Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 03.14.22

GK,

You asked in your column from 3/11/2022, “Which side are you on, if I may ask” starting out with ... “The war is far away and then it is up close.”

That made me think about my knowledge of history. When Hitler invaded Poland, it was the same story. I had no capacity to prevent that since I wasn’t born yet. Today, we are living WITHIN history not reflecting on it. I feel the same way about today as I do about the 1940s. I had no personal power to change Hitler then, or Putin now, they will do what they want, I will just have to observe, this time as a living person rather than someone reading history.

It is worth remembering that in Hitler’s time, Bible students who were non-Jewish German citizens, were executed or sent to camps for refusing to serve in his armed forces. In this country, Bible students were sent to prison for refusing the draft, although less severely punished than in Germany, where some were beheaded in Berlin.

Today, the same Bible students in Russia have gone to prison for years for simply practicing their religious beliefs, even before this war began — as of the end of January this year, more than 80 individuals, some as old you. And now, many more will be imprisoned for their refusal to participate in Putin’s war.

In Ukraine, the same Bible students refuse to participate as well, although it is against common public sentiment. From our distant but safe view, it seems wrong to not take sides, yet they, some Russians and Ukrainians, will not kill their brothers. That is some Courage!

We forget that governments wage war with the “consent” of their citizens, even if it is coerced. The bravest and most righteous of all are those who say NO to killing other people on behalf of their government. Without the cooperation and consent of the people, none of this would happen, not in the ’40s, and not today.

We need to realize that there is a third choice, people who say “NO” to their government’s wars even at risk to their own safety, health, wealth, and freedom. That’s the greatest heroic act, the end of wars, and the way to real peace.

Richard
Minnesota

Pacifism is noble in theory but the real test is in your own home: if violent men burst in threatening to kill your children, would you refuse to use force? To refuse to defend your countrymen whom you don’t know is one thing, but to refuse to defend your children strikes me as inhuman.

GK

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GK,

Regarding the comment about your comment about the chinless Mitch McConnell — I feel bad for Mitch M. for he cannot put pillowcases on pillows.

Robert Moats

Dear Mr. GK,

Cracking good defense of Al Franken. Thanks from a fellow Minnesotan. These folks who ride you negatively and hard about your politics could use some depthful self-reflection. That incredible nasty anger has to be coming from somewhere inside themselves and then projected onto you. Just like the former president who has no psychological self-understanding. Or the woman who wrote you to weaponize Biden’s heartfelt empathy against him. I keep wanting to ask, “Where is that coming from?”

Thanks for all you do.

With sincerity and gratitude,
JFL

I like to have a brisk exchange of views here on PTTH. I’m trying to get over my Minnesota upbringing that sought to stifle anger and soften criticism. I don’t question critics’ motives but I must admit I appreciate it when they’re not only angry but also funny.

GK

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Dear Garrison, 

Two things are bugging me. 

Al Franken got stabbed in the back by my (New York) senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, among others. She said there was no need to wait for any evidence or investigation. He must leave the Senate, said she. Then, it turns out that Al was guilty of nothing more than pulling a childish prank. Imagine, a comedian posing for a prank photo. 

But Gillibrand wasn’t done. She was compelled to hector Governor Andrew Cuomo out of office, too. She couldn’t wait for any investigation. Then after much investigation by several district attorneys, Cuomo wasn’t prosecuted and wasn’t charged with anything. Apparently, he was guilty of being an old-school Italian who hugs and kisses too much. His main accuser accused him of “looking down my shirt.” Let that be a cautionary lesson to all the men in the world. Kirsten Gillibrand is waiting for you to make a false move.

Item 2. Ivana Trump swore in a divorce deposition that the only book her husband Donald kept at his bedside was a collection of speeches by Adolf Hitler. I consider Trump to be the modern-day Hitler, or Hitler with nukes. He wants his old job back to settle some scores. I’m glad you mention his name — a name that will live in infamy. 

Keep up the good work.

Clay Blasdel

Garrison:

Your columns regarding the hell that is happening in Ukraine, instigated by Putin, or Vlad the Impostor, as I call him, and his stooge, the King of the World, or DJT, calls to something within my soul. Those who are haters and get cranky about your expressing your opinions, on YOUR page, must not have ever lived through the Cold War, or anything like it. The snowflakes who resent your expressing a learned and empathetic opinion about this horror of a war, where a lovely family is fleeing with their dog and a friend, and are killed as they go, photographed for all time, is deeply powerful. As a child, I remember watching the scenes of death and destruction of Vietnam, and the many horrors inflicted upon that country, and I think it was then that I became a Democrat. My father told me that the Bay of Pigs and associated incidents scared him and the men at the plant where he worked (American Standard), and he wondered if he could get home in time to be with my mother and his children before the nuclear bombs hit. We live in such awful times. I refuse to place blame upon anyone but Trump and Putin and the many fools that allow their vile and selfish behavior. I fully support your opinion, memories, stories about friends and family who fled pogroms, famine, war, and poverty. We HAVE to know these things as a nation. I couldn’t give a damn about “lite” subjects; my heart is too heavy. I have known too many people from Eastern Europe who left there for work here in the U.S., and fled things most of those in the cult of Trump cannot ever imagine. I have been a listener since I was 17, and in college, and now, at 62, I have few people with whom I can discuss this. Keep writing. Keep helping us understand. And don’t let the haters ever bring you down. Also, I want Al Franken on the Supreme Court. I think his common sense, intelligence, sense of humor, and decency would be a refreshing and much needed change to the SCOTUS.

All the best,

Ann Flynt

I share your alarm and don’t know what to do with it, Ann. I don’t wish to inflict it on my daughter so I joke around with her on the phone even as I ask myself, “When in her lifetime might this world become uninhabitable?” So anyway, a man appeared at the Ukrainian border and the guard asked, “Nationality?” “Russian,” the man said. “Occupation?” “No, I’m just visiting.”

GK

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Garrison,

I have enjoyed your musings for some time now. Heard you live in Reading, Pennsylvania, some years ago. My interest in your writing is heightened by our similar evangelical upbringing with mine being Mennonite. While remaining “in the fold,” I would now be considered a rather progressive Mennonite as my wife and I worship in a congregation that is welcoming and where the idea of a God who is only accepting of those who espouse a certain dogma is rather foreign.

Reading your column today (Reality is a good antidote, America. Take a long hard look.) reminded me of a song sung by some friends of mine: “Be Our Strength in Times of Trouble” by the Reunion Vocal Band:

 

What makes it additionally touching and meaningful is seeing Steve (red T-shirt), a former church member and talented musician, who was randomly gunned down late at night by a man high on drugs in August 2020. And it is certainly a fitting song for times like ours.

Blessings to you, my friend!

Dennis

A beautiful song, a sweet refrain (“Bring us into your hands”), brings tears to my eyes. And how remarkable to hear a steel guitar on a hymn.

GK

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GK,

We are now neighbors living nearish each other on the island of Manhattan. I wanted to suggest you try Absolute Bagels on 108 and Broadway to replace your H&H fix. Absolute was opened by a man who emigrated from Thailand but learned to make one of the best bagels in the city. Enjoy.

Karen H.

You can be grim and irate
About our country's sad state
But recover your faith
On 108th
Where a Thai makes a bagel that's great.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I love receiving your emails; they certainly brighten up my day. However, what is it with all the Trump supporters that feel the need to write to you, enraged by your particular beliefs and political preferences?

In the UK, we have a wide-ranging media that reflects all aspects of political thought, from the Morning Star, which is a socialist publication with a tiny circulation, to the Sun, which represents the gutter press at its rabid right-wing worst, via the liberal Guardian and centre-right Telegraph and Times. I choose to read the Guardian because I feel at home there. I don’t read the Sun because I find the content offensive and nationalistic.

My message to your political critics: “Find something else to read and stop haranguing Garrison for his perfectly legitimate views.”

Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to read your new book.

Yours sincerely,
Ian Peacock
Sussex, England

Ian, don’t tell those readers to go away, I treasure them, and they know it. I don’t know where on the spectrum I stand ultimately, I’m still watching and learning. I like to read conservative columnists who write well and I am drawn to thoughtfulness on all sides.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

It’s my 71st birthday today and for part of my present I just read Serenity at 70 Gaiety at 80 and wanted to tell you it touched my heart. During these times I loved your words “Finesse beats power,” which especially is significant these days. 

Thank you for this lovely book, Mr. Keillor. Turning 70 was scary to me, but reading your book today at 71 relaxes me into contentedness and releasing my need to carry weights of the world I no longer need to carry in my backpack. These kids now are intelligent and compassionate for their fellow man and can take over. The world will be in good hands.

Bless you,
Mary 

Bless you and I trust your 72nd year will bring you bursts of happiness in many unexpected ways and places.

GK

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Hello, Garrison.

Several years ago, you were a guest on the PBS series Finding Your Roots. The show never aired.

What did you learn about your ancestry? Were there surprises, sorrows, and joys?

Regards,
BET, an APHC fan and family tree person

The show got canceled after an old friend accused me of impropriety in a fancy shakedown scheme. Cash for silence. I wasn’t sorry about the cancellation since it was a fluff piece, and who needs that? My family history is fascinating, the great-great-grandfather who got in on the Colorado silver rush, Elder John Crandall of Rhode Island arrested for preaching against the Puritans and their witch hunts, and Prudence Crandall who got banned from Connecticut for admitting young women of color to her school and whose house was burned and she fled to Kansas. There’s more I’d love to know but nobody left to ask.

GK

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Garrison, as I contemplate the inevitability of your upcoming TWA retirement, I have many questions, observations, and feelings about it, but today only two:

What is the name of the music you play at the beginning and end of TWA? I want to learn to play that song. I did the same thing with a theme song from one of my NPR favorite local shows, a song by Yanni called “In The Morning Light” and I think you should give it a listen.

Now I know where New Ulm, Minnesota, got its name from your TWA today. See? Educational as well as enjoyable. I’ll miss that and so many other parts of your daily.

Steve Heizman

Steve, it’s a Danish song, “Giv Mig En Dag,” which I learned when I lived in Copenhagen.

If you play it on the piano in the morning, all the Danes in the neighborhood will come over and you’ll need to serve them coffee and boller and krumkake. No Danish, they don’t care for it.

GK

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GK,

This is one of the very few times I must disagree with you, Mr. K. I don’t think Don should be “forgiven” on any level. I think he should, for a change, be held accountable for all the damage he did to us as a country, and a society. I know you are writing on the crest of a wave of compassion, but this one doesn’t deserve one bit of it any more than his “pal” Putin does. And, by the way, important to remember, this kind of narcissistic character responds to “forgiveness” with indifference — as do many of his followers. That’s the nature of “evil.”

Richard Prosapio

Of course you may be right. My motive is not compassion, it is simply to put him in the past and focus on the needs of our people, which are urgent and real. Nothing about him is real.

GK

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Whoa, Sir.

I nearly fell off my chair. Forgive Trump? Trump made a secret deal with Putin at Helsinki. The U.S. would pull out of NATO leaving Putin free to conquer Ukraine and the other Soviet bloc states. And maybe more. At that press conference, we watched Jonathan Lemire ask the question and we heard Trump sell out our Intelligence Community and his country. We can only guess what Trump was promised in return for his treachery.

Please don’t ask for proof. We don’t need “proof” that Putin is knowingly killing innocent Ukrainian citizens, either. We can put 2 and 2 together. Putin is a war criminal and Trump is a traitor. I know it in my bones. I will never forgive either of them any more than I would forgive Hitler.

Clay Blasdel

Buffalo, New York

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I saw you at Town Hall a dozen times I think, met you out on W. 43rd when you were still smoking, even sat in a dented green Datsun 210 wagon in a cornfield in Iowa for two hours one evening just to listen, as I went from Chicago to San Francisco, because the signal was faltering.

A small observation. I have used the quote about war and geography many, many times, but always attributed it to Ambrose Bierce. Here’s a contrary view :

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/19/geography/#google_vignette

Keep plugging away, sir.

Dan Keefe
Montclair, New Jersey

It’s a great line, whoever came up with it first. So many people came to America to escape the European wars or the colonial powers in Africa or the poverty of Asia and the Atlantic and Pacific made them feel more secure, but when Putin invaded Ukraine, suddenly Ukraine becomes a neighbor and the brutal crimes against civilians feel like murders in our neighborhood and suddenly the end of the world seems quite imaginable. I’ve had a good long life but I worry about the children.

GK

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GK,

In today’s piece, Sitting Scared in Church, Thinking About Evil, I was thrown off by your recommendation that Donald Trump be pardoned. Mr. Trump has been getting away with illegal and amoral behavior for half a century. He doesn’t take responsibility for his words or actions and never plans to do so. In fact, Donald Trump has gotten so used to getting away with bad behavior, he keeps “upping the ante,” secure in the knowledge that he will never be held accountable. (Remember this claim: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”)

So, as much as I enjoyed the majority of today’s piece, I found the Trump recommendation objectionable. I think many of my Unitarian friends would feel the same.

Kathy Becker, UU
Saint Louis, Missouri

Our country is involved in a war in Europe, which we didn’t seek but we’re in it, and this could turn into a world war rather quickly. I want this country to survive and flourish and, considering that, I no longer care about Mr. Trump. Reality is looking us in the face and there is nothing real about him, he is fiction.

GK

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Good morning, Garrison.

I just read Scared in Church. I am with you 100%. Just as every day I am astonished at “Man’s inhumanity to Man.” We are growing so far apart as a country or world for that matter. In my 79 years I find it so hard to realize the behavior we are accepting. I too want to put the previous president behind us, get him out of the headlines!! I voted for him and now move on!! I heard a person say, “You know what’s wrong with this country? There are too many people know what’s wrong with this country.” I think that is really true today. There is a lot of good out there and we need to find it. And live with it.

That’s my slant on things. Keep up the good writing. We enjoy.

Richard
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

Dear Sir,
I have been a fan of yours since I was a young child. I remember being in fourth grade and looking forward to listening to your show every Saturday night. Shortly thereafter I began reading your books. First one I read was WLT. The book literally blew the top of my head off. It was incredible. Anyway I just wanted to take a moment and let you know how much your work has enriched my life. Thank you.

Joseph Dicapo

Glad you liked the book and it makes me think maybe I should pick it up and look at it. I’m an old man and I don’t dare look back lest I lose momentum and I know from experience that I’m not a good reader of my own work. Odd, but true.

GK

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GK,

Self-Purification of Russia. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin used this term to justify their dark ambitions. Vladimir Putin today used these same words. 

We drag our feet at our children’s and grandchildren’s peril. Why do we ignore the lessons of history? Fear? Attachment to our false sense of security? This will pass, we will find a safe solution … we think … we hope … we ignore the lessons of history.

Putin is Stalin and Hitler.

Stop Putin now before he scores the rest of Ukraine. We dragged our feet on Crimea and we backed off of Syria. Our leaders have not had the political will to draw freedom’s line in the sand because we fear losing our next election.

When is the last time we saw a politician be brave enough to lose their next election to stand for Democracy?

Don’t wait for the politicians to lead; they follow, they eventually follow you … us! Why? For the same reason they are silent and hesitant now: fear!

But we must stand for and defend freedom and democracy. The global situation is as critical now as it was as we faced Hitler. We waited too long then and many millions died. Stop Putin now so our ruthlessly slaughtered innocents will be less than a million.

It’s not up to Biden, NATO or the European Union.

It’s up to you.
It’s up to us.

Paul Pierlott 

I feel the same way, that the crisis is urgent and Putin must be stopped, but I do feel there are wise heads in our intelligence agencies and the military who’ve been scoping out Russia for a long time. The isolation of Putin and his religious zealotry bordering on madness — it’s terrifying to contemplate. But it’s a sunny day in New York and I need to take a walk.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

For someone who proclaims he is a Christian, you certainly have a lot of hate in your heart and for President Trump and conservatives. How do reconcile the hate and your Christianity?

Dan Hartnett
Kingman, Arizona

In a democracy, we often disagree with each other, sometimes severely, but “hatred” is an absurd word to use for principled disagreement. Your letter strikes me as far from conservative and rather ungodly, but that’s your business and not mine. Consider yourself forgiven.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.

When I read the tail end (sorry) of your most recent column, it brought back memories of an old PHC show — I forget what year, but you did a “News from Lake Wobegon” that included a long treatise on farting — it simply laid me out in hysterics. I think I still have a tape of it somewhere (our local station used to replay the Saturday show on Sunday evening. which gave me the opportunity to record chosen gems to listen to again and again). I am 67 years old, but my sense of humor remains rooted in junior high … if it’s good enough for Mozart, it’s good enough for me! (And apparently for you, thank heavens). Keep on laughing (but watch out for lentil pasta and chickpeas)!

Pat McC.

Me too, Pat. Back in junior high I attempted to be sophisticated, but all of that has fallen away and now I laugh hard at what I should’ve laughed at when I was 14.

GK

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