Robert C. Koehler

Robert C. Koehler

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Articles by this author

Considering that Pompeo is widely known as both a war hawk—a proponent of war with Iran—and an ally of blatant Islamophobes, his declaration of service to a perfect God is definitely troubling. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images) Views
Thursday, October 17, 2019
The Collusion Of Church and State
Intrigued by the controversy that erupted over Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's speech before the American Association of Christian Counselors last week in Nashville—it was titled " Being a Christian Leader " and was eventually removed from the State Department website—I wound up reading the whole...
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The prime strangeness about all this is the implicit assumption that "the law" in some way has conceptual dominion over Lake Erie or the Klamath River or Pachamama and can choose (or choose not) to give a particular ecosystem, which sustains life itself, the right to exist. (Photo: Jim Liestman/Flickr/cc) Views
Thursday, October 10, 2019
The Rights Of Nature
"When the U.S. Constitution was ratified, women, indigenous peoples, and slaves were treated as property, without rights." This isn't over yet. In the same vein of exploitative ignorance, we're still treating a living, life-sustaining, crucial being as property: the ecosystem. And in the process,...
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This is a force that has seldom made an appearance in presidential debates or campaigns. Certainly it’s one of the forces behind gerrymandering and voter suppression. As far as I can tell, it’s not a force within the reach of democracy. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Views
Thursday, October 03, 2019
Impeaching the Symptom, Not the Disease
I feel like I’m watching a sitcom called “America.” Next episode: Will they impeach the president? Stay tuned! “Impeachment is therefore imperative, not only to protect the integrity of next year’s elections but to secure America’s continued democratic existence. If the House does its job, it will...
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"There can be good lives for all people if we abandon the goal of infinite energy growth. Our guiding principle needs to be that the only form of truly clean energy is less energy." (Photo: Bryan Minear/Unsplash) Views
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Climate Change and Consciousness Shift
Climate change: It feels like the approaching End Times. But it’s the secular version thereof, which means that humanity is responsible for both its cause and—if possible—its transcendence. All we need to do is change everything about the way the high-tech, global society functions in the next...
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Has the upcoming generation taken it upon itself to save the planet? Is a transnational human unity beginning to create itself? (Photo: Sanmonku) Views
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Bad News to a Sick and Miserable-Looking Earth: "I'm Afraid You Have Humans."
The irony of this old New Yorker cartoon by Eric Lewis is so precise I haven’t been able to get it out of my head for two years. The speaker is the planet Saturn, clad in doctor’s garb — a stethoscope circling his forehead — giving the bad news to a sick and miserable-looking Earth: "I'm afraid you...
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Those who are without power—the poor, the indigenous, the uprooted—are at the mercy of heartless authority, no matter that the authority has global limits. (Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images) Views
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Altruists of the World Unite!
The biggest joke on the planet may be the phrase “national security.” It almost always justifies something brutal, whether outright murder (a.k.a. war) or climate apartheid—the rejection and condemnation of refugees who are fleeing terrible conditions in their homeland, often created or intensified...
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National policy, especially for the world’s dominant superpower, is based on the threat of unrelenting force. Ordinary citizens have begun to hold the nation, and its military, accountable. (Photo: @kingsbayplow7/Twitter) Views
Thursday, September 05, 2019
Defying the Nuclear Sword
". . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." These lost words — Isaiah 2:4 — are nearly 3,000 years old. Did they ever have political traction? To believe them...
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The world is currently divided into national and corporate interests that have the power to ignore and dismiss not only the rights of the tribal peoples who live in the rainforest, but also the rights of the planet at large, to breathe, to survive in eco-diversity.(Photo: Rene Rivers/fickr/cc) Views
Thursday, August 29, 2019
We Are All Indigenous
“All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.” These words, the first of the Twelve...
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"It certainly appeared he was trying to hit us," Amy Anthony, spokesperson for progressive Jewish advocacy group Never Again Action, told the Washington Post. (Photo: Never Again Action/Twitter Screengrab) Views
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Putting Bodies on the Line in Participatory Evolution
The big black pickup truck plunged into the protesters blocking the parking lot and I cringed, viscerally, as though I could feel it myself — this merciless crush of steel against flesh. I was recovering from a bicycle injury when I watched the event on the news last week, as members of the Never...
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He was playing war. My guess is that they’re all playing war, in one way or another. (Photo: Scott Nelson/Getty Images) Views
Thursday, August 08, 2019
Dead Canaries
“Many people think that the fight for America is already lost. They couldn’t be more wrong. This is just the beginning of the fight for America and Europe. I am honored to head the fight to reclaim my country from destruction.” This is how the El Paso killer ended his white supremacy screed ,...
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