Author Archives: Dr. David L. Horne, PHD

Recently, humankind in this part of the globe got dragged into an unwanted war with nature and got pummeled, thrice over.

Unless the art of lying is considered a special skill, our current POTUS seems not to have any notable artistic talent. It should therefore not have come as a surprise to many of us that in his first national budget proposal, Mr. Trump called for the elimination of all public funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. This horrified many artists and performers in this country, and in the world community. No other U.S. president has ever done that, though there have been numerous times that budget reductions in those agencies have been requested.

We can call last Saturday in Virginia what we want: the latest example of domestic terrorism, a current scenario displaying the present state of the U.S.A., or just an American protest gone bad. We can also see it for what it really was: a recruitment event for the Renaissance of White Nationalism.
Clearly, it was an answer to the questions: Why haven’t they just died off? Isn’t this the era of the money-oriented, smartphone millennials?

This is a multi-national world. That is, there are currently 195 countries officially recognized by the United Nations, each with its own government, economy, domestic issues and international interests. In order to enjoy relative peace and the opportunities for prosperity, each country must engage in regular negotiations, debate, mediations, etc., also called diplomacy. The latter is the art and skill of engaging with neighboring countries and the world in discussions aimed at non-confrontation and achieving one’s national interests to the degree realizable within the circumstances of the time.

America’s War on Drugs (WOD) (aka War on Black People) has been an ongoing messy affair for nearly 50 years. It has not stopped drug trafficking, it has not stopped drug addiction, and it has not made the USA safer. In fact, most analysts agree that, instead, the WOD has at best only propelled the incarceration of massive numbers of Americans (especially Black Americans), driven millions of families further into permanent poverty, and perpetuated the cycle of drug abuse in the country. The WOD has not been able to “arrest and incarcerate addiction out of the American people.”

In an apparent, though perhaps unintended, attempt to drive the U.S.A.’s reputation downwards, the Donald Trump administration is doing spectacularly well. A few weeks ago, this column identified the rapid decline of this country’s international reputation viz-a-viz the recent Pew International Survey. This week, another reliable international study, continued reporting on that trend.

As is very well known by now, the African Union, the preeminent continental African organization dedicated to African unification into a Union of African States, is very deeply involved in its drive to succeed.