Gene Lyons, Esteemed Columnist, Calls It Quits Over Trump: My Flyover-Country Response

In an op-ed essay that appeared in my local newspaper yesterday, Gene Lyons wrote that he is retiring mainly due to Donald Trump, whom Lyons described as an "incompetent sociopath and career criminal."

Lyons believes President Trump "will bring the American experiment to ruin," and he doesn't want to spend any more of his life writing or thinking about the President.

Although I disagree, I'm not shocked by Mr. Lyons's views about Trump. I have several friends who have gone further in denigrating the President--calling him an insurrectionist, a rapist, and a fascist.  Merely calling the President a sociopath and a criminal is mild by comparison.

However, I take umbrage at Lyons' description of the people who voted Trump into office. He quotes Amanda Arcotte, another columnist, who describes "median [American]voters," by which she means Trump voters, as having "a pathological aversion to reality" and an addiction to "BS".

Basically, Lyons is criticizing the millions of voters in the Heartland who cast their ballots for Trump last November. Whom does Lyons think they should have voted for?

Should they have embraced the presidential candidate that the Democratic Party hacks endorsed, the same hacks who pushed Joe Biden over the finish line in 2016, a brain-dead, geriatric grifter? Should the good-natured and practical people of Flyover Country have voted for Kamala Harris, an incoherent sluggard?

Lyons needs to understand that the people of Flyover Country no longer listen to the moribund legacy media about politics.  The media elites aren't respected, they're not trusted, and they're not believed.

So, Gene, you picked a good time to retire. I hope you take some of your buddies with you--all the self-righteous and arrogant blowhards who work at CNN, MSNBC, The View, WaPo, and The New York Times. Their time in the sun is over, and Americans are looking elsewhere for journalistic integrity.

Does Gene Lyons have Trump Derangement Syndrome?

A Half Million Ukrainian War Casualties and 6 Million Refugees: What’s the Point?

 During the First World War, it was said that the British military maintained three sets of casualty lists. One version was kept to hoodwink the public. A second set was maintained to dupe the British War Office. And the third set was kept to deceive itself.

According to the New York Times, nearly half a million troops have been killed or wounded over the last 18 months of Ukraine's war with Russia. The Times calculates that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 180,000 wounded. Russian military casualties are even higher: 120,000 deaths and 180,000 injured.

Of course, these numbers are only estimates. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have revealed their casualty lists. These tallies don't include civilian casualties, which must be severe given the routine bombing of Ukrainian towns and villages by the Russians.

As the Times put it, the toll of dead and wounded is “staggering.” To put it in perspective, about 58,000 American soldiers died during the Vietnam War, a conflict that stretched over ten years. Ukraine, a country with a much smaller population, lost 70,000 soldiers in only 18 months.

Then there are the refugees. Around 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and another 5 million have been displaced but still live in Ukraine.

Most Americans feel no moral responsibility for this catastrophe, even though American weapons and money have significantly contributed to the carnage. College students, by the millions, protested the war in Vietnam, but today's young students have more refined moral sensibilities. They can be whipped into a frenzy if a conservative judge gives a speech on a college campus. They don't give a shit about the Ukrainians.

And consider this. The New York Times may have miscalculated the death toll from the Ukrainian war. Douglas Macgregor. a retired U.S. Army officer, believes 400,000 Ukrainians have been killed during the war—more than five times the number reported by the Times.

America's legacy media report that Ukraine is winning this war, but that's untrue. Ukraine will never recover Crimea or the Donbas, no matter how many Ukrainians are killed or maimed in this senseless war with Russia. And make no mistake. The Russians will find a way to make America pay for provoking this pointless conflict.