On Friday, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, warned the US must take “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on its debt as soon as January 19. Yellen explained she would impose those extraordinary measures until Congress agreed to raise the debt ceiling — again. …

America has demonstrated a complete and utter lack of leadership throughout the pandemic. — Continued from Part 3. These gaps and systemic flaws identified within America and discussed in the prior pieces of this series are repairable except for the most significant gap of all. America has demonstrated a complete and utter lack of leadership throughout the pandemic. President Trump counted every escalating pandemic…

2020 revealed how fully American Christianity has compromised its role of moral leadership for political power. — Continued from Part 2. Historically, global pandemics have produced many of the same byproducts we are witnessing today. Social anxieties gave way to conspiracy theories. An array of health advice and research contributed to good ideas and other ideas that were simple quackery. But past pandemics also produced religious awakenings…

The pandemic did not cause economic inequality in the US. It revealed a long-standing divide that may be too far gone to repair. — Continued from part 1. The coronavirus lockdowns in the first half of 2020 triggered an explosion in unemployment. More than 14 million Americans became unemployed between February and May in the first wave of America’s pandemic experience. More Americans lost their jobs in three months than in three years of…

COVID-19 revealed an American system unprepared for a crisis and unlikely to quickly recover from the damage done in 2020. — As I write these words, the United States is approaching 20 million confirmed coronavirus cases nationwide and more than 340,000 deaths. In many instances, these figures far surpass the worst-case projections of the spring when the nation went into lockdown to “flatten the curve” of this deadly pandemic. India, the…

We have grown uncomfortably numb to the waves of crisis in 2020, but the end is not in sight. One month from today, the US will vote in the long-anticipated US elections. On November 3, everything will change. Or will it? Much of America, if not the world, is enduring this terrible year through a posture that amounts to little more than holding our breath. There is a subtle…

All manners of big companies and name brands are seizing the national platform to define and defend our society’s moral standards today. By virtue of their considerable financial imprint, corporations are learning they can impose their values of right and wrong upon various nations, states, and cities, not to mention…

Generational moments, or defining moments, are rare by definition. The easiest way to identify them is everyone in your age group can recall where they were when the moment occurred. Some examples include President Kennedy’s assassination, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, the 2001 terror attacks, and so on. If you…

Last week it was announced that Pranab Mukherjee, a former President of India, and a politician who served 51 years within the young nation’s government, died after being diagnosed with the coronavirus 21 days earlier. Later the Indian government also announced a return of tensions at the border with China…