But What About Biden’s Support of Israel?

There are several reasons why President Biden’s re-election as POTUS is uncertain despite the undesirability of his only real opponent. In this post, I am dealing with only one of those, which is the main reason some people, including some of my Thinking Friends, say they cannot vote for Biden. 

Pres. Biden contemplating what to do about Gaza.

Why is Pres. Biden supporting Israel so strongly? This is a question many people, especially younger people, in the U.S. are asking. And most of those asking that question are quite critical of the President because of that support.

In contrast to Lord Tennyson’s well-known words, “Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die,” concerning Israel’s retaliation against Hamas and the U.S. President’s support of that warfare, it is incumbent upon us to ask the reason why—and to ask why so many Palestinians have had to die.

The attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was an atrocious event, one not unfairly compared with the September 11, 2001, attack on the U.S. True, the deaths on 10/7 were around 40% of those on 9/11—but the population of Israel is only about 3% that of the U.S.

Do you remember the reaction of the U.S. government to those horrendous attacks on 9/11/01? On October 7 (in a remarkable coincidence of dates), the U.S. officially launched Operation Enduring Freedom against Afghanistan.

In that war which ended on August 30, 2021—an ending for which Biden has also often been strongly criticized—at least 175,000 (and probably far more) people were killed, including more than 46,000 civilians.

If that is how the U.S. first responded to 9/11 even though the attackers were not Afghans, it is not surprising that Israel responded with strong military action against Gaza, where most of the Hamas terrorists lived.

Support of Israel has been U.S. policy since 1948 when Israel became a nation, and the U.S. under Pres. Truman was the first to recognize that new nation, and this country has been Israel’s primary ally ever since.

Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, receiving about $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance.

What else could Pres. Biden do but stand by an old ally? As I wrote in my blog post on Dec. 21 last year,

I don’t think Biden’s position is any different from what any other President’s would be, including Hillary Clinton (who could well have been nearing the end of her seventh year as President if it had not been for her inexplicable loss in 2016).

Near Election Day in 2016 when I thought Clinton’s election was assured, I wrote “an open letter to Madame President.” Among other things, I implored her to ease up on her support for Israel in order to lessen the injustice being done to the Palestinians.

Pres. Biden’s support of Israel has lessened over the months since last October, and his support for humanitarian aid for Gaza has increased notably.

Four weeks ago, Senator Schumer (D-N.Y.), the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S. and a staunch ally of Israel, gave a powerful speech criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu and called for new elections in Israel, for if held now, Netanyahu would most likely not be re-elected.

Pres. Biden praised Schumer’s speech. In contrast, it was also widely reported that leading Republican lawmakers were quite critical of it. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the U.S. needs to stand with Israel and give its friend and ally its full support.

What would happen if Trump were President? Two weeks ago, Trump said he would have responded the same way as Israel did after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas but urged the country to “finish up” its offensive in Gaza and “get this over with.”*¹

On that same day, “U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan who used to serve as a Baptist pastor, suggested at a town hall meeting during Holy Week that the Gaza Strip should be nuked.”*²

I certainly wish Pres. Biden—and the U.S. government—had a far less supportive position toward Israel and a far greater humanitarian position toward Gaza.

Hearing what Trump and the Republicans are saying, though, why would anyone think voting for them rather than Biden would be better for the Palestinians?*³

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 *¹ This was widely reported in the news media; here is the link to what the Associated Press wrote.

*² Here is how my friend Brian Kaylor, president & editor-in-chief of Word&Way, continued, citing Walberg: “‘We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,’ [Walberg] declared on March 25 after a constituent asked about the U.S. effort to build a port to deliver humanitarian aid to starving people in Gaza. ‘It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.’” (Word&Way is a Christian [Baptist] media company based in Missouri since 1896.) 

*³ Please note my contention in the March 20 post that not voting or voting for a third party candidate, especially in swing states, increases the likelihood that Trump will be re-elected. 

On Having and Celebrating Life, Real/Eternal Life

Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty: These are the “4-Ls” about which I wrote in my March 9 post. Today I am focusing on Life, the first of those four. Over the next few weeks, I will write about the other three.

Real life is more than physical life. As I said in the March 9 post, the foundation of my emphasis on life was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).

Having abundant life focuses on the quality of life, not just its quantity. Physical life is something that people either have or don’t have. That is, they are either alive or dead. But living abundantly means living with meaning, purpose, and joy.

The emphasis on life, real life, was prominent in the Christian Studies courses I conducted at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. In 1975, I taught a required course for second-year Economics Department students. Horiuchi Akira-san was one of the students enrolled in that class.

On his 70^th birthday in January, Horiuchi-san posted the following comments (in Japanese) on Facebook: “When I was a second year university student, a missionary teacher of Christian Studies said, "The purpose of Christianity is to help people to have life and to have it abundantly."

In a personal exchange on Facebook Messenger, Horiuchi-san (whom I should call sensei since he has been a Christian pastor for most of the years since he finished his theological education in 1981) wrote, “I am who I am today because of my encounter with you. Thanks.”

Real life includes valuing and protecting physical life. Even though it is more than physical life, having real life leads to more than just enjoying the richness of one’s own life. It also seeks life for groups of people, robust physical life as well as meaningful societal life.

This generates opposition to war, to violence of all kinds, to capital punishment, to ecological destruction, and to all exploitation and/or degradation of people because of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else.  

Conservative Christians of the present have preserved the important emphasis of evangelicalism on real life for individuals by faith in God through Jesus Christ, but so many have largely failed to emphasize the equally important matter of helping marginalized groups to have vigorous physical life also.

The New Testament term eternal life is basically the same as what I call real life. I have used the latter term because of the misunderstanding or ambiguity of the word eternal, which was long expressed as everlasting in English.

For centuries, the majority of Protestants (including most Anglicans) read the King James Version of the Bible, which dates back to 1611. Many of us older people memorized John 3:16 in the KJV:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That was the basis for the widespread belief in unending life, which was generally understood as life after physical death.

But beginning with the American Standard Version, published in 1901, the Greek words previously translated as everlasting life began to be translated as eternal life. This became more widely the case after the Revised Standard Version was published in 1952.

Bible scholars increasingly began to emphasize that eternal, especially in the Gospel of John, primarily refers to the quality of life, not its quantity. Thus, eternal life is the type of life that we can have and enjoy now, not just life after physical death.

Life (real life) is the theme of Easter, which Christians around the world will be celebrating tomorrow.

It is because of the resurrected Jesus that all can receive new life = eternal life through him. That is the life that Horiuchi-san received the year after he heard about real life in my Christian Studies class in 1975.

His kind words of gratitude were primarily for my sharing the Gospel of life with him and his classmates, most of whom never accepted that message. He did and that made all the difference.

Happy Easter!

Is the Republican Party Dead?

This is not the blog post I first intended to write for today. Last month I happened to see that Ralph Nadar was celebrating his 90^th birthday (on Feb. 27), and I planned to write about him. But my plan changed when I saw this headline: “Trump Jr. says ‘MAGA movement is the new Republican Party’.”

Various voices over the last few years have spoken about the death of the Republican Party. Surprisingly, one of those voices was that of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

In November 2022, CBS News quoted Sen. Hawley as saying, “The Republican Party, as we have known it, is dead.” That was an expression of his disappointment about the outcome of the mid-term elections. Democrats maintained that those results were because of voters’ displeasure with Trump.

Since then, though, Trump and MAGA Republicans have become much stronger. Last week, “Donald Trump Jr. mused that the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement has replaced the old guard of the Republican Party.”

That New York Post article went on to cite Trump Jr. declaring, “That [old-school establishment] Republican Party frankly no longer exists outside of the D.C. Beltway.”

With Trump Sr. replacing the leadership of the Republican National Committee with his hand-picked supporters, including his daughter-in-law, the traditional GOP has essentially become the MAGA Party.

As the March 25 issue of Time magazine says (on p. 7) under the title, “It’s Trump’s Party,”  “The MAGA movement’s takeover of the GOP is now complete.” In that sense, it may be correct to say that the Republican Party as it has existed for the past century is dead.

What are traditional Republicans or opponents of Democrats to do? That seems to be the dilemma many U.S. voters find themselves in now.

Come November 5, one of two old, White men will be re-elected POTUS (assuming they are both still alive and well then, which is by no means assured.) But what if you cannot bear to vote for “Sleepy Joe” or “Sleazy Donald”?

That’s where Ralph Nadar enters the picture. According to Wikipedia, Nadar is an “American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes, and a perennial presidential candidate.”

The latter is the only aspect of Nadar’s career that I will consider here, for Nadar’s running as a third-party candidate in 2000 is quite likely the major reason George W. Bush was elected President over Al Gore.

It is difficult to fathom how much better off this country, and the world, would be if Gore had been elected in 2000. As you may remember, Gore did receive the most popular votes, but thanks to the Supreme Court’s dubious decision, Florida’s electoral votes went to Bush and he became the 43^rd POTUS.

In that decisive state of Florida, Bush defeated Gore by only 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes in Florida, which led to justifiable claims that Nader was responsible for Gore's defeat—or rather, the Democrats and Independents who voted for Nadar were those most responsible for Bush’s election.

What does all this mean for 2024? Among other things, it means that those—and most especially those who live in the so-called “swing stages” of Ariz., Ga., Mich., N.C., Nev., Penn., and Wis.—must beware of voting for a third-party candidate if they don’t want Trump to win the election.

Some speak of voting for the lesser of two evils, and others say if both candidates are “evil,” they cannot and will not vote for either.

But it seems quite clear to me that it is far better to vote for the better of two evils than to not vote at all. Also, it is far better to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than for a third-party candidate that will potentially lead to the election of the greater of the two evils.

And mark it down: it is nearly 100% certain that either the Democratic or the Republican candidate will win the 2024 presidential election.

If Trump’s MAGA party is the only alternative to the Democratic Party, which seems to be the case now that the traditional Republican Party is the same as dead, I admonish you to vote for Biden’s re-election and for Democratic Senators and Representatives. Democracy itself and so much more is at stake.

Tarnishing the Name of Jesus

It was a week ago tonight that Pres. Biden delivered the annual State of the Union (SOTU) message. His address was widely applauded by Democrats and by the mainstream media—and, not surprisingly, panned by Republicans and by right-wing news outlets who castigate the “lamestream” media.

This post, though, is about the Republican rebuttal speech given by Alabama Senator Katie Britt. 

Katie Boyd Britt (b. 1982) was elected the junior Senator from Alabama in 2022, defeating Democrat Will Boyd, a Black Baptist pastor. She received nearly 67% of the vote.

I didn’t remember hearing the name of Sen. Britt before I saw that she would give the rebuttal after the SOTU address, so I looked her up on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

In a July 2021 interview, Britt stated, “Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life, and that should be the foundation that everything else comes around.” I certainly would not disagree with that, but surely such a statement should include telling the truth and not bearing false witness.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times candidly stated that “the woman sitting in the kitchen with the cross glittering on her neck lied.” After listening (on Friday) to her Thursday night rebuttal speech, that clearly seems to be the case.

And given what she has said about Jesus Christ and the sparkling (diamond-studded?) cross around her neck as she gave her speech, it seemed to me that she was tarnishing the name of Jesus.

No wonder more and more people in the U.S. are leaving the Christian faith and joining the “nones.”

Sen. Boyd’s rebuttal speech was criticized and critiqued by a wide variety of voices. For example, here is part of what historian Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) wrote about Katie’s talk in her March 8 newsletter:

Sitting in a kitchen rather than in a setting that reflected her position in one of the nation’s highest elected offices, Britt conspicuously wore a necklace with a cross and spoke in a breathy, childlike voice as she wavered between smiles and the suggestion she was on the verge of tears. 

At the close of HRC’s letter, I first learned about Jess Piper and her Substack posts under the name “The View from Rural Missouri.” Her March 8 “view” was titled “The Fundie Baby Voice.”*

But it wasn’t the voice that most disturbed me. It was the lies that Sen. Britt told in that problematic voice.

In his remarks at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening, Jimmy Kimmel made these remarks about Emma Stone, who had just been awarded the Best Actress Oscar: “Emma, you are so unbelievably great in Poor Things. Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night.”**

Sen. Boyd did her best to harm Pres. Biden and to lessen his chances of winning a second term as POTUS. She may have done the Republicans more harm than good, however.

I was saddened by the touching story she told of talking last year with the girl who had been a victim of sex trafficking—and then off-put by her blaming the President for that tragic event. And then I was incensed when it turned out the incident in question took place when George W. Bush was President!

On Monday, Washington Post associate editor and columnist Karen Tumulty wrote that the “horrific story” Katie told, “at least by implication, turned out to be a big fat lie.”

Tumulty went on to note that the “Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Britt four Pinocchios for the way she twisted this tragic story to make a cravenly partisan point.”

Despite her later efforts to walk back what she had said, there was no way her listeners could have known she was talking about an incident that took place more than a decade ago. Even if it wasn’t a blatant lie, it was highly deceitful and told with the intent of harming the President.

It is quite clear, though, that in spite of her prominent display of a cross on a necklace and pious talk, she tarnished the name of Jesus and did the cause of Christ far more harm than good.

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  * Jess Piper lives in (or near) Maryville, Missouri, which is about 35 miles from my hometown. In 2022 she ran as a progressive Democrat to become a Representative in the Missouri legislature, but she was soundly defeated in the district that twice voted for Trump by 80% or so. I am now receiving her Substack posts and have had email exchanges with her this week.

** This was a powerful putdown of Sen. Britt’s rebuttal speech to those who had seen Emma Stone's Oscar-winning performance in Poor Things, but I do not recommend that movie except to insightful, mature adults.

The 4-Ls: Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty

The header at the top of all my blog posts contains the words “Reflections about Life, Love, Light, and Liberty.” Those are the 4-Ls that I have emphasized for years and about which I am finally explaining in this blog post. 

Some of you may have wondered why more of my blog articles are not more “religious” or more explicitly “Christian.” Many of you know that I was ordained as a Christian minister at the age of 18 and that I served for 38 years as a missionary in Japan.

True, some of my blog posts are clearly Christian and/or religious. But many could, conceivably, have been written by one who is neither Christian nor religious as that word is generally understood.

But with a few exceptions, most of my blog posts are directly related to life, love, light, and liberty, the 4-Ls, and those words are basic concepts of the Christian faith and at the core of my life and work.

In 1995 after I had been elected as Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin, the large educational institution in Japan where I had been a university faculty member since 1968, a local newspaper reporter asked me what I would be emphasizing as the head of what was widely known as a “Christian school.”

Beginning at least in a 1994 Christmas sermon in a school Chapel service, I talked about four words that began with the letter L in English. (Those words are known by any Japanese person with a high school education.) So that is what I told the reporter I would be emphasizing.

Not long after I was installed as chancellor, Nakamura Kunie-san, one of my supporting staff members, presented me with the following wall hanging that I kept in my office during the eight years I served as chancellor—and have had hanging above my desk here in the States ever since retirement in 2004.

On the back, Nakamura-san pasted an explanation of the simple image, saying they were the four Ls: Life (生命), Love (聖愛), Light (公明), Liberty (自由). (The Japanese words do not begin with an L sound; they are pronounced seimei, seiai, kōmei, and jiyū.*)

Most of my Japanese students were not interested in religion when I began teaching Christian Studies at Seinan Gakuin University (SGU) in 1968—and that remained so during my three decades teaching required courses in what was founded as, and continued as, a Christian school.

Not long after starting my teaching career at SGU, I came across a book titled ABC’s of Christian Faith (1968) by Union Theological Seminary professor James D. Smart (1906~82). I was impressed by that book and its unifying theme: “Life in God.”

After reading Smart’s book which emphasized that Christianity at its core was not about religion but about life, I decided that since I was teaching an introductory course on Christian beliefs, I would relate my lectures to how Jesus came not to start a new religion but to help people live a meaningful life.

The foundation of that emphasis was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).**

Later, love became a central theme in the new course on Christian ethics that I developed. While there continued to be considerable disinterest in religion, students were generally interested in learning about people who lived lives exhibiting Christian love.

Then through the years, I also began to emphasize the Christian emphasis on light as well as liberty, so by the mid-1990s, the 4-Ls were prominent enough in my mind to make them the focal point of my work as head of Seinan Gakuin, the educational institution with around 10,000 students and pupils.

I wanted then to speak meaningfully to the mostly non-Christian students, staff, and faculty at Seinan Gakuin in Japan. And now I want to write these blog articles so that those who are not, or no longer, active Christians will also find them thought-provoking and relevant for the living of these days.

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 * The image at the top of this post is the center of a large hanging scroll which I received as a gift at the end of my term as Chancellor. The Japanese words for the 4-Ls are written by stylized brush strokes and are read from top to bottom and from right to left.

** I plan to write more about Life in my March 30 blog post and about Love, Light, and Liberty over the next several weeks. 

Beware of “Greenwashing”

We are all familiar with the term “whitewashing.” The verb whitewash used in the figurative sense means "to cover up, conceal, give a false appearance of cleanness to," and it was used with that meaning by the middle of the 18th century

But what about “greenwashing”? What does that word mean and why should we beware of what it designates? 

Greenwashing is defined as “the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.” This word was first used around 1990.*¹

Since it is a form of deception, we must be aware of and beware of greenwashing. This is one of the many important emphases in a new book (in English) that I have read and written a review of this month.*²

The book title is Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, and the author’s name is given as Kōhei Saitō. The English translation was issued just last month, but the original Japanese edition was published in 2020, and its (translated) title is “Capital” in the Anthropocene.*³

Saitō (b. 1987) was born in Japan but was a university student in the U.S. from 2005 to 2009 and then in Germany, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in 2015. After a few years teaching at a university in Osaka, in 2022 he became an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo.

“Ecology Is the Opiate of the Masses!” is the attention-grabbing title of the Introduction in Saitō’s book. He explains,

Long ago, Marx characterized religion as “the opiate of the masses” because he saw it as offering temporary relief from the painful reality brought about by capitalism. SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] are none other than a contemporary version of the same “opiate” (xvii-xviii).

Before that, though, in his preface to the English edition, Saitō asserts that “greenwashing is everywhere,” and he describes that concept as “an optimistic belief in green technologies and green growth” and says that it “may be nothing more than a ploy to buy time for capitalism” (xi).

Saitō’s main criticism is not directed toward the global warming deniers, whom he rarely mentions, but toward those who want to save the environment. Thus, his second chapter mainly disparages proponents of the Green New Deal (GND)—as I was when I made a blog post affirming the GND in Feb. 2019.

He asks, “Can a Green New Deal really save us,” and he answers his rhetorical question in the negative. Why? Because those espousing the Green New Deal emphasize “green growth,” which Saitō thinks is impossible. And now I think he is probably right and my previous support of the GND was wrong.

Politicians always have to be concerned about the next election, so affirming “green growth” is a way of appealing to those who want to combat the dangers of climate change as well as to continue receiving the support of “big business.”

But Saitō’s main point throughout his book is clearly stated in the Introduction: capitalism is the “root cause” of the current climate crisis (p. xix). Greenwashing is used to protect capitalism by making people think that the GND and the like will alleviate the ever-increasing environmental crisis.

So, why should we beware of greenwashing? For the simple reason that the New Green Deal and other similar plans for saving the planet from global warming are deceitful, for they propose that that can be done with capitalism kept intact. Still, the NGD is certainly better than maintaining the status quo.

Saitō’s analysis of the climate/ecological problem is most probably accurate. (You’ll have to read Saitō’s book or at least a/my review of it to understand what degrowth communism means and why he thinks that it is the only viable solution to the current climate crisis.)

But the solution he posits, a worldwide shift from capitalism to degrowth communism, is absolutely unrealistic. Even Saitō says, “The Earth will become uninhabitable for humankind before capitalism collapses” (p. 26).

But, sadly, with the MAGA Republicans refusing to provide additional funding for Ukraine and candidate Trump saying he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if it attacked a NATO country that didn’t pay enough for defense, perhaps nuclear warfare will bring the end of the world as we know it before the ecological crisis does.

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*¹ From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

*² The review was written for The Englewood Review of Books, which provided me with a free copy of Saitō’s thought-provoking book. My review will appear on ERB’s website next month, but you can read (here) the review article (of around 1,200 words) that I submitted to Englewood.

*³ In the first printing of the English translation, all references to global temperatures should be disregarded, for they are all incorrect. I was able to exchange emails with author Saitō about this matter, and he said it was “a stupid conversion error” that has already been fixed on the Kindle version and will be corrected in the subsequent printings of the published book.

Note: Here is the link to a YouTube video of Saitō explaining his understanding of degrowth communism. That video has had nearly 10,000 views, and there are other, and longer, videos by Saitō on YouTube. 

Do You Know about TheGrio and the Icon Awards?

As this is Black History Month, it seems like a good time to post an article about TheGrio, which I just learned about by accident earlier this month. Some of you, I assume, know about TheGrio, but my guess is that most of you know little if any about it. 

TheGrio is “an American television network and website with news, opinion, entertainment and video content geared toward African-Americans.” It can be watched free on the internet, and it is also available on local TV in many cities across the U.S.*

TheGrio’s name comes from griot, a Western African word that designates a musician-entertainer who plays a vital role in preserving their people's oral traditions and histories.

Although I rarely watch local TV, I happened to turn on CBS on the evening of Feb. 3 and theGrio’s Icon Awards program was being telecast. I listened with interest to speeches by three of the Icon recipients, the three I am briefly introducing below.

Al Sharpton received the Justice Ikon Award. According to Wikipedia, Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (b. 1954) is “an American civil rights and social justice activist, Baptist minister, radio talk show host, and TV personality, who is also the founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization.” 

Sharpton has been a leading, and controversial, civil rights leader for nearly 55 years now. He has also sought various political offices, including that of POTUS (in 2004), but was never elected.

At the end of his theGrioAwards speech, Sharpton said, “The only thing that I really live for is I get up with this dream: every bigot, every racist, everyone in this country that hates will say damn, he’s up again.”

TheGrio online article concludes, “He loves to have them know that they can’t stop him. He loves knowing that Black resistance to oppression is unstoppable. That’s why the Rev. Sharpton deserves the Justice Icon Award.”

Those who commemorate recent Black history forty years from now will surely remember Al Sharpton along with many other exemplary civil rights leaders such as him as well as the next two theGrio Ikon Awards.

The Scientist Ikon was awarded to Kizzmekia Corbett, born in 1986 in North Carolina. In 2008, she received a B.S. in biological sciences and sociology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).** 

In 2014, Corbett earned a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and since June 2021 she has been an assistant professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Corbett was awarded the Scientist Ikon because of her great contribution to the development of the covid-19 vaccination, which probably saved as many as five million lives—and some sources put that figure as high as 20 million—around the world.

Please click here to read the article about the reason Corbett was chosen for the Scientist Ikon and listen to her acceptance speech last November.

The recipient of the Inspiration Ikon Award was Dwayne Johnson. I never thought I would post a blog article in admiration of a man whose main claim to fame is professional wrestling, for I am the very opposite of a fan of that “sport.” 

Johnson’s father was a Black Nova Scotian and his mother (whose first name is Mataniufeagaimaleata (!) but she went by the name Ata) is Samoan. Both parents were professional wrestlers.

Citing Wikipedia again, Dwayne Douglas Johnson (b. 1972), “also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor, businessman, and professional wrestler. He is…widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time.”

Recently, however, Johnson has been in the news because of teaming up with Oprah to raise and provide much-needed financial and housing relief for the many people suffering from the Maui, Hawaii, wildfires in 2023, the deadliest U.S. wildfires in at least 100 years.

Here is the link to Johnson’s impressive (and brief) acceptance speech for his Inspiration Ikon, which was also awarded in November 2023.

Black History Month every February is an important time to recognize prominent African Americans of the past as well as contemporary Black people of distinction who are shaping Black history that will be remembered decades from now.

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  * This is the opening sentence of the Wikipedia article on TheGrio (often written as theGrio)—and it needs to be updated as African-American is now not generally used as a hyphenated word nor used as much as Black. Here is a link to theGrio’s webpage with their explanation about themselves—and I encourage you to take a look at that website. (Note that Grio is pronounced grī/ō.) I was a bit surprised to learn that it is available on channel 62-2, a free local channel, here in the Kansas City area.

** I was interested to see that, for my granddaughter Naomi is currently a student at UMBC.