Category Archives: Political Correctness

Several people, including a prominent faith leader, are calling for the resignation of the citys recently-elected alderman.

At the latest meeting of the Tullahoma Board of Mayor and Aldermen, Mt. Zion Baptist Church Pastor Elmore Torbert Jr. firmly called for either the resignation or removal of the freshman alderman after recent social media posts caused controversy.

Torbert delivered a prepared statement, which he also sent to City Administrator Jennifer Moody to be added to the official record of the meeting, calling Amachers social media actions a blight on Tullahoma.

Torbert said he has been leading his church for more than 13 years and has experienced the best of Tullahoma, such as his churchs partnership with a local couple to provide free hams and turkeys to families in need prior to Christmas.

However, he said, Tullahoma has a blight that boards on windows cant contain.

The blight is to have a person sitting on our board of aldermen for this fine city engrossed in racist rhetoric and humiliating racist actions, Torbert said. I dont know about you but I believe Tullahoma does not have time for a city representative or alderperson to be a social media star or comedienne. In fact, thats the last thing that we need in this critical stage of life.

Torbert then called for Amacher to resign or be removed from the city board.

So it is of no consequence and with no negotiation that we demand, request and require that Ms. Jenna Amacher resign and/or be removed from the board of city aldermen, because, clearly, when they were giving American history lessons, she showed up for the years 1861 through 1865 but skipped the classes when they instructor covered 1620 through 1908, which was the last recorded government-sanctioned slave auction or action on indigenous African people.

Clearly, she missed the second semester of Jim Crow laws and the plight of systemic racism and the word the N word that were used to control a population. Clearly, she missed the pains of being a Black woman, so she can readily identify as one and think it is cute. No, it is not cute; its blatant racism, and it should not and will not be tolerated for someone who has been elected to represent all people.

Torbert referenced other social media posts from Amacher that have circulated around social media, including a video of her allegedly using a racial epithet against Black people, a Facebook comment where she also used the epithet and another Facebook comment where she stated she identified as being a Black woman.

We dont think its social and culturally acceptable to decry falsely a narrative, lynching some people with her actions, words and philosophical musings, he said. To see her use the N word with no reflex of remorse or an oops, and being a person with a jurisprudence background, it should have alerted her that her conversations would be captured and supervised. Yet, however, her reckless, cavalier attitude proves that she is not fit to represent all Tullahomans.

Torbert then called for Amacher to acknowledge her error by stepping down and resigning within the next 30 days or citizens would be ready to step in and take matters into their own hands by putting pressure and moving forward to seeing a resignation or a resolve of this matter.

We are mobilized and ready to see that she is no longer representing the beauty and the best of Tullahoma by spreading what is historically the worst of America. And, oh yes, I approve this message, he said in closing.

Another citizen, Marie Desilets, also called for Amacher to resign during the meeting, calling her online conduct unethical, unprofessional and uncivil.

She asked whether or not there had ever been this much of a stink for a Tullahoma aldermen. Desilets also said the community was embarrassed by Amachers online presence.

Tullahomas embarrassed by her unethical behavior, she said. Not only has she been biased to anyone besides her fellow Republicans, but [she] has also blocked more than half of her fellow constituents from her social media, which is, by law, illegal. Shes not supposed to censor the public.

Jenna blatantly spews racist and unethical comments, such as, Liberalism is a mental disorder, daily on her social media. Mental illness is not a term that should be used to create parallels of fuel for your arguments. Its a serious topic, and statements like those only worsen the stigma that surrounds it.

Desilets said it concerns her to have a representative who shows such lack of empathy towards mental health, people of color and individuals who practice different religions and/or political practices than herself.

It concerns me that someone who holds such a high political position in my community constantly posts unprofessional, uncivil posts on her social media, she added. She does not represent me or the greater good of Tullahoma, and I am asking that she either resign or be removed from her position.

In addition to these comments made during the meeting, a Facebook event scheduled for Dec. 22 and a Facebook group both revolved around Amachers removal from office.

According to Desilets, she created the Facebook event about a month ago in the hopes that she wasnt the only citizen who felt embarrassed at Amachers social media actions.

I knew that if I felt this way there had to be more people as well, so I started reaching out, she said.

Since she created the event, Desilets said she has received hundreds of comments from friends, family members and strangers expressing similar embarrassment at Amacher.

It just goes to show that there is a problem here, she said. There are thousands of people right now in Tullahoma that feel the same way that I do. Jenna needs to be removed as Alderman because she does not take her job seriously. Shes not qualified and incompetent. Shes using this as a spotlight just to feed her own ego.

Desilets added she feels Amacher should have thought about being judged as a political figure before running for her seat.

She doesnt feel as though her constituents should have their own opinions and should not be judging her for her political correctness, hence the reason why she blocks everybody from her Facebook, which is a censorship that is not supposed to be used by government officials on their social media.

Desilets clarified that she was not calling Amacher racist, as she does not personally know the alderman.

I am not attacking her because her values and beliefs are different from mine, she said. Its okay to have different political views than others, and it is okay to agree to disagree. We are all different. Im sure my culture, values, morals and beliefs are probably different from yours, and that is okay.

If Amacher will not step down, as she has repeatedly said she will not, Desilets, Torbert and more are preparing to look into the power of recall to have her removed from office.

According to the Tullahoma city charter, the people of the city may recall any elected local official and may exercise this power by filing a petition for recall.

Per state law, at least one registered voter in the city or county where the recall is sought is required to file the proper form of petition and the text of the question posed in the petition with the county election commission. The election commission then has 30 days to certify that petition. During this time, the petitioner(s) have 15 days to correct any errors in documentation. The election commission then has five days from receipt of revisions to determine whether or not the revised documentation will be certified.

If the petition is certified by the county election commission and the candidate whose removal is sought resigns within 10 days after the certification and notice to the city board, no recall election will be held.

According to state law, at least one specific reason for removal must be listed on the petition. The Tennessee Code Annotated (TCA) 6-53-108 states any petition required to be filed under a municipal charter in order to cause a recall election shall contain one or more specific grounds for removal.

State law also dictates that at least 15% of the registered voters in the municipality or county sign the petition for recall. As of Dec. 23, there were 11,839 registered voters in the city of Tullahoma. In order to reach the 15% threshold of the Tullahoma electorate, at least 1,776 Tullahomans would need to sign the petition.

A recall petition would need to be filed with the election commission with at least the 15% of registered voters signatures within 75 days from its original certification, per state law. The election commission would then have another 30 days to determine if the petition meets all state requirements for recall petitions.

Those requirements include:

The petition must be filed at least 60 days prior to a general municipal or county election, per state law.

According to the city charter, should a recall election happen for the removal of an elected official, the question must read: Shall [name of elected official] be removed from office?

The two options for that question, then are listed as either Fore the recall of [name of elected official] or Against the recall of [name of elected official].

Should the majority of the votes cast in the recall election be against the removal of the official, that person shall continue in office. If the majority of votes cast are for the removal of the elected official, the city board is required to announce that seat as vacant at its next regularly scheduled board meeting and fill the vacancy in accordance with the charter provisions.

An elected official thus removed is not eligible to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the term, the charter states.

There are limits on recall elections, however, According to the city charter, recall petitions cannot be filed within six months of an elected official taking office. Additionally, no elected official can be subject to more than one recall election during a term of office.

As it relates to Amacher, she is covered by the six-month restriction, as she only took office in August. Those looking to remove her from office via recall will have to wait until at least Feb. 6, which will be six months from when Amacher took office.

Per the city charter, should the recall effort fail, Amacher would not be subject to another recall effort during her first term, which will expire in August of 2023.

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Citizens call for recall following Amacher antics | Local News - Tullahoma News and Guardian

[Disclaimer: The views expressed in opinion pieces on the PrescotteNews website are solely those of the authors. These opinions do not necessarily represent those of the staff of Prescott eNews or its publisher.]

Theres an idea of a Joe Biden but no real person. He is the president-elect, but he seems almost irrelevant even before he takes office. Does he even know who will be in charge? Just this week, he called Kamala Harris president-elect.

His campaign offered nothing new. The Atlantic described his victory this way:

He won while giving the same speeches, and telling literally the same stories, that he had for years. . . . He was established enough not to seem a revolutionary in a year of politics stretched between poles, but still offered enough of a contrast to win progressives support if only as a tool to remove Trump. Throughout, he was boosted by voters sense of his personality, from the people who cried in the arms of a man they felt could ease their pain to all the union guys who saw their stories in his Norman Rockwell tales of Scranton.

Who came up with that image? Who let the candidate of BLM channel Norman Rockwell?

Joe Biden didnt run a real campaign. Journalists mostly protected him from negative stories while repeatedly attacking President Trump. Social media banned President Trumps voters on major platforms. Whatever President Donald Trumps faults, his supporters turned out in large numbers for mass rallies, cheering their champion. Only handfuls showed up for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He ran the 21st-century equivalent of a front porch campaign, and won because of favorable media.

When dissident reporters broke stories that threatened the candidates image, mainly about Hunter Biden and a sexual assault on a woman who worked for the then-senator, the major media buried them. It was after the election that we learned the federal government is investigating Hunters business dealings in China. If this had been known before November 3, that alone might have tipped the election. While President Trump barnstormed furiously, Joe Biden seemed almost a bystander to his own campaign. Outside forces shoved him over the finish line.

It is Donald Trumps supporters, not Republican supporters, who will march on Washington on January 6. Donald Trump may not even realize it, but he represents something bigger than himself. For better or worse, President Trump became an avatar of American nationalism and implicit white identity.

His failures ironically show the potential of such a movement. He inspires fanatical loyalty, even though he didnt stop mass immigration, protect his supporters, drain the swamp, destroy political correctness, or really put America First. Paradoxically, its because President Trump is so unimpressive that we can see how powerful the ideas he represents really are. If a champion emerged who could do what President Trump merely talked about, he could change history. He could re-direct this nations fate as dramatically as an Augustus or a Constantine. President Trump aroused something visceral and real. All we need is a real leader to arouse the same thing.

What did Joe Biden arouse? What is Joe Biden except the goofy, gaffe-prone white sidekick, the Homer Simpson of television and film. The satirical newspaper The Onion made Biden out to be a harmless oaf during the Obama Administration. In the age of Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory, a weak and almost comical white man is the ideal leader for a progressive movement. Nave whites feel they can vote for him because they cant see him truly believing nonsense about transgenderism, reparations, or abolishing the police.

He may say he wants to fight for transgender and gender-nonconforming people, but it rings as false as Kamala Harriss childhood Kwanzaa memories. This was a strength for Mr. Biden in the election. He was able to win over just enough older white voters to stop President Trump. Mr. Bidens own words were: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Perhaps not. However, his vice president, of whom we would never have heard if she were white, was promoting a bail fund for BLM protesters.

To quote Mr. Biden again, he is a transition candidate. He says the transition will be to a country that is no longer divided, but what unity is possible with people who despise our identity and history? Mr. Biden represents the transition to a post-white, post-American age. The pose of Joe from Scranton, American everyman, will fade quickly once we see who and what he has unleashed.

But does he care? There are very few stances on which Joe Biden has not reversed himself, but he is constant in one way: He is a politician, almost a caricature of the Beltway Establishment. His hair plugs and cosmetic surgery symbolize his willingness to do anything, say anything, or be anything so long as he can be the face of the System. Mr. Biden represents the white men who would give away their country if it meant they could stay on top, not caring that le deluge would follow.

Joe Biden probably couldnt be hired at a Taco Bell today because of his past. Earlier this week, the New York Times helped humiliate a white teenager because of a three-year-old, four-second Snapchat video, even though the young woman was a Black Lives Matter supporter. Joe Biden has officially and repeatedly taken stances and made associations that could get any of you reading this fired.

Even by the standards of his time, Mr. Biden was never a progressive on race. In 1972, he sounded far more like a white nationalist than Donald Trump ever did. He called school busing a phony issue which allows the white liberals to sit in suburbia, confident that they are not going to have to live next to a black. (Even black liberals today dont want to live next to a black). In 1975, Joe Biden dismissed what we would now call white privilege and affirmative action:

I do not buy the concept, popular in the 60s, which said, We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race. I dont buy that.

This concept now rules the media, schools, and entertainment.

If there is one slogan that defines our current political and cultural regime, it is Diversity Is Our Strength. Its not, and Jared Taylor has explained why. So did President-Elect Biden. He scoffed at the idea that if a heterogeneous society becomes a totally homogeneous society that somehow were going to solve our social ills, adding:

I think the concept of busing, which implicit in that concept is the question you just asked or the statement within the question you just asked, that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride, is a rejection of the entire black awareness concept where black is beautiful, black culture should be studied, and the cultural awareness of the importance of their own identity, their own individuality. And I think thats a healthy, solid proposal.

In this 1975 interview, Mr. Biden faulted liberals for rejecting things out of hand because if George Wallace is for it, it must be bad (in this case, opposition to busing). The same could be said about the way liberals act towards Donald Trump today.

Jared Taylor says racial solidarity is natural; so did the former Joe Biden. Black kids dont want to come to your school any more than you want to come to their school, then-Senator Biden told an audience of white schoolchildren in 1976.

Jared Taylor tells us diversity leads to tension and even violence. So did then-Senator Biden: Unless we do something about this [integration policy], my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. USA Today tried to explain this away, even to the point of denying he ever talked about a racial jungle.

When Joe Biden said racial tensions were going to explode he was right. Id say it happened last year. To see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal, said Enoch Powell, perhaps the last Great Briton to serve in government. If thats true, how much worse is it to see, to speak, and then do nothing? Senator Biden later called for unrelenting immigration, non-stop and said that white European stock becoming an absolute minority would be a source of our strength.

Joe Biden worked with segregationist Senator James Eastland to defeat forced busing, and spoke fondly of the senator. Today, Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff is saying Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler is campaigning with a Klansman because she appeared in a picture with alleged former Klan leader Chester Doles. She obviously had no idea who he was and immediately denounced him. President-Elect Biden will be campaigning in Georgia for Mr. Ossoff this weekend, though he clearly cant meet Mr. Ossoffs standards for morality.

Near the beginning of his political career, Joe Biden opposed reparations for slavery and said he would be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago. However, accepting responsibility is precisely what the white privilege conspiracy theory is all about. To say you do not feel responsible is white fragility.

This isnt a fringe doctrine; its probably part of your childs curriculum in public schools. In fact, high on the agenda of President-Elect Bidens incoming Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, is bringing back the Obama-era guidance on school discipline. This policy ordered an end to racial disparities in school discipline because disparities can be caused only by racism. Thus, whatever he once said or may secretly believe, Mr. Bidens Administration will act otherwise.

It would be one thing if Joe Biden simply said a few things back in 1975. However, hes been fairly conservative on race, crime, and even education for decades. In 1984, he and Senator Strom Thurmond expanded civil asset forfeiture to punish drug dealers. In 1989, Senator Biden attacked then-President George H.W. Bush from the right on crime, drugs, and border security. We have no more police in the streets of our major cities than we had 10 years ago, he complained.

hat same year, Senator Biden said that there was no answer for drug addicts committing crimes except to put them in jail permanently. In 1991, he said his plan on drugs was much tougher than the Presidents [George H.W. Bush] and had more ways to apply the death penalty. In 1993, he blasted predators on our streets. In 1994, celebrating the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, he took credit for converting the government to a tough-on-crime approach:

Every major crime bill since 1976 thats come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the State of Delaware: Joe Biden.

Joe Bidens plan for criminals? Lock the S.O.B.s up. The 1990s version of Joe Biden was tougher than President Trump in 2020, who was bragging about criminal justice reform.

Mr. Biden has a long record of, shall we say, politically incorrect statements. He saw Barack Obamas potential. [Obama was] the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, he said. However indelicate, this shows Mr. Biden was shrewd, knowing that Americans want to believe in integration and are looking for the correct package. The fact that this is cynical doesnt mean its not true.

You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent, he told us in 2006. Im not joking. Recently, leftists successfully purged the character Apu, a convenience store owner, from The Simpsons.

In 2007, he told blacks:

I spent last summer going through the black sections of my town, holding rallies in parks, trying to get black men to understand it is not unmanly to wear a condom, getting women to understand they can say no, getting people in the position where testing matters. I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS.

It is very hard to imagine Joe Biden or any other white man wandering through the black sections preaching about condoms, but it shows that he knows the truth about blacks and AIDS.

Once again, this isnt American Renaissance saying it. Its the president-elect, a man who won the Democrat nomination because blacks backed Biden. If you have a problem figuring out if youre for me or Trump, then you aint black, he said in 2020. Blacks deserve this condescension because Mr. Biden knew they would vote for him. Thats how I get elected every single time, he said in the same 2020 interview.

The issue is not just that Joe Biden once said sensible things and now doesnt. Its certainly not that hes the real racist. Its that the next president of the United States is being held to a lower standard than the teenager who had her life ruined because of a single word. He is exempt from a terrifying cultural movement that is costing careers, reputations, and lives.

Egalitarianism is, as the immortal Sam Francis explained, a political weapon. Whether Mr. Biden believes in it if indeed he believes in anything is irrelevant. He uses it cynically to punish ordinary whites who do not have his wealth, political connections, and media support. In its effects, it shows the hate that lies behind the platitudes about love.

Joe Biden campaigned on restoring decency to the White House. Leave aside the plagiarism that ended his 1988 presidential campaign. Leave aside Hunters antics. Leave aside whether Joe Bidens family profited from his government position. Leave aside the accusations that Mr. Bidens current marriage (an enduring love story according to Oprah magazine) began by destroying someone elses marriage. One thing even the liberal press admits is that for years, Joe Biden spread a false claim that a drunk driver killed his first wife and baby daughter. The other driver was sober and blameless. Mr. Biden repeatedly made the claim despite the drivers family asking that he stop.

The crazed, angry faces illuminated by torches. The chants echoing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 1930s. The neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists emerging from dark rooms and remote fields and the anonymity of the web into the bright light of day on the streets of a historically significant American city.

An independent report found that city authorities egged on violence. President Trumps predictions that what began with General Lee would culminate with destruction of George Washington has come true. And Charlottesville is nothing compared to the violence unleashed by the BLM movement.

A President Biden will punish whites. Hell push for that unrelenting stream of immigration. Hell impose more gun control. He wants to eliminate racial disparities in incarceration impossible unless blacks suddenly stop committing crime or go unpunished. Hell also unleash Kamala Harris, whose plan for combatting violent hate is to muzzle pro-white speech. Hell throw the book at whites who have said far milder things than he has. Hell be the national version of Virginias Governor Ralph Northam, who collectively punished Virginias conservatives to atone for having once been in black face.

To quote Enoch Powell again, every political career, unless cut off at a happy juncture, ends in failure. That may not be true of Joe Biden. He has pursued the White House for longer than Ive been alive. To what end? To get there, he abandoned every accomplishment he once championed. Our cities are decaying, our patriotism is scorned, our national unity is gone. He will preside over further decline. Hell be president because this system needs collaborators, and Joe Biden is happy to play the kapo.

It doesnt matter to me whether this embarrassing puppet really won the election. Hes the crab that somehow got out of the bucket. His career shows that whites have no stake in propping up a system that enables someone like him to win public office. Joe Biden has been in office for most of the long American decline from 1965. Its fitting he will now preside over the denouement.

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Opinion: White Renegade of the Year 2020 - Prescott eNews

January

4 Winners of five Costa category awards announced.8 The Father released Florian Zeller directs an adaptation of his own play, starring Anthony Hopkins.11 TS Eliot prize for poetry.19 Centenary of the birth of Patricia Highsmith, queen of psychological suspense.22 Netflix adaptation of Aravind Adigas Booker winner The White Tiger.Release of film Chaos Walking, based on first book of Patrick Nesss eponymous trilogy.26 Costa awards ceremony, with book of the year announced.

Fiction

Luster by Raven Leilani (Picador)In the years buzziest debut, a black American millennial tackles the difficulties of work, love, sex and being seen for who you really are.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan (Chatto & Windus)A family grapples with mortality while Australia burns, in a magical realist fable about extinction and Anthropocene despair from the Booker-winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Memorial by Bryan Washington (Atlantic)His story collection Lot won last years Dylan Thomas prize; this deft debut novel explores the complications of family and a gay relationship on the rocks.

A Burning by Megha Majumdar (Scribner)Three lives entangle in contemporary India, in a debut about class and aspiration that has been a sensation in the US.

The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin (John Murray)Debut novel about a woman rebuilding her marriage, from the celebrated Irish short story writer.

A River Called Time by Courttia Newland (Canongate)Ambitious speculative epic set in an alternate London where slavery and colonialism never happened.

People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd (Mantle)Smart, gobble-at-a-sitting thriller about life as a yummy mummy influencer and the dark side of Instagram.

Girl A by Abigail Dean (HarperCollins)Incendiary, beautifully written thriller debut about siblings living with the emotional legacy of childhood abuse in a House of Horrors.

The Stranger Times by CK McDonnell (Bantam)Pratchettesque romp set around a Manchester newspaper dedicated to the paranormal whose reporters get sucked into a battle between good and evil.

Childrens and teen

Amari and the Night Brothers by BB Alston (Egmont)Film rights have been snapped up for the first in a new supernatural adventure series with a black heroine.

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas (Walker)From the US YA sensation, this hard-hitting prequel to the award-winning The Hate U Give focuses on Starrs father as a young man.

Poetry

Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Faber)The award-winning American essayist and poets first collection to be published in the UK combines civic awareness with an interrogation of language and self.

Nonfiction

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (Bloomsbury)The Booker-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo considers the art of fiction through seven classic Russian short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol.

Francis Bacon: Revelations by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (William Collins)A definitive biography, written with the full cooperation of the Bacon estate and with unrivalled access to the artists personal papers.

Begin Again: James Baldwins America by Eddie S Glaude Jr (Chatto & Windus)Exemplifying the resurgence of interest in Baldwin, this blend of biography, criticism and memoir with the novelist at its heart is an indictment of racial injustice in Trumps America.

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera (Viking)One of a new wave of books on British imperialism, this study, from the likable journalist and author of The Boy With the Topknot, looks at the legacy of empire from the NHS to Brexit and Covid.

Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic by Rachel Clarke (Little, Brown)The palliative care doctor who scored a hit with her book Dear Life gives an insider account of hospital life as Covid-19 changed everything.

Saving Justice by James Comey (Macmillan)The former FBI director and author of A Higher Loyalty looks into how institutions of justice in the US were eroded during the Trump presidency.

The Unusual Suspect by Ben Machell (Canongate)The remarkable story of how a British student with Aspergers became obsessed with Robin Hood following the global financial crash, and began to rob banks.

4 Centenary of the birth of Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique.23 Bicentenary of the death of John Keats in Rome.

Fiction

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford (Faber)The author of Golden Hill imagines the lost futures of children killed in the blitz, in a sparkling, humane panorama of miraculous everyday life.

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury)Following her acclaimed comic memoir Priestdaddy, a fast and furious debut novel about being embedded deep in the digital world.

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander (Picador)Outrageous comedy about identity politics and family ties centred on the Cannibal-American Seltzer clan.

We Are Not in the World by Conor OCallaghan (Transworld)Delayed from 2020, the examination of a father-daughter relationship by a rising Irish star.

Maxwells Demon by Steven Hall (Canongate)Long-awaited follow-up to ultra-inventive cult hit The Raw Shark Texts features a man being stalked by a fictional character.

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking)Black British artists fall in love in an intense, elegant debut.

Voices of the Lost by Hoda Barakat, translated by Marilyn Booth (Oneworld)In a war-torn country, six characters share their secrets, in this international prize for Arabic fiction winner.

Childrens and teen

How to Change Everything by Naomi Klein with Rebecca Stefoff (Penguin)A guide to climate change billed as the young humans guide to protecting the planet and each other.

Nonfiction

Fall by John Preston (Viking)The author of A Very English Scandal turns his attention to the last days of disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell.

What Does Jeremy Think? by Suzanne Heywood (William Collins)A set of revealing insider political accounts, written up by the author after conversations with her husband, the former cabinet secretary Lord Heywood, who died of cancer aged 56 in 2018.

Consent: A Memoir by Vanessa Springora, translated by Natasha Lehrer (HarperCollins)The memoir, by the director of one of Frances leading publishing houses, of her sexual relationship as a teenager with a leading writer.

Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay (Faber)The national poet of Scotland has written a new introduction to her study of the American blues singer, whom she idolised as a young black girl growing up in Glasgow.

Keats by Lucasta Miller (Cape)A new biography in nine poems and an epitaph by the author of The Bront Myth, to coincide with the bicentenary of the poets death.

Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla (Bluebird) A memoir from the Bristol-based editor of The Good Immigrant, which is also an exploration of how to raise a brown baby in an increasingly horrible world.

Karachi Vice by Samira Shackle (Granta) An impressive account of the inner workings of the Pakistani city, as exposed by the stories of five individuals.

The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)The biographer of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a book about Crispr, the revolutionary tool that can edit DNA.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates (Allen Lane)The co-founder of Microsoft discusses the tools needed to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Raceless by Georgina Lawton (Sphere)Reflections on identity along with recollections of growing up as a mixed-race girl raised by two white parents who pursued the untruth that the authors darker skin was the product of a so-called throwback gene.

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu (Sceptre)A descendant of Ashanti royalty recounts growing up without a mother, travelling from country to country and feeling an absence of home her experience told through the metaphor of earthquakes.

19 Bicentenary of the birth of the explorer, linguist and author Richard Burton, who translated The One Thousand and One Nights and the Kama Sutra into English.

Fiction

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber)An Artificial Friend considers humanity and the meaning of love in Ishiguros first novel since winning the Nobel literature prize.

Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn (Harvill Secker)The author of the Patrick Melrose books investigates themes of inheritance, knowledge and freedom through the connections between three friends over one tumultuous year.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Viking)This follow-up to her debut Homegoing, focusing on an immigrant Ghanaian family in the American South, has been a huge hit in the US.

Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore (MacLehose)The French author took the Wellcome science prize for her bravura novel about a heart transplant, Mend the Living; this new book is set in the world of trompe lil painting.

Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley (John Murray)Her debut Elmet made the Booker shortlist; this followup tackles money and class through the inhabitants of Londons Soho.

Kitchenly 434 by Alan Warner (White Rabbit)The Sopranos authors tale of a rock stars butler at the fag end of the 1970s promises to be Remains of the Day with cocaine and amplifiers.

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Corsair)In the sequel to Pulitzer winner The Sympathizer, that novels conflicted spy finds himself in the underworld of 80s Paris.

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (Michael Joseph)From the New Zealand writer, a propulsive parallel-worlds fantasy epic about the power of stories and storytelling.

The Mysterious Correspondent by Marcel Proust, translated by Charlotte Mandell (Oneworld)Nine previously unseen stories illuminate a young writers development.

Names of the Women by Jeet Thayil (Cape)From Mary of Magdala to Susanna the Barren, women whose stories were suppressed in the New Testament.

Redder Days by Sue Rainsford (Doubleday)Twins in an abandoned commune prepare for apocalypse, in the follow-up to her standout debut Follow Me to Ground.

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (Viper)A woman believes she has found the monster who snatched her younger sister as a child Full of twists and turns, this high-concept gothic horror is going to be huge.

Childrens and teen

The Wild Before by Piers Torday (Quercus)Can one hare change the world? A prequel to the Guardian prize-winning The Last Wild.

Poetry

Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different, edited by Maisie Lawrence and Rishi Dastidar (Corsair)An anthology celebrating 20 years of writers collective Malikas Poetry Kitchen, featuring work by now well-known alumni including Warsan Shire, Inua Ellams, Roger Robinson and Malika Booker herself.

Nonfiction

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson (Allen Lane)Having spent a year in rehab, the controversial Canadian psychologist, self-styled professor against political correctness follows up his global bestseller 12 Rules for Life.

Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert (Bodley Head)The Pulitzer prize-winning writer of The Sixth Extinction meets scientists and researchers and asks: can we change nature, this time to save it?

The Soul of a Woman: Rebel Girls, Impatient Love, and Long Life by Isabel Allende (Bloomsbury)An autobiographical meditation from the bestselling novelist on feminism and what women want.

New Yorkers by Craig Taylor (John Murray) The sequel to Taylors bestselling Londoners is another work of oral history, 10 years in the writing and drawing on hundreds of interviews.

The Diaries of Chips Channon, Volume 1: 1918-1938 edited by Simon Heffer (Hutchinson)The unexpurgated version of the often-quoted diaries of Henry Channon, social climber and Tory MP, who liked to gossip about politics and London society.

A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib (Allen Lane)From Josephine Baker to Beyonc reflections on black performance from the author of a superb book on A Tribe Called Quest.

Inventory of a Life Mislaid by Marina Warner (William Collins)A memoir from the writer known for her books on feminism, myth and fairytales, which is structured around objects, from her mothers wedding ring to a 1952 film cylinder.

Friends by Robin Dunbar (Little, Brown)An exploration of friendship by the anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist known for the Dunbar Number, his theory that we can have meaningful relationships with only 150 people.

The Gun, the Ship and the Pen by Linda Colley (Profile) The historian best known for Britons retells modern history by considering the spread of written constitutions.

Failures of State by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnot (Mudlark) Investigative journalists explore all the things the British government got wrong over Covid.

9 Bicentenary of the birth of the influential French poet, translator and critic Charles Baudelaire, author of Les Fleurs du Mal.

Fiction

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor (4th Estate)An inquiry into the meaning of courage in the aftermath of a disastrous Antarctic research expedition, following the Costa-winning Reservoir 13.

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley (Granta)Fearless, darkly witty novel anatomising a toxic mother-daughter relationship.

Civilisations by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor (Harvill Secker)A counterfactual history of the modern world from the author of HHhH, examining the urge for power across time and space.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass (Swift)Sight was shortlisted for the Womens prize in 2018; in Greengrasss second novel, an ordinary family prepares for climate catastrophe.

This One Sky Day by Leone Ross (Faber)Set on a magical archipelago, a big, carnivalesque novel that takes on desire, addiction and postcolonialism, but is also a celebration of food, love and joy.

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel (Harvill Secker)A new collection of eight stories that play with the boundary between memoir and fiction.

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer (4th Estate)A climate change conspiracy thriller about ecoterrorism and extinction.

The Republic of False Truths by Alaa Al Aswany (Faber)A polyphonic novel about the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

Male Tears by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury)Farmers, boxers, ex-cons Short stories about men and masculinity.

Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith (Cape)The US army runs a secret genetics programme in this epic graphic novel from the Marvel and Conan artist, 35 years in the making.

You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes (Simon & Schuster) The latest in the thriller series behind Netflix stalker blockbuster You.

Childrens and teen

Weirdo by Zadie Smith and Nick Laird, illustrated by Magenta Fox (Puffin)This first picture book from the husband and wife writers celebrates the quiet power of being different through the story of a guinea pig in a judo suit.

Bone Music by David Almond (Hodder)The Skellig authors new novel focuses on a young girl who moves from Newcastle to rural Northumberland and finds herself rewilded.

Poetry

A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi (Bloodaxe)The witty, wise and clear-eyed novelist, dancer and poet deploys both rage and sharp analysis covering issues from the precarious state of the environment to the treatment of women.

A Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonyi (Chatto & Windus)The second collection from the Dylan Thomas prize-winner explores both the personal and cultural influences of inheritance.

Nonfiction

Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey (Jonathan Cape)Renowned biographer Bailey was appointed by the American novelist, who died in 2018, and granted independence and complete access to the archive.

Go Big: How To Fix Our World by Ed Miliband (Bodley Head)Inspired by his Reasons to be Cheerful podcast, the shadow cabinet member investigates 20 transformative solutions to problems as intractable as inequality and the climate crisis.

How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World by Henry Mance (Jonathan Cape)Tapping into new thinking about animals and our changing perception of them, the FT journalist works in an abattoir, talks to chefs and philosophers and looks to a better future.

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2021 in books: what to look forward to this year - The Guardian

2020: what a time to still briefly be alive. Lets look back on the year, after a Christmas so grim for Great Britain that it was almost as if Santa had been reading some history. They said it was political correctness that would end Christmas but now, after the humble office worker was reduced to getting off with their own partner at the Zoom Christmas do, we realise it was actually ended by electing people who try to source medical supplies through their mates pest control firm. The Tardis would stop in 2020 barely long enough for Doctor Who to empty its chemical toilet.

Every so often, I remember we will be leaving the EU in the middle of a plague and the worst recession in modern history, and then black out and wake up at the bottom of my garden in a pile of canned goods. As Brexit negotiations continued, a 27-acre site in Kent was set to become a lorry park that can take 2,000 lorries. Complaining about your locked gym will soon seem very quaint, when every source of dietary protein is in a parked lorry that cant be processed because the driver has an apostrophe in his name.

One way to not get too down about 2020 is to remind yourself that next year will be worse. But how much of the year can you remember, and how much have you subconsciously tried to suppress? Lets find out!

In many ways, the Labour party should be the natural choice to run a bitterly divided country full of people who hate each other. Keir Starmer, looking like a cross between the bloke who says hes unstoppable before getting fired first on the Apprentice, and an Anglican vicar trying to hold in a fart at a funeral, has been pursuing the approval of newspapers that wouldnt stop backing the Tories if they crop-dusted the whole country in hot shit. The nationalist posturing required makes him look deeply uncomfortable, as if hes been asked if he personally would sleep with the Queen and is afraid of both answers. By withdrawing the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer signalled that he can contain the threat posed by the left of the party, which currently consists of a handful of MPs, maybe 10 journalists, and a couple of dozen shitposters called things like @WetAssProletariat.

Where did Keir Starmer choose to deliver his keynote Labour conference speech?a) His own kitchen.b) Labour party HQ in Westminster.c) A socially distanced PPE factory in the East End of London.d) A corridor in a deserted Doncaster arts centre.

The government spent 12bn on it, and yet still the only reliable app for alerting you to the fact that someone deadly is nearby is the one that shows you when your Uber driver has arrived. Of course Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed complaints from people who had to travel 200 miles for a test: he regularly commutes between now and the 1840s, strapped into something built from plans drawn up to the final words of the tortured HG Wells, with a groundsman furiously shovelling venison into a flux capacitor.

Which of these organisations was not given contracts to help implement the NHS test-and-trace system?a) Serco.b) Capita.c) The NHS.d) Sitel.

Its difficult to speculate on the long-term effects that the pandemic will have on British politics; all we know for certain is that 40% of the survivors will vote Conservative. One flaw in Labours relentless framing of prime ministerial incompetence is that the Conservatives can just replace him with someone more competent possibly Rishi Sunak, and his air of a sixth former who still wears their school uniform. Boris Johnson may be a marshmallow toasting on the funeral pyre of Britain, a post-apocalyptic snowman with the increasingly dishevelled air of something thats been tied to the front grille of a bin lorry, a demented, sex-case vacuum cleaner bag; but theres no denying he does possess some Churchillian qualities: racism and obesity.

Which of these did Boris Johnson fail to do in his first 365 days as prime minister?a) Get divorced.b) Have a baby.c) Contract coronavirus.d) Secure a trade agreement with the EU.

Taking time out from tweeting denials of his privilege while wearing three-piece pyjamas, Laurence (19th-century) Fox announced the launch of his new political party. He certainly looked determined. Or was it sad? I just never quite know which one hes doing.

No doubt he considers himself to be on the Reich side of history, but he may yet regret his statements on Black Lives Matter: the way his acting careers going, there could well be auditions where hell have to take a knee. Foxs head points to a combination of robust genes and forceps pressure, showing that from the very start he had a reluctance to face the real world. The sort of people who went to his famous boarding school would never be so gauche as to actually mention the name Harrow, except when phoning up for a Chinese takeaway, pissed.

In 2020, Fox received large donations for his laughable new culture-war party, and it must have been odd to receive millions of pounds that wasnt a divorce settlement from the mother of his children. We can only hope that his interest in politics wanes soon, and he can get back on stage and give us his long overdue Othello.

Which of these is not something Laurence Fox did this year?a) Announced a personal boycott of Sainsburys.b) Got dropped by his acting agent over the phone.c) Acted in a film.d) Got told to fuck off by the Pogues.

In 2020, the only thing you could say for sure when you met an optimist was that they werent on Facebook. Hate-sharing app Twitter has again spent the year setting itself up as an arbiter of morals, a role its as convincing in as the Love Island casting department. Personally, I left Twitter because of death threats: Eamonn Holmes just didnt seem to be reading them any more.

Which of these Twitter users has the most followers, and which the least? One point for each correctly placed. a) Donald Trump.b) Katy Perry.c) Logan Paul.d) BTS.

The broad takeaway from the US election is that Americans count as slowly as one would expect. Joe Biden is not exactly overflowing with presence. You see his picture and the first thing you think is, Was that already in there when I bought the frame? Even at his most strident, he barely has the presence of a finger-wagging, spectral grandparent that appears as you hover, undecided, over a perineum. He could become the first president assassinated by an icy patch outside the post office.

Still, Biden performed surprisingly well during the campaign, especially when you consider that he had to put up with the distraction of his mothers voice calling his name gently from a bright light. Hes now so close to death that he can talk directly to the Ancestors, and has been ending every press conference by asking people if they have any questions for David Bowie.

How old would Joe Biden be by the end of a second term in office?a) 86.b) 84.c) 88.d) 90.

Peter Sutcliffe died and Priti Patel didnt move on the list of Britains 10 Worst People, whereas I went up one. Patel has stood out as uniquely dreadful even in a cabinet that is basically Carry On Lord Of The Flies, dresses as if shes going to the funeral of someone she hates, and often speaks as if trapped in a loveless marriage with her interviewer.

Which of the following proposals did Priti Patels Home Office not consider as a way of deterring people from seeking asylum in Britain?a) Building a giant wave machine in the English channel.b) Processing asylum seekers on a volcanic outcrop in the South Atlantic, a thousand miles from the nearest landmass.c) Training swordfish to burst dinghies.d) Housing asylum applicants on decommissioned oil rigs in the North Sea.

Grant Shapps looks like a Blackpool waxwork of Clive Anderson, and has the permanent expression in every TV appearance of a man watching his train pull away behind the camera.

But what is his actual job title?a) Secretary of state for transport.b) Minister for Brexit.c) Minister of state for international development.d) Chief whip.

The pandemic has been hard on many conspiracy theorists: eight months of men keeping their distance, too. There are people who believe Covid-19 is spread by 5G. If only that were true: put Virgin Media in charge and wed be clear of it in days.

An anti-mask demonstration in Trafalgar Square on 29 August drew thousands of protesters: which of these countercultural celebrities did not speak?a) Piers Corbyn.b) David Icke.c) Chico Slimani from The X Factor.d) Bill Drummond from the KLF.

Our disposable culture isnt all bad. Without it, Id miss that warm glow on Boxing Day when my son stuffs my gift in the bin and I imagine, in just a couple of years time, the joy on the face of the kid who pulls it from a pile of dirty syringes in a Philippines landfill. Jeff Bezos has become the worlds wealthiest man by pioneering a kind of delivery Argos. I look at Bezos and wonder if the rest of us evolved too much: his acquisitiveness is possibly explained by the fact he looks like a newborn constantly searching for a nipple.

What was the most money Bezos made in a single day of the pandemic? a) $100m.b) Nothing. He has said all his profits will go towards developing Covid therapies.c) $150m.d) $13bn.

Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested. For those of you too young to remember, Ghislaine is the daughter of a media mogul whose death sent ripples around the world because he was obese and fell in the ocean. Steve Bannon was also arrested and charged with fraud. On the wing, prisoners described his potential arrival as whatevers the opposite to fresh meat.

But which of the following are not currently in jail?a) Harvey Weinstein.b) Bill Cosby.c) Ricardo Medina Jr, the red Power Ranger.d) The cops who killed Breonna Taylor.

This years presidential debates were like looking through the window of a care home on the day the staff thought theyd play prescription roulette. By managing only to speak to his base and alienating everyone else, Trump ended up being the definitive Twitter president. Theres so much wrong with him you could talk about his presidency for ever and never run out of things to criticise. Its the equivalent of letting a child repaint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and then pointing out all the bits that arent as good as Michelangelos. Is that meant to be God, Timmy? Why is he eating a Babybel?

In hospital, Trump was given a new drug made by Regeneron, which sounds like the robot wholl present Match Of The Day once Gary Linekers been strapped into the re-education dinghy. He seemed to pull through, but its hard to gauge the health of someone who looks like Frankensteins monster won a holiday, and who chooses to have the skin colour of a dialysis machine emptied on to snow.

Which of these is not something Trump achieved this year?a) The most votes for an incumbent candidate.b) The most retweeted tweet of all time.c) The highest US death toll in a century.d) The most golf ever played by a sitting President.

Scotland qualified for next years Euros after beating Serbia. Facing a team that grew up in a war zone in the 1990s, Serbia lost on penalties.

When did Scotland last qualify for a major tournament? a) Argentina 1978.b) Italia 1990.c) France 1998.d) Mexico 1986.

If only late-stage capitalism could get behind equality and lead us to a golden age where people of all skin colours are considered equally dispensable. For the time being, we neednt fear AI. The robot that steals your job is expensive. You are cheap. You can only die, whereas it may get scratched.

I wonder if our leaders go-to platitude, Were all in this together, will ever ring true? Perhaps after the next wave of austerity, as it blares through speakers in the bunk-bedded dormitory of a derelict Sports Direct, rousing us at dawn so that we can harvest kelp in the shallows in exchange for the fibre waste collected from the juicers of gated communities, wearing nothing but underpants: ones we never seem to fully own, underpants where there always seems to be one more payment due to the Corporation.

We will dream of one day having our own igloo built from blocks cut from sewer-fat, maybe even moving to a better neighbourhood, just as soon as its hot enough to slide our house there. As we heave our bales on to the gangmasters counter, the ex-performers among us will kid ourselves its still showbiz, as were permitted to crack a joke, and if the gangmaster smiles hell throw us a treat. We opt for a classic: surely no one has ever not laughed at one where bagpipes are confused with an octopus wearing pyjamas? But just as we can almost taste sugar, a mangled tentacle drops from our kelp block into our open mouth and ruins the moment.

Which one of these was not a scientific breakthrough in 2020?a) The discovery that bacteria can survive in space for several years.b) A bionic breakthrough that allows people with paralysis to control computers using their thoughts.c) The confirmation that there are several large saltwater lakes under the ice in the south polar region of the planet Mars.d) An AI which can alter magnetic fields in the human brain, influencing thoughts.

1. d. 2. c. 3. d. 4. c.5. Most to least: Perry, Trump, BTS, Paul. 6. a. 7. c. 8. a.9. d.10. d. 11. d. 12. b. 13. c. 14. d.

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Frankie Boyles big quiz of 2020: How much have you subconsciously tried to suppress? - The Guardian

The competition has been fierce, and the competitors have spent months running neck and neck. But in the end, either Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) or Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Ky.) will do the most damage to their reputation in 2020.

To be sure, the Kentucky Republican took the early lead in the race. In early March, as the nation started coming to grips with the coronavirus crisis, Congress approved a modest $8.3 billion emergency bill to respond to the public-health emergency. The bipartisan measure passed the Senate 96 to 1 -- and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the lone opponent.

But like any true competitor, the Wisconsin Republican fought back, making clear that Paul wasn't the only one who could look foolish. Indeed, later in March, Johnson blasted pandemic mitigation efforts as an "overreaction."

Back and forth they went. In May, Rand Paul publicly clashed with Dr. Anthony Fauci for no reason while insisting that New York is in New England. The same month, Ron Johnson suggested independent inspectors general should be subservient to Donald Trump.

Over the summer, after Rand Paul held up a bipartisan anti-lynching bill, Ron Johnson went after Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated American war hero. The Kentuckian used his office to question epidemiological expertise, while the Wisconsinite used his office to chase anti-Biden conspiracy theories before Election Day.

But once the fall arrived, the self-defeating competition to destroy their reputation reached an entirely new level.

Rand Paul pretended Joe Biden didn't really win the 2020 presidential win, as Ron Johnson held a Senate hearing to blast "bureaucrats" for not making hydroxychloroquine more available. When Johnson held a separate hearing to undermine public confidence in the election results, Paul went further than most, telling the public that the 2020 election "in many ways was stolen."

Ron Johnson appeared to be inching ahead with a second hearing indulging his anti-science impulses, but Rand Paul fought back, taking a stand against a bill to protect judges from attackers. Johnson tried to take the lead by blocking a bipartisan measure on increased direct aid during the pandemic, but Paul stayed in the fight, denouncing increased voting in Georgia.

Last night, only six senators rejected a bipartisan compromise on economic relief and government funding, but since Johnson and Paul were both part of the sextet, neither could claim an advantage.

But shortly before the vote, the Kentucky Republican shared a few thoughts with a CNN reporter about the COVID-19 crisis.

"It's this political correctness of submission, submission, submission. Everybody's got to submit, going to walk around like a drone and wear a mask, and yet there's no real evidence of this working."

In reality, of course, the CDC has pointed to plenty of evidence that masks reduce the spread of the virus. What's more, mitigation efforts during a pandemic are not "political correctness," and it's profoundly foolish -- and potentially dangerous -- to argue otherwise.

There are only nine days remaining in the year. The ball's in your court, Ron Johnson.

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Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and the race to the 2020 bottom - MSNBC

We are living in perilous times. Statistics show that there are many more unchurched people than there are attending any type church. Political correctness has dampened the spirit of a lot of people and many have gone the way of the world due to this. Our younger generation is not receiving or hearing the gospel message as it was given in years gone by.

Many of todays preachers have led their congregations into a message of feel good preaching. They tell you that God wants you to have every day conveniences. They lead you into a direction if it feels good do it because God will bless you in your efforts instead of your sincerity. Many leaders of the church are teaching and preaching from books written by worldly men and women instead of the one and only inspired, inerrant, Word of God, the Bible.

I have heard some men, who are deacons and elders in the church, agree with the world that the Bible is antiquated and needs to be updated. Where in the world is this coming from? Gods Word has never changed. It has always been the same and speaks to us today just as it did to those in biblical times. It is the only book that never loses its value or its message.

Christians that adhere to the gospel message have to go into the world and tell others about Jesus. For too many years we have sat in our pews and waited for people to come into the church and hear Gods Word instead of going into our neighborhoods and reaching out to the unchurched and unsaved. We, as Christians, have become complacent in our duties of what God wants us to do.

In 2 Timothy 2:1-10, the Apostle Paul writes to young Timothy about being strong in the Lord and be attentive to what he should be doing. He gives the analogy of serving the Lord as an athlete is in a constant state of preparation for his next competition. He speaks about the military soldier always being prepared and ready to do as his commander says and leads. A third analogy is that of a farmer who stays focused on what he needs to do to prepare his land to have a good crop.

The modern day believer also faces a multitude of distractions that can take away our focus of spreading the gospel. Just as Paul told Timothy to be strong, dedicated, and focused on what he is doing, we as Christians are to spread the good news of our Savior far and wide. This will not happen if we take our eyes off of Jesus or water down His Word. We need to be strong and go into our communities with the good news of Christ and be bold in our witness.

Do you remember the person that told you about Jesus? It seems that the men and women of yesterday reached out to a dying world to tell them about the saving grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Are we going to be the ones that withdraws and not carry on the message of Jesus to an ungodly world?

PrayerThank you Lord for the opportunity of knowing you personally and for your promise of eternal life. I pray that I may bold in my witness for you and tell others about your saving grace. Amen.

Suggested ReadingsSunday Matthew 28:16-20Monday Isaiah 41: 8-10Tuesday 2 Timothy 1:3-11Wednesday Deuteronomy 31:1-6Thursday Romans 1:16-17Friday Psalm 96:1-9Saturday 1 Peter 3:13-17

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Sharing the gospel message with others - Kosciusko Star Herald

Happy holidays, dear readers! Possibly, in my genuine good wishes, I have just raised some hackles. Some of you may be thinking, Bah humbug. COVID. Its understandable. Others, though, are fuming because I didnt say, Merry Christmas. Its Christmastime, the thinking goes, so people should wish each other a merry Christmas. So what if people dont celebrate Christmas?

The idea seems to go along with a misconception, that This is a Christian country. Actually, no, its not. The First Amendment the same one so many people proudly lean on to claim their right to say anything they want no matter who their words might hurt expressly states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The United States is not an officially Christian country, even though much of the population is Christian.

Further, many do not realize that not all Christians celebrate Christmas. For instance, Jehovahs Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas. Quakers dont generally celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay colony likewise rejected Christmas as a religious holiday, finding no evidence in scripture that Jesus of Nazareth was born on December 25.

Those who insist that Merry Christmas is the only thing to say this time of year often complain that People get so offended nowadays. They call others snowflakes. They grouse about political correctness. However, I want to offer that such thinking is absurd.

Lets start here, with a brief tour. First, the African American holiday of Kwanzaa starts on December 26. Its one of the newest holidays, beginning in 1966, when it was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga. Kwanzaa celebrates pan-African culture and family, and focuses on cultivating values including unity, responsibility, faith, creativity, and purpose, amongst others.

For Jewish friends and neighbors, Hanukkah has just ended. For eight nights, candles blazed in their windows to commemorate a miracle: that oil meant to last one day lasted eight days when the temple was rededicated after a small group of Jews who had resisted Hellenization, the Maccabees, revolted against Greek oppressors.

The Persian holiday Shab-e Yalda also just occurred on the 21st. My dear friend Ara Serjoie from Guilford College explains that, The longest and darkest night of the year is celebrated by friends and family gathering together to eat, drink and read poetry (especially Hafez) until dawn. Fruits, sweets, seeds and nuts are eaten and pomegranates and watermelons are particularly significant. The red color in these fruits symbolizes the crimson hues of dawn and glow of life (University of Tehran). This tradition dates back thousands of years and marks the winter solstice. It precedes the birthday of Mithra (Goddess of Light) on December 25th.

Bodhi Day, was celebrated on December 8th. Bodhi Day commemorates the spiritual transformation of Siddhartha to the Buddha as the result of his commitment to his meditation practice, the middle way, that enabled him to awaken from the illusions of conventional reality. And this year Hindus celebrate Gita Jayanti the birthday or creation day of the spiritual text Bhagavad Gita on December 25.

I dont say Happy holidays because I am a snowflake or politically correct. I dont say Happy holidays to avoid offending people. I say Happy holidays to honor people, to wish someone joy no matter what they celebrate this time of year. I say happy holidays to acknowledge the many different religious paths that exist in this beautifully diverse world. Saying happy holidays offers inclusion. It respects those paths and their followers. Its kind.

Be aware: in our own country, some are violently attacked because of the religions they practice. Jews, Sikhs, Muslims and others have been targets of hate crimes, including murder. Acknowledging and respecting the paths of others helps to protect their lives and rights.

I mentioned absurdity. I happily say Merry Christmas to people who I know practice Christianity and celebrate Christmas. But to me, saying Merry Christmas to people I dont know is akin to saying Happy birthday to strangers on my birthday. Why would I assume that my birthday is their birthday?

So happy holidays, dear readers, whatever you celebrate. If you celebrate nothing at all this time of year if you like to exchange gifts this time of year but walk no religious path happy winter. Happy slightly longer days; the solstice is behind us now. Happy almost new year; may 2021 be kinder to us all than 2020 has been. May we be kind and respectful to each other. May we remember that every world religion teaches us to treat others as we would wish to be treated, and to avoid treating others in ways that we do not wish to be treated. May we all create for others and find for ourselves moments of comfort and joy in days ahead. And if you celebrate the birth of Jesus, a very merry Christmas to you.

Nancy J. Thompson teaches comparative religion at CCV and NVU. She is author of Touching the Elephant: Values the Worlds Religions Share and How They Can Transform Us. She is a member of the Bennington Interfaith Council.

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Nancy Thompson | Speaking of Religion: Tidings of comfort and joy - Bennington Banner

This grim year of misery and misfortune has highlighted the difference between cinema and the movies: its been terrible for the former and excellent for the latter. The pandemic-induced closure of theatres across the world took the focus away from big tentpole releases and shifted it to smaller budget, water cooler productions that were wolfed down by homebound audiences.

Streaming should probably be listed as the Oxford Word Of The Year, given how much weve all been doing of it. Theres been plenty of TV events drawing conversation around the proverbial water cooler such as, to name a few, I May Destroy You, Ill Be Gone In The Dark, The Last Dance, The Queens Gambit and the wildly overrated Tiger King.

All up its been a pretty good year for local movies and TV, though it would be remiss of me to ignore the negatives, given how foul the last 12 months have been. With that spirit in mind, let us first look at the Australian productions of 2020 that were pretty, well, crappy, before moving on to the good and the great.

Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears

Thank god: another Crocodile Dundee movie! Said nobody, ever. At least not for 30 years.

Paul Hogan stumbled back into the spotlight this year with his meta-ish comedy The Very Excellent Mr Dundee, looking like hed just woken up from an ancient slumber. The film embraces his status as a cranky dinosaur, casting Hoges as a befuddled version of himself who is confused about the state of the world, with its political correctness and all these online thingmebobs. The story is simple and daft, involving him wandering around accidentally offending people. It was Very Far From Excellent.

Another disappointing movie that felt like it belonged to an older era was Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears, the Saturday matinee-style, big-screen debut of glamorous TV fashionista-detective Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis). Not because the film is set in the 1920s, but because this hammy adventure feels like it was made in the 10BA era of Australia, a period in the local entertainment industry when outrageously generous tax incentives encouraged filmmakers to create money-burning spectacles.

The Crypt Of Tears didnt have a massive budget (a substantial amount of it was raised by Kickstarter) but it does retain the 10BA eras lavish attitude. Director Tony Tilse cobbles together a silly story involving murder, valuable artefacts, a tattoo that doubles as a map and glowing green rocks. I wish the film was as stupidly entertaining as it sounds.

Hopes were high for Dirt Music, the latest film based on a book by beloved Australian novelist Tim Winton, whose work has made impressive screen conversions before, including Breath, The Turning and In The Winter Dark. But this was not, as we all know, a good year for high hopes.

Dirt Music turned out to be a visually and emotionally uninteresting romance between a lobster-stealing beach hunk (Garrett Hedlund) and a bored former nurse (Kelly Macdonald). Its one of those adaptations that feels conspicuously adapted, with dialogue that might have worked on the page but comes across wishy-washy when spoken on screen.

Dirt Music

On the subject of disappointing and/or bad and/or burn it to the ground Australian TV shows released in 2020, I believe reality TV is the work of the devil. Therefore you will find no mention of Pooch Perfect or Yummie Mummies or whatever other dross that needs holy water thrown on it.

And talking about (segue alert!) a show that needs holy water: consult Stans morbid true crime series After The Night. The four-part series examines one of the countrys most notorious serial killers, Eric Edgar Cooke, who brought terror to Perth in the 1960s, murdering eight people and violently assaulting many more. As the crimes occurred more than half a century ago, most interviewees were simply reflecting on what it was like living in Perth at the time; few have any real connection to the crimes. After The Night has an amateurish, rinky-dink vibe.

While the Four Corners documentary Black Summer certainly isnt amateurish, this investigation into the bushfires, which caused many human fatalities and the death or displacement of around three billion animals, was heralded as a riveting and important watch. Guess how many times climate change a driving force fuelling the length and severity of the worst wildlife disaster in modern history was mentioned? None. Not once. Nada. Nil.

The filmmakers appeared to have followed the nows not the time to mention climate change mandate as dictated by our fossil fuel-loving Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Not cool at all. In fact, extremely dodgy work from the ABC.

I Am Woman.

Time to move on to a more upbeat conversation: local films and TV shows that were good but not great.

Starting with the small screen first, this year marked the arrival of Informer 3838, the latest spin-off of the often trashy Underbelly series. The titular character is Nicola Gobbo (Ella Scott Lynch), who begins the show in a graffiti-strewn bathroom, deploying the classic stay tuned device via voiceover narration: I was the most notorious police informer in Australian legal history. I broke all the rules Why did I do it? Youre about to find out.

Content-wise, the show covers familiar ground, with Gobbo rubbing shoulders with characters explored previously including Tony Mokbel (Robert Mammone) and Carl Williams (Gyton Grantley). But the female perspective adds freshness, as does Informer 3838s rigorous editing style its chopped up and assembled with a frenetic, fast-paced kind of sass, making it an interesting stylistic exercise.

Halifax: Retribution, belatedly returning Rebecca Gibney to her most famous and high-rating series (which was a huge hit in the 90s) is also told from a strong female perspective, strong in this instance being a synonym for total bad arse. Gibney reprises her role as a forensic psychiatrist or psychological sleuth, helping the police (including Anthony Lapaglia) get to the bottom of a series of killings orchestrated by a sniper.

The best Australian LGBT movie drama this year was Sequin In A Blue Room, a richly styled and intensely colour-graded film about a 16-year-old boy (Conor Leach) addicted to online hookups, who attempts to track down somebody he desires while trying to avoid unwanted attention.

Young romance was also the subject of the gently stylish and AACTA award-sweeping Babyteeth, about a teen protagonist with terminal cancer (Eliza Scanlen) who meets and develops feelings for a drug-dealing nogoodnik (Toby Wallace). Her parents (Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis) dont like this, but its not the biggest issue in their lives.

Rams

Australian cinema has countless stories about cancer victims, but surprisingly few musician biopics. Enter I Am Woman, a fist-pumping celebration of feminist singer and glass ceiling-breaker Helen Reddy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who passed away in September at the age of 78.

Another film about an artist (albeit of the aspiring kind) that landed this year was the very low-budget but well-made Hot Mess, a Sydney-set dramedy about a young playwright (Sarah Gaul) struggling to balance her romantic life with her career. It played at a few event style screenings last year, but didnt get a proper release before being added to Netflix in October.

For an older and blokier affair, check out the excellent Rams, starring Sam Neill and Michael Caton as sheep farming siblings who live next door to each other but havent spoken in years. Its a very good, very tender film, funny and well acted, with an unprepossessing vibe that gradually manifests into touching and heartfelt drama.

Other standouts this year that were just shy of crossing the threshold into greatness: Hungry Ghosts, a modern-day ghost story set within Melbournes Vietnamese-Australian community; The Gloaming, a moodily shot series that follows a police detective investigating all sorts of jiggery-pokery, and A Lion Returns, about a jihadist who returns home to visit his dying mother after having been radicalised by his uncle.

The Beach

Now its time for the pedigree titles. The top-shelf whiskey. The fine dining experience.

The words rustic worn-down shack dont usually gel with fine dining but anybody whos seen Warwick Thorntons sublime series The Beach, the best Australian TV show of 2020 by a considerable margin, will probably empty their bank account for a chance to eat in this beautiful isolated place in the Dampier Peninsular in Western Australia. But the real feast here is not about food but rich cinematic visuals. Some images from the show have been burnt into my psyche: a leaf floating in water; boats in the sand; a guitar by the door.

It might not sound like all that much. But in Thorntons hands (his oeuvre includes the great Samson And Delilah and Sweet Country) The Beach becomes a rumination on many things from the healing of self-isolation (before it was compulsory) to connection with the land. It is a sublimely emotional and yet utterly enjoyable experience, with notes of the slow TV style.

Stateless

ABCs gripping six-part series Stateless, which explores the lives and distressing circumstances of characters connected to an Australian detention centre, is a different kettle of fish with harder edges and a pointier political context. Nevertheless its something special.

As is the tranquil sitcom Rosehaven, from stars and co-creators Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor, who play best friend real estate agents working and living in a sleepy Tasmanian town. Its fourth season premiered this year, which is at least good as the others and these are very good, matching Seinfeldian narrative minutiae with a lovely ebb and tone.

Mystery Road

The Mystery Road franchise (comprising two feature films and two TV shows) isnt beautiful or slow, but it does have an absolutely killer performance from Aaron Pederson. His character, the outback sleuth Jay Swan, belongs to the pantheon of great 21st-century Australian screen detectives, joining the likes of Phryne Fisher and Jack Irish. Season two marked his fourth screen adventure and it didnt disappoint, with Swans investigations beginning with a headless corpse (natch) and leading into drug-distributing crime syndicates.

Criminals are the subject of the best Australian film of the year, which is also one of the best 2020 films from anywhere in the world full stop. Not just any two-bit bad guy, either, but Australias most famous and legendary.

Im talking about old mate buckethead Ned Kelly, who is played by a beardless George MacKay in The True History Of The Kelly Gang. Justin Kurzels high-powered and brazenly stylish film, dotted with horse riding and shootout scenes, contemplates the bush outlaw as a victim of his own legend a man doomed to become a myth.

This is a complex subject to explore, signalled most obviously in lines of voiceover narration such as a man cannot change the past nor ever outrun his destiny. Everything comes to a head in a breathtaking final act, depicting Kellys last stand at Glenrowan in a way thats both utterly original and connected to previous representations if only to mark a fascinating point of departure. And depart from the norm it does: this is a truly wild ride.

Relic

Away from hotheaded masculinity, director Natalie Erika James explored womanhood, family and the losing of ones marbles in Relic, a richly textured horror-drama centred around an elderly lady (Robyn Nevin) suffering from dementia. When she goes missing her daughter and granddaughter (Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote) visit her house in regional Victoria, conveniently located near cinematic-looking woodlands. What they find is well, actually, see it for yourself.

What you wont see at least for most of the running time is the titular villain in Leigh Whannells excellent second feature as a director: the US/Australia co-production The Invisible Man. Wiping the cobwebs off an old and tired franchise, Whannell delivered a socially conscientious thriller that explores the terrors of domestic violence and an abusive relationship. Elisabeth Moss delivers another white-knuckled performance in the lead role as the victim, widening our eyes and draining the blood from our faces.

Although, do we even have any blood in our faces left (final segue alert!) after this collective haemorrhage of a year? Hard to say. Im pretty sure all my internal organs are operating at reduced capacity. Ah well. Time to have a stiff drink, get through the silly season and welcome in 2021.

The rest is here:

Australian film and TV in 2020: the good, the bad and the great - NME.com

Comedian Jimmy Carr has taken aim at Swansea in this year's The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year.

The show, which has been on TV since 2004, is a comedy panel quiz which sees celebrities in pairs take on questions relating to the past year. As part of his introduction to the TV and Film round, the stand-up comedian, who is quizmaster on the Channel 4 show every year, said: "This year's I'm A Celebrity was held in Wales. The contestants had to endure foul smelling unsanitary conditions, awful food, and disgusting creepy crawlies. Then they left the hotel in Swansea and headed to location."

Jimmy Carr is no stranger to Swansea, and has regularly visited the city through the years to perform at its Grand Theatre.

He is scheduled to perform there on Monday, August 23 next year, with his show 'Terribly Funny', which is billed as containing "jokes about all kinds of terrible things that might have affected you or people you know and love."

The show advertisement also warns that "having political correctness at a comedy show is like having health and safety at a rodeo."

What's on where you live? Find out with your post code:

This year's The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year saw Richard Acaster, Stacey Solomon, David Mitchell, Maya Jama, Richard Ayoade and Joe Lycett and take part.

It is not the first time Swansea has featured on the show. Back in 2009, Swansea cagefighters Daniel Lerwell and James Lilley featured as the 'mystery guests' on the show, where teams have to find out, through a series of yes or no questions, why they made the news that year.

The two men had dressed in drag for a night out on Wind Street and The Kingsway, and had knocked out yobs who had approached them, unprovoked, and began picking on them. CCTV footage of the incident was captured and ended up being viewed all over the world, racking up millions of views.

Read more:

Jimmy Carr slates Swansea in The Big Fat Quiz of The Year - Wales Online

Frank Barry is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. This column is part of a series, Looking for Lincoln: A Portrait of America at a Crossroads. It features reports from Barrys journey west along the Lincoln Highway, a zigzagging network of local roads running from Times Square to the Golden Gate Bridge, from Sept. 11 to Election Day.

Those things are finally good for something: They keep your face warm. A woman is smoking a cigarette outside the Four Deuces Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, where the worlds most famous gunfight, 139 years ago, still keeps the town alive, its shops and businesses catering mostly to tourists, though almost none are around tonight. My wife Laurel and I, wearing masks, laugh and say something about the cold: The sun has gone down and its in the 40s. We had just arrived in town and, seeing the saloons large outside patio decked with garlands, decided to stop for a drink. But there is no one outside, save the woman smoking. To order, well have to enter the saloon.

Oh, you dont have to wear those in here. The bartender young woman, friendly greets us with information that is already clear from a glance at the patrons. But whatever youre comfortable with. We leave them on and feel some stares. We take the drinks out to the patio where a sign notifies us that no weapons are allowed the town likes its gunplay staged, three times a day at the O.K. Corral, for an admission fee. A song comes on over the speaker: Christmas in Dixie, by Alabama.

With glasses emptied, we return them to the bar and walk back out the front door. The woman smoking is still outside, now with a friend. Have a merry Christmas, she says as we walk by, but the words have an edge to them, a defiant tone as if shes testing us, wondering if the masked visitors will say Happy holidays in return. Laurel hears it, too. Merry Christmas! I reply. And as we head out onto a dark street, we hear them talk of the phrase being overtaken by political correctness.

We pick up dinner from Marios Bakery Caf and I make the mistake of getting hey, were in Tombstone a pizza. We return to the RV for the night, in a public lot across the street from the old county courthouse, built in the shape of a cross one year after local lawmen including the Earp brothers and their pal Doc Holliday were put on trial for their role in the 1881 shootout. All were cleared. I cannot resist the conclusion that the defendants were fully justified in committing these homicides, ruled Judge Wells Spicer. The decision divided the town some supported the lawmen, some the slain men. Controversies surrounding the justice systems treatment of police are nothing new.

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The next morning, 30 miles south in the old mining town of Bisbee, I meet Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and several of his deputies. Inside their offices, one of the deputies reaches out to shake my hand. I freeze and, before I can think of a fist bump, I extend my hand. Its the first time Ive shaken hands in nine months.

Sheriff Dannels is an Army veteran with 37 years of law enforcement experience and a masters degree in criminal justice. When he began in the sheriffs office in the 1980s, Cochise County was acquiring the nickname Cocaine Alley, for all the drugs coming over the countys 83-mile border with Mexico, mostly rural ranchland. Cochise County has always been on the front line of smuggling, he says.The Sinaloa cartel is south of us. Its a profit-greed game for them. Anything they can smuggle in the United States, they will do for a dollar bill. Thats what drives it that and violence and fear.

He calls human smuggling or trafficking modern-day slavery: Theyre paying about $6,000 a head to come across. They get three attempts and head-to-toe camouflage for the journey. These people dont have $6,000. So theyre servant to the cartels, whether its sex, gang labor, drug labor, whatever it may be. The torture these people go through is just incredible. And thats where the humanitarian side comes from.

He sees this humanitarian side protecting the human rights of those being exploited and smuggled as being a core part of his mission, in addition to protecting public safety for local residents and protecting national security for all Americans. As an example, he mentions a man recently reported missing by his wife, who lives in Mexico, after crossing over the border. We have a group that came across here and one of the individuals involved in the group went missing. Hes on our Facebook page right now. We know hes undocumented. And we sent a team and resources and technology trying to find him and we still havent. Thats a John and Jane Doe in the future, which means well find the bones later, and it's really those are tough.

Today, he says, drug dealers are avoiding his county. Im telling you, we watch them every day his office has developed and deployed its own camera system. They go around Cochise County every day to New Mexico, the counties adjacent to us.

One reason: The sheriff has cracked down on one of the cartels favored tactics enlisting teens as smugglers. About five years ago, youth smuggling was chronic. We had 22 juveniles in 45 days that were bringing drugs into this county, Dannels says a majority of them Mexican, but some American kids, too. Not one prosecution. The U.S. Attorneys office would not prosecute them. They released them, no consequence exactly why the cartel kept recruiting them.

Sergeant Tim Williams explains what it was like on the ground: We would catch them and they would go right back [to Mexico] and we would catch them the next day, if not sometimes eight hours [later] because they would already have been processed and sent back, where they often faced a different form of justice. If they lost their drugs, they would get a severe beating and then sent right back [to America]. And so we have numerous pictures of kids that are just beat with two-by-fours on their backside theyre completely black and blue or even in some senses possibly tortured.

Sheriff Dannels developed a local program to prosecute juveniles. We went from one or two in our facility right next door here the county jail to 36 a day, to show you how bad it was. One hundred percent of those kids went to prison for 1.5 years. Today they are down to one juvenile a year. When you run a 100% conviction rate,you see the reduction in drugs.

The number of illegal border crossings has tripled since March, to 2,700 a month, likely a result of the Trump administrations decision to resume catch-and-release. Given the need for physical distancing during Covid-19, detention centers dont have the space to hold migrants. Now, they are often simply sent back across the border.

Dannels knows that law enforcement is only one piece of the puzzle. Immigration reform is so needed. It truly is. What is the process to get in this country? It takes years. Come on. Can we look at that? But people are so afraid of their parties. I blame Congress hard on this all sides. I mean, Republicans will blame Democrats. Democrats will blame Republicans, but remember, Republicans had the House, Senate and the presidency and didnt fix a damn thing. We have to have a balanced immigration, progressive plan. We also need a balanced plan of border security, which is a balance of technology, staffing, physical all that needs to come in play. One doesnt fix it all. We all know thats common sense, but can you get them to agree on any of that? Of course not. Youve got from open borders to close it all. Folks, the answers in the middle. We all know that.

He has a message for those who extol sanctuary cities. I call it offensive when local leaders and state leaders say, Come see us, get through that border, break the law, come see us and well take care of you because it puts his officers at even greater risk. Thats offensive to what weve done here.

Sergeant Williams who leads the South Arizona Border Region Enforcement, or SABRE team, that Dannels began takes me out in his truck to have a look at the border. Williams built the camera network the sheriff proudly touted, which uses AI to filter out non-human images and provide real-time data to the team. Every time you hear that phone go ding he points at his cell phone thats another group of illegal aliens or drug smugglers come across.

He had no experience building a camera and communications network. So I actually learned how to bounce signal [using] radio waves its been awesome to learn. His system, which he built for a little over $1 million, has been adopted by other jurisdictions across the southern border to California, and localities use it to alert the border patrol. One of the border patrol supervisors about a year ago said in this valley right here, that my unit and our camera system does 80% of their work meaning that the cameras were responsible for 80% of what they were going after.

At the border town of Naco, we get out of the truck. There is a 20-foot-high fence built during the Obama administration, and now construction crews are installing a 30-foot-high steel-beamed fence directly behind it. The two walls together are a jarring sight that call to mind King Canute and the futility of trying to stop the tide.

I ask if anyone has tried to scale the taller fence yet.

Absolutely. We catch them all the time.

And how are they trying to scale it with ropes?

No, no. One of my guys used to be able to show you, but you literally grab it like this he extends his arms in a circle and they just shimmy right up that. I think the border patrol's already had quite a few fall off of it. They got seriously injured.

The top of the fence is supposed to be sharp enough to prevent people from grabbing onto it. But what they do is they just throw a blanket over it.

Sometimes, they dont even need to climb over Im astonished to learn the fence includes storm gates that are open half the year.

During monsoon season, all these gates will be wide open and they'll leave them open, and theres thousands of these gates across the border. You can see where they can lift them up. Theyll walk right through that. For months at a time, those will just be open, because if they dont, the water will rip the whole fence apart. And Ive seen that, where the fence is getting completely destroyed. The water will just take it right off.

When theyre open, I ask, it makes the rest of the fence a moot point, right?

Yeah. And thats where our camera system comes into play, because we can saturate that area with the cameras and see them coming across and go after them.

The fence extends only up to the nearby Chiricahua Mountains, but construction crews are carving their way alongside it though only up to a point. As we travel up into the mountains, many miles of the border are marked by low-slung fence that is easy enough to step over, and there is no current plan or funding to change that.

Its easy to seize on these gaps people can walk around the fence, or even right through it! to argue that the fence is useless. Sheriff Dannels was quick to say that its not a panacea, but his team sees it as an essential tool that makes it harder to cross into population centers, protecting border communities from drug and human trafficking. And wherever it exists, it buys law enforcement time to respond.

Thats why were so adamant that you got to have something, because it gives us a fighting chance to try to get them, says Sergeant Williams. Several years ago, you would be standing right here we are in Naco, steps from houses and a group of 30 would run right into the community. And so the community here, being a port of entry, they really wanted to secure this and push [migrants] out to where the rural population was. But then you also have U.S. citizens that live out in the rural part. Theyre just as important as anybody that lives inside the city.

For many Americans, the fence is a canvas onto which we project broader beliefsabout what the country should be. But standing beside it in Naco, I realize that for many people in border towns, it is something much simpler and more tangible: one way of several to push trafficking and illegal crossings away from their neighborhoods, into more remote areas. Even if it doesnt solve the nations problem, it helps solve their problem.

Thinking about the day in Naco and the night before in Tombstone, I begin to wonder whether border walls are to many liberals what masks have been to many conservatives. Both sides are dismissive of these measures, seeing them as useless as a matter of practice, because they are incapable of solving the entire problem, and damaging as a matter of policy, because they chip away at our national character by striking at the heart of values we cherish societal openness by liberals, individual freedom by conservatives.

Of course, assessing the wisdom of each policy requires balancing its benefits with its costs, but a fair accounting of both sides of the ledger is often blocked by partisan loyalties, ideological attachments, social pressuresand overriding emotions. For liberals, acknowledging that border walls have some public safety benefits would risk appearing to be sympathetic to Trumps attacks on foreigners. For conservatives, at least for much of this year, acknowledging masks have some public safety benefits risked appearing to be sympathetic to Democratic attacks on Republicans.

Sheriff Dannels wishes the national dialogue on the border were more grounded in the practicalities of public safety: Politics, emotions, sensation[alism] have no business in policing. It truly doesnt. But in a democracy, where even sheriffs are elected, those forces shape the challenges facing all law enforcement agencies, including those patrolling the border. And until Congress acts to overhaul a badly broken immigration system, the challenges will only increase.

You hear all that? Williams asks me.

We are back in cell service, having driven down from the mountain, and his phone is lighting up with dings.

Thats how many groups have crossed since weve been over there. How many was that, 30?

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Frank Barry at fbarry5@bloomberg.net

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Frank Barry is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. This column is part of a series, Looking for Lincoln: A Portrait of America at a Crossroads. It features reports from Barrys journey west along the Lincoln Highway, a zigzagging network of local roads running from Times Square to the Golden Gate Bridge, from Sept. 11 to Election Day.

Continued here:

Masks, Walls and Security in a Divided Country - Bloomberg