Commentary

We are living in the most dangerous times since World War II, when fascism threatened not only our democracy but our very existence as an independent nation. The rise of Hitler as leader of a powerful, militaristic and nationalistic Germany, and of Mussolini in Italy coupled with Japanese dreams of conquest, resulted in the deaths of 75 million people. Hitler exterminated six million Jews. I was born during the World War II, while my dad served on a Navy destroyer making dangerous runs escorting supply ships to Murmansk, Russia through a gauntlet of Nazi U-Boats and Luftwaffe planes. This was to help break Hitler’s back after he invaded Russia in 1941.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, told “PBS NewsHour” that “certainly” America is now “out of the pandemic phase” of COVID-19 as our rates of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to ebb. But, he added, “We’re not going to eradicate this virus.” Our best hope is to “keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people,” possibly as often as every year. Put another way, the endemic has arrived.

Last week, the Florida Republican Party declared war on Disney and math books. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was caught on tape acknowledging former President Donald Trump’s responsibility for the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol and his plan to ask for Trump’s resignation. Trump’s former White House chief of staff and self-declared champion for voter integrity was found to be registered to vote in three states while using a false address in one of them. Also last week, pictures were released showing Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn at a party dressed in women’s lingerie, a bra, and sporting earrings and a woman’s necklace. Just weeks ago, Cawthorn accused Republicans of inviting him to “cocaine-fueled orgies.”

Our Democracy is hanging by a thread. Less than two years ago, we witnessed a full scale insurrection in Washington, D.C., where rioters assaulted Capitol Police officers and threatened to assassinate the vice president and members of Congress. It is against this backdrop of recent political violence that makes the behavior exhibited at Tuesday’s City Council hearing so troubling. As members of Baltimore’s governing body, we collectively condemn the outrageous and dangerous behavior exhibited at City Hall. The free exchange of ideas should never be accompanied by petty, personal insults or thinly veiled threats of a riot.

School board members work hard but usually get more grief than appreciation for their labors. I was one of them, serving two separate stints on the Baltimore City school board. Nonetheless, the evidence is overwhelming that school boards generally do more harm than good. And their negative impact is getting worse.

The grander myths of Christopher Columbus were long ago exposed as false. As we’ve outlined on this page before, he didn’t set out to prove the world was round, didn’t discover America and might not even have been Italian. He was never the hero his legend grew to portray him, but instead a complicated man whose journeys commercially linked the Eastern and Western hemispheres, and led the way toward European conquest of North America, as well as the enslavement and domination of its Indigenous peoples.