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
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Views Thursday, October 06, 2016 The Politics of Fear “This politics of fear has actually delivered everything we were afraid of.” Well, OK, let’s think about these words of Jill Stein for a moment, as the 2016 presidential race enters, oh Lord, its final month — and the possibility still looms that this country could elect a hybrid of Benito... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 29, 2016 The Debate: They Both Bombed It Painful, stupid, trite . . . America! There was more than one loser in the big debate, but that’s no surprise. I hardly expected any issues of substance to get serious air time, let alone intelligent commentary, in Monday’s 90-minute presidential race spectacle, but something — something — matters... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 22, 2016 Stop the Killing Maybe half a million dead, half a country — 10 million people — displaced from their homes, jettisoned onto the mercy of the world. Welcome to war. Welcome to Syria. This is a conflict apparently too complex to understand. The U.S. brokered a ceasefire with Russia, then proceeded to lead a bombing... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 15, 2016 The Future Cries Out: 'Water Is Life' The dogs growl, the pepper spray bites, the bulldozers tear up the soil. “ Water is life !” they cry. “Water is life!” This isn’t Flint, Michigan, but I feel the presence of its suffering in this cry of outrage at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. No more, no more. You will not poison... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 08, 2016 War vs. Democracy The paradox of democracy is that it depends on the integrity of those who have the most to lose if an election goes the wrong way — you know, the people in power. That’s a particularly thorny dilemma when the “fourth estate” — the speakers of truth to power, the public’s counterforce against... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 01, 2016 Reflections on the Anthropocene “However these debates will unfold, the Anthropocene represents a new phase in the history of both humankind and of the Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate of the other. Geologically, this is a remarkable episode in the history... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 25, 2016 The Heart of Order He’d left the water running, flooding neighbors’ apartments. He’d been running around outside naked. By the time police arrived, he was standing in the window of his fourth-floor apartment on Farwell Avenue — a few blocks from where I live in the diverse, unpredictable Chicago neighborhood called... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 18, 2016 Beyond Winning and Losing It’s the smallest thing in the world. Does the tennis ball land inside the line or outside? But somehow, as I watched this 60-second YouTube clip of an Australian tennis match last January, and heard an explosion of joyous approval surge from the crowd, I could feel the planet shift. Or at least it... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 11, 2016 Donald Trump, the Nuclear Arsenal, and Insanity Donald Trump is a reckless fool. But the U.S. defense establishment is M.A.D. And herein lies one of the darker problems with the Trump candidacy, and the reason why so many establishment conservatives are awkwardly distancing themselves from America’s leading narcissist — if not running screaming... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 04, 2016 Reaching Beyond the Candidates What would it take to cause Hillary Clinton to distance herself from the newly launched bombing campaign in Libya? Or call for a congressional debate on it? Or suggest the obvious: that the war on terror isn’t working? Of course it won’t happen. But the fact that it sounds so absurd — almost as... Read more |