In the News

Letters

12/22/2019
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Not the best strategy

I see the 2,500-acre Chenal development project is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. When you drive through the neighborhoods, you will see two impressive private golf courses and a number of good-sized lovely homes. What you won't see are ball fields, soccer fields or parks.

Chenal families have to drive 20 minutes each way to Junior Deputy to find a baseball field. They have to go at least as far to find a soccer field. There are plenty of basketball hoops in driveways, but few neighborhood courts. I am not sure where they would have to go for a picnic or to sit on a park bench.

Develop every inch and move on may be a great strategy for a developer, it is not the best strategy for a city interested in quality of life.

STEVE SCOTT

Maumelle

A starry, starry night

A long time ago, Leonard Cohen noted in a song that we will never, ever, reach the moon. At least not the one we're after. A recent letter-writer extolled some of the sublime symmetries of our solar system, but omitted one of my favorites: the "accidental" positioning of things so that our moon appears in the sky exactly the same size as the sun, and they can dance their ecliptical dance to the music of the spheres. The letter was fine, however incomplete I might have thought it, until at the end the writer seemed to blame Urania herself for the way people have blinded themselves to mystery. That struck me as unfair, but probably not intentionally so on the letter-writer's part.

Philip Martin, on the other hand, seems to take a kind of glee in his contradictory pronouncements regarding man's soul. He seems to want to be able to make a person's inner life meaningless because it's explainable as chemical reactions, but he can't quite. Every once in a while some nagging part of himself gets to speak out against the (absurd) idea, only to be quashed by subsequent columns. I feel sorry for anybody who looks at a night sky and sees dead, ashen orbs. That's just kind of sad.

The stars that are most prominent these nights are some of the most beautiful: Aldebaran and the Pleiades, Sirius and the stars that make Orion, the little dog Procyon ... The full moon the other night was stunning. She hung in just the right place to make a face for Orion. Stars among the naked branches glittered like jewels. There are nursery rhymes in the stars sometimes, and knowing the physics of twinkling, and of cold night air, does not spoil the magic. If the ass next door would stop braying and let you enjoy it.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Get out and see some stars.

STANLEY G. JOHNSON

Little Rock

Guess we don't count

It seems the leaders of this state do not care about the well-being of the citizens in Arkansas.

Our congressman, French Hill, voted to cut my Medicare benefits and raise my taxes. Our governor, Asa Hutchinson, terminated health-care benefits for the most vulnerable among us and simultaneously practices corporate welfare by "infusing" $1.5 million of our tax dollars into a wood factory doing almost exclusive business with Walmart. The wood factory has been promised a practically no-tax program.

The state Education Board is fostering segregation in the Little Rock School District again by placing a charter school on practically every street corner in Little Rock and removing local control of schools based on a manufactured crisis. The state board seems to want to destroy public education and hand it over to private enterprise.

Our flagship university at Fayetteville intends to privatize its bookstore, thus eliminating tuition benefits for the college kids that work there while paying a fired athletic director and numerous fired coaches tens of millions of dollars.

Sarah Huckabee is back in Arkansas and the rumor is that she will run for governor. If elected, Huckabee will continue to lie to the public as she did for Mr. Trump, with an unknown and, most likely, horrific result for Arkansas.

Please pray, Arkansas.

JOHN ROLLANS

Little Rock

Abandoning of Syria

Body count was how we kept score in Vietnam. Our strategies are more sophisticated now, but body count remains important, especially in optional conflicts.

We accept a certain number of ours killed as long as we kill more of theirs, but the ratio should be rather lopsided. Maybe 10-to-1 at the beginning, but higher as a conflict drags on.

With superior firepower, especially from the air, we can usually achieve an acceptable body-count score against belligerents from the lower conferences.

Turkey (more opponent than enemy, like in a game) calculated correctly that we will not risk engaging in battles where they can rain down as much terror from the sky as we can. It is just a game, after all.

The Kurds should have thought of that before agreeing to fight ISIS on our behalf. Helping the Kurds defend themselves against Turkey (and Russia?) is not prudent at this juncture. Better to declare ISIS defeated and send the Kurds a thank-you note. The hostility to Muslim refugees by our president, our members of Congress and their base of religious and racial bigots should have been a clue.

We aren't fighting "for" anyone, not the Kurds, and especially not Muslims, only against ISIS, but not Turkey or even Assad. In future conflicts, if we must fight, let's pick a side to be for and go all in for them.

Whatever arrows directed at me for my uncivility: Right back at you. No point trying to be civil to bigots.

HOWELL MEDDERS

Fayetteville

Editorial on 12/22/2019