Is it my imagination or is there really a growing number of people seeking to better the World and their own lot in it? That query may perhaps be purely rhetorical but from my vantage point I can validate that it is not my imagination. I may not be able to speak for the entire…
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Serving notice on the cult of personality devotees
Celebrities and their adoring fans have a unique relationship. Whatever appeal a celebrity exudes often attracts a following drawn to their characteristics and traits with which fans identify or a professional record or personal history that resonates or perhaps even defines the fan’s own. Professional or financial success, be it actual or perceived, can be…
Continue ReadingBill Maher: HBO live at the Brady Theater
Tulsa’s Brady Theater played host to another of those life-enhancing events for the liberal and progressive minded folks who reside along this, the most conservative stretch of Old Route 66. Few celebrity comedians validate progressive values and touch all the right nerves of liberals immersed in life in Red State America with the precision and…
Continue ReadingA clarion call for social change
One of the motivating reasons for creating this unofficial publication was to provide an alternative viewpoint on political, social and cultural issues from a locality that is lodged in a perpetual state of conservative traditionalism rooted in evangelical Christian patriarchy. I’ve heard more than a few visitors from other places in the USA and overseas…
Continue ReadingVeterans, candidates and an approaching primary election
“Conditions win elections and not speeches.” That assertion was once made by Oklahoma’s most famous Democrat, Will Rogers. If the conditions created by implementing radical ideas enabled by one-party rule in my beloved home state for the better part of a decade are not enough to move a majority of voters to shift the needle…
Continue ReadingOverturning the New Deal
Long game strategies, when employed with simplicity, specificity and devout dedication, are the most effective way to cause change lasting for decades. When the Labor Movement and others seeking to safeguard the rank-and-file worker and common citizen from economic calamity gained a friend in the White House, many of their ideas and demands found their…
Continue ReadingThe spring of the grassroots
We are well into May of a midterm election year and in spite of an unseasonably cool spring, primary election campaigns are off and running. Regardless of what may be happening in the larger national and global picture, the focus on local state legislative politics is heating up. Given that all politics is local, that…
Continue ReadingA citizen’s testimony of a failed state government
Like many other evolving stories which illuminate and illustrate our life and times along this, the most conservative stretch of Old Route 66, I have had to stop myself more than once from writing this piece before the subject matter was ripe enough to rate appropriate commentary. Since January 2011, the Oklahoma State Senate, House…
Continue ReadingWitness to a movement: Marching for their lives
Power concedes nothing without demand. Those in government who currently wield the power of crafting legislation and have done nothing in the face of the crisis generated by mass school shootings were served notice on Saturday. A genuine grassroots movement is on the rise and their collective voices demanding action to reign in gun violence…
Continue ReadingThe bottom line question for all voters in 2018
As most regular readers have noticed, there is a stock in trade of what gets published on this blog. For the most part, the stock in trade of Reason Rest Stop is information. There may be an occasional humorous story or a run down of an entertainment event or a book or movie review, but…
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