Pondering Pogo's Enemy: One Op-Ed at a Time

FROM THE AUTHOR: As of July 2016 I have had 50 op-ed columns published in the Joplin Globe Joplin Missouri which began in 2009. Given that volume of material I had in effect written a book. The question then became one of selecting which op-eds to include. After making the selections I found that they could be divided into five categories: - Economic Issues- Governance and Democracy- National Security- Political Issues- Social IssuesRegardless of the category each of the Op-Eds here is my own reflection on certain aspects of our social institutions and culture. But the opinions of course came from my own worldview.As the writing progressed and with the subject matter sometimes pointing to the stupid stuff people do I often thought of the famous Pogo declaration We have met the enemy and he is us. Then the wheels started turning in my meager brain.My pondering contemplating mulling and cogitating about the human condition and expressing the same through a series of Op-Eds seemed to make sense. So in keeping with this theme I titled the book Pondering Pogos Enemy.I have selected some of what I think are the more interesting diverse and sometimes controversial of my commentaries to include here. Some of these appear as they were originally published. A number of others were expanded and revised as I had time.Where I could I added a few quotations pertinent to the topic that were not in the original piece to underscore and emphasize my point. I also added references as needed to identify the sources for the material that were not published due to restrictions on the word-count permitted by the Globe.Of course most of the commentary here is time-dependent and things will have likely changed by the time this book is read. There are statistics for example that were current at the time of the writing but have not been updated.Nonetheless I hope the reader can just enjoy seeing another point of view. I hope too that these writings may also provide ideas for essays or for research or even for use in an op-ed or two.