As 2021 crams in its final thwacks on our collective psyche (thanks, omicron variant), I’m in the pensive mood that strikes columnists toward the end of each year. Mixed doesn’t begin to describe my feelings. On one hand, I can’t believe my good fortune to write for Kansas Reflector’s engaged readers. On the other hand, I wish I was doing it in more congenial times than these.
You could call this the hangover year. The biggest and worst stories from 2020 just kept on going. We might have wanted to hear less about a certain ex-president or novel coronavirus, but neither one was done with us.
Rather than unspooling a lengthy list of events (editor in chief Sherman Smith has been working on that), I’m going to highlight three big items from 2021. First of all, what scared me the most. Secondly, what gave me the most hope. And third, the biggest question that looms as we sail into a hopefully hangover-free 2022.
This past year proves once and for all that Donald Trump and his merry band of populist Republicans weren’t an easily manipulated bunch of maroons. They were deadly dangerous. They didn’t just threaten the life and health of U.S. senators and representatives but our entire system of democratic governance.
Jan. 6, 2021, will live in infamy, and not just because of the ragtag bunch of marauders who flooded the U.S. Capitol. It stained our nation’s history because so many elected Republicans went along with the former president’s outrageously false claims...
Mombasa County Commissioner Mohamed Noor said investigations conducted so far have found no evidence that any victim had actually lost their genital organs despite widespread rumours circulating ...