Opinions and Editorials Archives - Brain Dumping in Retirement

Truth on a Slippery Slope

By Jim Bauman September 29, 2025Opinions and EditorialsCulture Clash, Language, Politics, Truth

It's hard these days to get a firm grip on what's true and worth paying attention to and learning from. The same words can be appropriated by different political points of view to have completely opposing meanings. What to do? Who to believe?

What Are Rich People Good At

By Jim Bauman July 20, 2025Opinions and EditorialsPoor people, Rich people, Wealth Inequality

A mental exercise in detailing how the rich differ from the rest of us. Of course, it's money that makes them rich, but more importantly it's money that importantly shapes who they are. The sad conclusion is that they are fundamentally not like us.

Intractable Conflicts

By Jim Bauman June 1, 2025Opinions and EditorialsIsrael Palestine Conflict, Polarization, Politics

The Israel Palestine conflict is in 2025 in its most brutal phase yet. It's a worst case example of the effects of rigid polarization turned savagely violent. Thousands are being killed and both sides are living at the edge of despair. It's a testament to the inflexibility and moral failures of politicians who incense their populations into hate.

Republicans Should Talk to Democrats (and Vice Versa)

By Jim Bauman May 15, 2025Neighborhood Watch, Opinions and EditorialsDEI, Democrats, Legislative Dominance, Republicans

A rewrite of the article Help! There's too many Republicans The rewrite includes some specifics relevant to Jefferson County.

Regrets of a Poor Choice

By Jim Bauman May 6, 2025Life and Living, Opinions and EditorialsChoices, Consequences, Culture Clash, Grandparents, Parents, Politics

Part memoir, part discourse on American politics in 2025, part speculation. How all these themes connect in Germany, Poland, and the United States.

A Friend in Jesus….

By Jim Bauman May 4, 2025Opinions and EditorialsChristianity, Deportation, Hypocrisy, Jesus, Trump

Speculation about how a self-avowed Christian president would stack up in the eyes of the Jesus he says he believes in.

Help! There’s Too Many Republicans!

By Jim Bauman April 8, 2025Opinions and EditorialsDEI, Democrats, Political Balance, Racism, Republicans

Putting the control of government in the hands of a single political party is a singularly effective way of putting a brake on legislation that will benefit the electorate fairly. Today we've allotted so much power to Republicans that we're at risk of weakening the foundations of our democracy. The battle against DEI is a case in point.

Armchair Quarterbacking Election Results

By Jim Bauman March 15, 2025Opinions and EditorialsCompetition, Democrats, Republicans

Following an election there's always a post mortem analysis by the losers about why they lost. The analysts need to find the flaws. And there are several places to look. At the candidates, the party, the voters, the messaging, or just because the time wasn't right. .

Political Messaging

By Jim Bauman March 3, 2025Opinions and EditorialsCampaigns, Messaging, Politics

What are the goals, probable benefits, and tactics for setting up a messaging campaign for a progressive political organization?

Living Without Friends

By Jim Bauman February 16, 2025Opinions and EditorialsAmerica, Global Friendships, Making Friends, Status

The Trump administration is playing fast and loose with the global friendships the United States has created and maintained for decades. What will be the effect of the U.S. losing those friends? Does the U.S. need friends anyway?

Getting Swing Voters to Lend Some Weight to Your End of the Seesaw

By Jim Bauman February 9, 2025Opinions and EditorialsElections, Messaging, Political Choice, Politics, Swing Voters

When is the best time to start engaging with the next following election? And a related question, when is the best time to try and convince someone to vote for your side?

DEI: It’s Been Good Knowing You

By Jim Bauman February 5, 2025Opinions and EditorialsDEI, Diversity, Election 2024, MAGA

The 2024 presidential election creates a scary picture of the future of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) for US democracy. We can speculate about what's coming, but first the MAGA movement has to rebrand itself to something less scary.

Hold On To Our Youth

By Jim Bauman February 5, 2025Opinions and EditorialsLocal Politics, Population Growth, West Virginia, Youth

West Virginia is losing its youth and becoming a state of older people. Our state, though, is actively trying to keep people out who could help reverse the outflow.

Superlatives in Politics Are the Worst

By Jim Bauman February 5, 2025Opinions and EditorialsAmerican Politics, Democracy, Superlatives

Claims made using superlative language can be convincing to some, while to others they are the mark of the snake oil salesman. It's the old story of don't believe what you know, believe what I say.

The Wild West in the White House

By Jim Bauman January 23, 2025Opinions and EditorialsBillionaires, Democrats, Politics, Trump Administration

The accumulating wreckage of the second Trump administration and how his thoroughbred billionaires are abetting the devastation.

The Mind of Your Better Angel

By Jim Bauman December 9, 2024Opinions and EditorialsBelief Systems, Better Angels, Points of View, Polarization

People are guided in their voting choices by their underlying belief systems. Assuming that most people's guides are kindly motivated, let's assume that these guides are angels. What would be the difference, though, between a good Left bending angel politically versus one on the Right?

I Want More Cake

By Jim Bauman December 9, 2024Opinions and EditorialsArmchair Economics, Billionaires, Greed, Mother Earth

Billionaires, even though there are relatively few of them, are accumulating more and more wealth at the expense of the "little people" all 7 billion of them. They are increasingly getting involved politically for no good reason except to become trillionaires. Mother Earth is not pleased.

The Smarts of the MAGA Intelligentsia

By Jim Bauman September 9, 2024Opinions and EditorialsEmpathy, Intelligence, MAGA, Project 2025

The intelligence of people who have a lot of it, maybe too much, is often applied in ways that sacrifice empathy. A case in point, the scientists of Los Alamos, who created the atom bomb. Another, the political scientists who created Project 2025.

Democratic Snowflakes and Republican Ice Crystals

By Jim Bauman September 8, 2024Opinions and EditorialsDemocrats, George Lakoff, Jonathan Haidt, Republicans, War on Coal, West Virginia

Politics is a brain game in which the opposing players have to come up with strategies to persuade and convince voters. The game is played to a great extent with language wrapped up in signs and speeches. Social scientists understand more and more how to craft that language to be effective.

The Hungry Pie Lover: An Allegory

By Jim Bauman August 3, 2024Opinions and EditorialsBiden, Choices, Discernment, Politics, Trump

A fictional account of a restaurant owner who thinks much of his menu and disparages his competition. The tale is related through the person of a potential customer.

Washington Waging War on West Virginia?

By Jim Bauman June 27, 2024Opinions and EditorialsGovernment Funding, Jim Justice, Politics, West Virginia

Criticism of Governor Jim Justice blaming the Biden Administration for delays in highway construction in West Virginia.

Undocumented Immigrants are People Not a “Scourge”

By Jim Bauman April 28, 2024Opinions and EditorialsImmigration, West Virginia

A response to a local politician critical of US immigration policy, even though immigration would be a plus for West Virginia's declining population.

Keep Going Or Jump Off

By Jim Bauman April 21, 2024Life and Living, Opinions and EditorialsAI, Choices, Medium, Retirement, Writing

With the advent of artificial intelligence, Medium, the writers' collective is getting a lot of writers submitting articles using AI. This article explains why I don't use AI to do my writing for me.

MAGA: An Honest Analysis of the Acronym

By Jim Bauman March 16, 2024Opinions and EditorialsElections, MAGA, Politics

An analysis (from a leftist perspective) of what the letters in the MAGA acronym stand for.

Creating the Theocracy

By Jim Bauman March 2, 2024Opinions and EditorialsCompromise, Democracy, Judicial Overreach, Theocracy

Democracy is becoming something of a dirty word among Christian conservatives, who would put their trust in the future of America as a theocracy. They are getting closer to achieving that goal in recent actions by certain courts. This attitude is becoming also a major platform plank of the Republican party.

How Long Does It Take to Make a Democracy Work?

By Jim Bauman February 21, 2024Opinions and EditorialsAmerican South, Democracy, H. L. Mencken

Democracy has had a rough ride here in the U.S. In the hundred years from World War I to today, it has increased and declined. The misgivings that H.L. Mencken had about the workings of democracy as he saw it 50 years after the Civil War are still with us today.

My Morals Are Stronger Than Your Morals

By Jim Bauman February 13, 2024Opinions and EditorialsGeorge Lakoff, Jonathan Haidt, Metaphors, Politics

The difference between conservatives and progressives or liberal and their electoral success or not is complicated. Lakoff attributes this to messaging and Haidt to moral differences.

Tangled Trees, Tangled Truths

By Jim Bauman February 13, 2024Opinions and EditorialsAnalogy, Conservatives, Politics, Progressives

Thinking about how our divided politics, which is so mixed up and tangled, that it looks similar to the kind of tangling that physicists and biologists deal with.

Conservatives Tell Us How to Behave

By Jim Bauman January 21, 2024Opinions and EditorialsConservatives, Marginalized People, Progressives

How do conservatives look at the concerns of progressive people? From the book The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray, like a bunch of complainers who don't know how good they have it.

Believe Me, I’m Telling You the Truth!

By Jim Bauman January 1, 2024Opinions and EditorialsMajorities, Majority Rule, Opinion, Political Truth

Some thoughts on truth and believability, which are not the same thing. Truth can be slippery and discerning it can take some effort on the reader's or listener's part. It's as easy to be deceived as to be enlightened.

Is the Majority Always Wrong?

By Jim Bauman December 23, 2023Opinions and EditorialsAnti-Democracy, Democracy, Majority Rule, Mark Twain, Minority Rule

Mark Twain had no trust or love for majority rule, but since our country is supposedly democratic, how does that mistrust of majority rule align with what kind of country the US wants to be? There's a lot of anti-democratic feelings boiling up in the country now.

What to Make of John McWhorter

By Jim Bauman November 25, 2023Opinions and EditorialsAnti-Racism, DEI, Racism, Woke, Wokeness

John McWhorter is a Black man who rejects the idea that Black people have any right to criticize their present station in life. He argues that staying woke in the face of racism and the attention given by white people to anti-racism is demeaning of Black people. This in spite of the fact that the term woke and the reality of racism reflects the experience and testimony of Black people themselves.

Charity — The Worlds Solution to Wealth Inequality

By Jim Bauman September 7, 2023Opinions and EditorialsCharity, Culture, Giving, Politics, Wealth Inequality

Does the institution of charity and the practice of charitable giving come from our human nature or is it actively promoted by businesses and governments who are trying to deflect their responsibility to prevent the need for charity.

Better Call Saul for LGBTQIA+ Rights

By Jim Bauman July 17, 2023Life and Living, Opinions and EditorialsACT UP, ADIS Activism, LGBTQ rights, Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky wrote the book on how to get what you need from your society when the powers that be don't want you to have them. He laid the groundwork for the methods that the ACT UP movement used to poke the government to respond to the AIDS epidemic in the 80's and 90's.

Is Hoping Worth the Effort?

By Jim Bauman May 17, 2023Life and Living, Opinions and EditorialsAI, Determination, Hope, Risk Assessment

Hope is a word we typically utter with the expectation of some outcome, usually a positive outcome, but not necessarily. It’s typically triggered by some actual or imagined threat. The hope is made with the prospect of reducing that threat.

How Do You Feel About Your AI?

By Jim Bauman May 17, 2023Opinions and EditorialsAdjectives, Artificial Intelligence, Humanness, Robots

The question is how much humanness there is in artificial intelligence. Enough for us to trust it or not?

Got a Problem? Ask Your AI Bot

By Jim Bauman May 10, 2023Opinions and EditorialsAbortion, AI Solutions, Discourse Analysis, Gun Violence, Yuval Harari

Can AI bots do a better job than we humans have done in working through solutions to our social problems?

Who Am I to You?

By Jim Bauman May 10, 2023Life and Living, Opinions and EditorialsBigotry, Labels, Naming, Politics, Psycholinguistics

There is a pervasive tendency to label people we don’t like for some reason that offends us. Many labels are pejorative, meant not just to describe, but to tar.

Book Banning Counter Attack

By Jim Bauman April 2, 2023Opinions and EditorialsBook Banning, Bullying, Libraries, Parents Rights, Reading

Books are being banned as a radical right conservative battle with rights progressives have won over the years. This article offers some thoughts about who is going to win and what progressives can do to counter attack the book burners.

The struggle to make AI seem human

By Jim Bauman March 26, 2023Opinions and EditorialsArtificial Intelligence, Context, Discourse, Linguistics, Translation

There are two opposing viewpoints about AI. One believes that the potential for AI is almost limitless and that it will ultimately reach human levels. The other, supported by linguistics says that's not likely.

Woke, Wokeness, Wokeism

By Jim Bauman March 12, 2023Opinions and EditorialsLanguage Change, Racism, Woke

This article focuses on the fortunes of the word "woke" and the change from its original meaning in the phrase "Stay woke" as a warning to an indictment of progressive politics.

Woke: the Concept and the Word

By Jim Bauman March 10, 2023Opinions and EditorialsRacism, Wokeness

There's a battle being waged over the meaning and significance of the word "woke," a term that has it's origins in the Black community as part of the language for how to deal with racial prejudice.

Systemic Racism Has Got to Go

By Jim Bauman February 27, 2023Opinions and EditorialsCensus, Racism, Systemic racism

There's a debate in the U.S. as to whether systemic racism exists in the country. Some red states want to legislate the term away, to deny its existence. But is that going to be possible or even desirable?

The Cult of Coal

By Jim Bauman December 31, 2022Opinions and EditorialsCoal country, Environment, Good jobs argument, Out-of-state interests, Republican policy

Coal has long occupied a special place in the economy of West Virginia, a place that today's energy market is fast relegating to history.. However, coal still carries a lot of political weight in the state, wielded mainly by Republicans. If that weight isn't lifted, it will stall the progress communities across the state need to make to recover from the dirt, mess, disease, environmental destruction and poverty coal mining has left in its wake.

For the Many, Not for the Few

By Jim Bauman December 31, 2022Opinions and EditorialsCorporate commitment to community, COVID pandemic, WV Congressional election, WV health picture, WV jobs

This article is an endorsement of the 2020 Democratic candidate for Congress, Cathy Kunkel. Kunkel lost the election to Alex Mooney. The phrase "For the many, not for the few" was Kunkel's campaign slogan, an appeal to voters to consider Mooney's overwhelming support from out-of-state money as evidence that his interests were not those of the people.

My Hero and Me

By Jim Bauman December 31, 2022Opinions and EditorialsTrump

Some speculations about whether Trumps character flaws extend to his voters too. If and when the light dawns will his voters experience any remorse or will they rationalize their veneration of him somehow?

The Left, the Right and the Center

By Jim Bauman December 31, 2022Opinions and EditorialsConservatism, Democrats, Politics, Progressivism, Republicans, Socialism, Trump

We're a politically polarized country and, with the exception of a relatively small number of centrists, people align themselves with the political left or the political right. This article plants itself squarely on the left and presents that side of the issue. Feel free to disagree.

A More Perfect Union

By Jim Bauman December 31, 2022Opinions and EditorialsConservatism, Constitution, Progressivism, Trickle-down economics

The More Perfect Union we're promised in the Constitution is a work in progress. It's been on-going for more than two centuries and we're still not done yet. Making some progress maybe, but it's like two steps forward, one step back. This is the argument for progressive thinking in government and society.

The Hate Card

By Jim Bauman December 31, 2022Opinions and EditorialsChristians on LGBTQ, LGBTQ hate

Matthew Franck, director of the Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution, argued when the Supreme Court was deliberating on the constitutionality of gay marriage in 2010 that advocates for gay marriage were overplaying the "hate card," that is, regarding religious opposition to gay marriage as evidence of hate toward homosexuals. This was my response.