democracy | Straightspeak

Donny … ya’ gotta stop poking the bear

By DHughes|2025-04-07T17:32:07-04:00March 28th, 2025|Categories: business, community, politics, social, trumpwatch|Tags: 2024 US election, democracy, eligible voters, mandate, Trump, voter turnout|

... 'cause if she rises up, you're lunch! (3 min) "Bad officials are elected by good citizens who don't vote." – George Jean Nathan In this winter of discontent American citizens might want to turn their attention to America's great sleeping bear, hibernating in plain sight, ignored by all. Not only should little Donny Trump beware the bear, Read more...

“Houston, we’ve got another problem”

By DHughes|2025-03-20T16:54:19-04:00March 20th, 2025|Categories: business, community, politics, social, trumpwatch|Tags: Apollo 13, Brandy Lee, Canada, chainsaw, corruption, democracy, Edward Deming, Eliott Jaques, Jim Collins, Jim Lovell, John Gardner, Michael Lewis, Musk, tariffs, The Fifth Risk, Trump, Ukraine|

The near-catastrophe aboard Apollo 13 was nothing compared to what Captain Space-X and his orange crew chief are now launching in America (11 min read) "Houston, we've had a problem." Jim Lovell, American astronaut, April 1970 Like the problem (explosion) on Apollo 13, the current firestorm raging from the White House could blow up if we don’t throw off our Read more...

This is us …

By DHughes|2022-05-06T10:21:55-04:00May 6th, 2022|Categories: business, community, politics, social|Tags: abortion rights, Alito's leaked memo, Allegory of the Caves, Community, David Sloan Wilson, democracy, E.O. Wilson, equality, Fox News, Fox Ntion, Plato, Putin, Socrates, Tucker Carlson, US Supreme Court, war in Ukraine|

still trapped in Plato's cave! "The prisoners would mistake the shadows for reality." – Socrates, The Republic, Book VII (20 min) About 2,376 years before Fox News was founded (1996), Plato wrote his renowned Allegory of the Caves (380 BCE), introducing it with Socrates saying, "And now, I said, let me show in an allegory how far our nature Read more...

One small step for democracy, one giant leap for Port Hope

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:56-05:00April 6th, 2014|Categories: communitywatch|Tags: democracy, moon landing, Port Hope|

Is there hope for democracy in small towns? The metaphor of the moon landing is overused but it seems appropriate for a local historic event that happened just one week after the forty-fifth anniversary of the moon landing (July 20, 1969). That first step was on July 21, 1969 and on July 29, 2014, one small town with a lot Read more...

Oh Canada, oh no! Is Harper selling out to China?

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:41:08-05:00October 29th, 2012|Categories: business, politics, social|Tags: China, Clayton Ruby, democracy, foreign trade, forest ethcis, Mitt Romney, Prime Minister Harper|

Prime Minister Harper toasts the selling out to China. All part of the race to beat Americans to the big China pie. (photo: forestethics.com) Sign this petition BEFORE November 1, 2012 – hurry! Stop Canada's Prime Minister Harper from creating his version of state capitalism! Click here to sign the petition: Here's another conservative who says one Read more...

My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."

"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama

This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.

It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.

My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.

It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.

As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.