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opinion
Thursday, May 20, 2021 • Page 4A
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Letters to The Editor:
Arab-Israeli
War:
Blame Obama
The following submission
is an excerpt from an article
written by attorney and
freelance writer James Stud-
dard:
To the Editor:
Arab-Israeli war: Can’t
blame Joe for this one; blame
Obama.
During the Obama ad
ministration, John Kerry, the
chic, quiche consuming,
Teresa Heinz’ man puppet,
secretary of state pontificated
to Israel’s prime minister,
Bibi Netanyahu, to immedi
ately withdraw from the West
Bank and East Jerusalem.
Both, by the way, were cap
tured by Israel in 1967 (the
six-day Arab-Israeli war).
Following Kerry’s laugh
able blustering to Netanyahu,
Obama, ever the Teflon man,
said (up his sleeve), “Aw
shucks, I ain’t got nothing
against them Jews.” Ho
wever, the United States ab
stained from a UN Security
Council resolution to end Is
raeli settlements in the West
Bank. Abstaining is tanta
mount to acquiescence, i.e.,
get them Jews out of the
West Bank.
The resolution passed by
a 14-0 vote.
To use the term, “Israel
occupied lands” even as a not
so veiled slap at Israel, is a
complete and historical mis
nomer. To say the Jews are
occupiers is a despicable, big
oted, ahistorical lie whis
pered among Muslim fellow
travelers in the Obama White
House.
For over 40 years it has
been recognized that the
West Bank and Gaza could
remain under Israeli control,
including the Jewish Quarter
of the Old City, home of the
Western Wall, the only re
maining remnant of the Jew
ish temple destroyed by the
Romans in 70 A.D. Obama’s
brethren have long objected
to Jews praying at the West
ern Wall, which to them, the
Arabs (Muslims) is the Al-
Haran (Noble Sanctuary).
A brief history of Jewish
claim to title: We could go
back 4,000 years of Jewish
presence, but let us only ven
ture back in time to 587 B.C.;
the Babylonians conquered
Judah and kept them ser
vient until 538 B.C., when the
Persians beat up on the Bab
ylonians. The Persians al
lowed the Jews to return to
their homeland, Palestine. In
382 B.C., the Greeks beat up
on the Persians and con
quered Palestine, turning it
into a Hellenistic territory
which included Gaza and Sa
maria. When Alexander the
Great died in 323 B.C.,
Ptolemy, the successor king,
took over Palestine and the
Jews.
Now I pose the question:
Who are the occupiers, the
Israelis or the Palestinians?
Bottom line: Barack
Obama, blinded by his hatred
for all things Jewish, frus
trated any serious efforts for
peaceful resolution; instead
he exposed his utter
contempt for Netanyahu gen
erally, and Israel specifically.
The age old Arab-Israeli
dispute will ebb and flow but
will never stop, especially
when we elect biased repre
sentatives. And even then,
the war over whose God is the
real God will rage on.
James Studdard
Redistricting:
Demand Fair,
Open Process
To the Editor:
The census is done, and
the redistricting season, that
occurs every 10 years, has
begun.
Drawing maps in Georgia
is done by whichever party is
in charge of the state legisla
ture. The work is done under
a veil of secrecy sanctioned
by law. Lacking an open, fair,
and public process, everyone
- no matter what party - has
used this opportunity to pro
tect their incumbents, to the
detriment of Georgia voters.
The upcoming redistrict
ing will affect our state for the
next decade, and voters need
to have a say in developing
these districts that will be in
place until 2030. Com
munities can have their in
fluence diluted or overly
concentrated by map line-
drawers interested in parti
san gain or pleasing powerful
interests.
At a minimum, the House
and Senate apportionment
committees should: Do all
the work in public, share all
data used, and release pro
posed maps well in advance
of their adoption for public
comment; draw maps based
on community input given at
open public hearings across
the state; and commit to
using independent, non-par
tisan benchmarks to prevent
partisan bias.
The non-partisan Fair
Districts GA has resources on
its website,
fairdistrictsga.org, to educate
citizens about redistricting
and opportunities for in
volvement to encourage
legislators to ensure that the
process is fair and transpar
ent.
It is important to contact
Sen. John Kennedy, chair of
the Senate Redistricting
Committee,
john.kennedy@senate.ga.gov
, and ask him to guarantee a
transparent, fair, and open
process as maps are redrawn
in Georgia.
Sarah O’Leary
Thomaston
Tree Board &
Arbor Day 2021
Dear Editor:
On April 14, 2021 the
Thomaston Tree Board held
their annual Arbor Day Cele
bration and dedicated two
‘Autumn Blaze’ maples in
honor of City Clerk Gail
Hammock upcoming retire
ment with 42 years with the
City of Thomaston—one ‘Au
tumn Blaze’ maple was
planted in the north crescent
and another ‘Autumn Blaze’
maple planted in south cres
cent to the entrance to Silver-
town Mill Village on Park
Drive. However, only one
planting was mentioned in
the recent Women’s Maga
zine publication of the Upson
Beacon and in the previous
week’s Upson-Beacon issue.
It is important to the Tree
Board that the public know
that two maples were planted
in Gail Hammock’s honor.
Thank you,
Sandra Keadle
Thomaston Tree Board Member
Alan Landers
The Walking
Woke
While normal, decent, patriotic
Americans of all races are trying to fig
ure out the madness that has seized
the country, we cannot dismiss the
"Walking Woke."
Like some zombie army that has
become infected with a virus that has
rendered them nothing but a husk of
a human... they mindlessly march for
ward thinking themselves superior in
thought and deed to the rest of us. It
is a toxic form of politically correct fas
cism that if not extinguished
could/will destroy our society.
Their arrogant narcissism, self-
importance, and ignorance make
them totally incapable of rational
thought. We must acknowledge that
one cannot rationalize the irrational,
therefore we must reject ALL they say
and do.
To think they can be persuaded or
changed is futile. They must be de
feated. What do you say to people that
believe men menstruate or get preg
nant? That there is no difference be
tween men and women. That it’s ok to
castrate boys 5/8/10 years old or ad
minister life altering/irreversible hor
mones for gender reassignment/sex
changes. Perform double mastectomy
on teenage girls. They ARE the Dem
ocrat Party.
To them WE are the misfits; the
deplorables/white supremacists/in
surrectionists. They burn, loot, kill,
destroy cities for months on end, and
call themselves peaceful protesters,
and the woke fool politicians and
news media agree and support its vir
tue. The violent mobs are allowed to
run amok. The few that are arrested
are immediately released to rob, loot,
burn, and destroy again and again by
radical Democrat politicians.
Black Lives Matter/Antifa holding
Klan rallies across the country, riot
and destroy black/minority neighbor
hoods, burning down everything in
sight, because tragically a few blacks
are killed by "white” cops, most while
resisting arrest.
Meanwhile hundreds/thousands
of blacks are murdered routinely each
year by other blacks in cities/states
run by radical Democrats for decades,
then rant and rave about systemic rac
ism as the cause.
The “Walking Woke” millionaires
in corporate America, the Facebooks,
Twitters, Delta Airlines, Major League
Baseball, Coca-Cola, Google, NBA,
Amazon, etc. call that virtue and give
tens/hundreds of millions for it to
continue and the rest of America is
called racist. Just imagine if we, nor
mal Americans, were donating mil
lions/supporting a group that are
burning/looting any community.
A one-day event in which a few
hundred idiots break some windows
and trash the Capitol and many ar
rested sit in jail on trespassing charges
months later without bail. The Walk
ing Woke calls that justice.
That same one-day event awakens
the wrath of scores of woke military
brass/generals that surround the Cap
itol with more military troops than are
deployed in war zones around the
world when only months before the
same so called military leaders muti
nied when President Trump merely
mentioned using the military to quell
weeks/months of violent rioting.
The "white guilt" crowd is in full
woke meltdown, having gulped down
full-blown racism poison called Criti
cal Race Theory (CRT) by the gallon.
CRT is pure racism that the elite rad
ical Democrats have invented as their
new "Jim Crow" laws. It is both sick
ening and pathetic to watch these
woke idiots apologize for their whiten
ess. Like some medieval heretics try
ing to avoid being burned at the stake
for their past sins, they vomit self-ha
tred and guilt at being white, then per
form acts of self-flagellation in hopes
of being spared. In their twisted
world, I suppose they think they are
inoculating themselves from the dis
aster they are creating. They’re not.
I am convinced the woke are the
true racists, homophobes, xeno-
phobes, etc. whether black, white, or
whatever. They themselves are guilty
of what they accuse the rest of us and
project their guilt onto us for their sins
to escape “their” accountability. What
better way than to accuse others of
what they themselves are guilty of.
Michele, Barack, Biden, Pelosi,
Lebron James, Oprah, all the Holly
wood/academic elite, corporate elite,
super wealthy sports stars, million
aires/billionaires, guilt ridden in their
walled mansions with their private se
curity guards to protect them and
their families, while they tear down
the wall at the southern border and try
to destroy our right to defend our fam
ilies, homes, neighbors. Showing their
virtue, they'll write a check to BLM to
burn down other neighborhoods in
faraway places and feel all better.
Listen and they will tell you they are
victims too... poor things.
Beware whenever you hear terms
like equity, diversity, multicultural-
ism, white privilege, cisgender, micro
aggression, non-binary, transphobia,
institutional racism, or other
words/terms that have been invented
in the last 10 or 15 minutes... '“You
unlock this door with the key of imag
ination. Beyond it is another dimen
sion - a dimension of sound, a
dimension of sight, a dimension of
mind. You’re moving into a land of
both shadow and substance, of things
and ideas. You’ve just crossed over
into... the Woke Zone."
*Rod Serling’s Introduction to
The Twilight Zone
B. Waine
Kong, Ph.D., JD
Waine’s World:
Dentistry in
Thomaston: Meet
Dr. Tommy Farr
Historically, your knowledge of
dentistry probably coincides with
George Washington or you may have
heard that Paul Revere was a dentist.
You, no doubt, know that President
Washington had wooden false teeth.
We have come a long way.
Dentistry, however, originated
10,000 years before our first Christ
mas. I, for one, wonder what people
did in ancient times or, for that
matter, what they do about their
rotten teeth if they live in places where
there are no dentists, antibiotics, or
knowledge about preventing and
treating tooth decay. Some people still
believe that tooth decay is caused by
tooth worms.
Well, for starters, tooth decay is a
major cause of death from systemic
infection or maybe when the pain be
comes unbearable, patients just beg to
be put out of their misery. I am told
that the pain from an impacted tooth
is more severe than childbirth and as
opposed to the birth of a child, there
is no expectation that it will end until
death without dental care.
I already confessed in a previous
column that when I was 12 years old,
I had a tooth extracted by the local
shoemaker because he had a pair of
plyers. Yes, they gave me a drink of
rum, two men held me down, and the
shoemaker extracted my impacted
tooth. The bleeding didn’t stop for a
day but I was passed out from the
trauma... and the rum.
We all suffered with Tom Hanks
in the movie “Castaway.” He could
stand it no more and extracted the of
fending tooth with a skate - not to be
compared to your mother tying a
string to your seven-year-old tooth as
well as to a doorknob and slamming
the door. But then the tooth fairy left
you a quarter for your troubles.
The first textbook on dentistry
was published in 1530 by a French
man named Pierre Fauchard. He is
recognized as the father of dentistry
for writing a comprehensive system
for the care of teeth including discov
ering that acids from sugar caused
tooth decay. He also invented fillings
of cavities. It wasn’t until 1840 when
the first dental school was established
in Baltimore. The American Dental
Association (ADA) was formed 20
years later. In 1873, Colgate invented
toothpaste, leading to the habit of
daily brushing after WWII and x-rays
were not used in dentistry until 1896.
I am fond of talking about the
wonderful model provided by dentis
try for preventive health. Instead of
pulling teeth and replacing them with
appliances, dentists discovered that if
they did a public health thing by fluor
idating the drinking water and a clin
ical thing by encouraging people to
visit a dentist twice per year and most
importantly, to brush and floss twice
per day, we can go a lifetime without
requiring any treatment or bad out
comes.
Prevention works in all aspects of
healthcare. Our teeth were designed
to last over a thousand years. Ten
thousand-year-old mummies still
have their teeth.
According to Dr. Tommy Farr,
(guest presenter at our Kiwanis Club,
May 11,2021) the first dentist came to
Thomaston in 1959. His name was
A.C. Moore and there are four dentists
currently practicing in Thomaston.
Dr. Farr is a remarkable man. I in
troduced him as the local boy who
made good. He attended Rock Hill
Elementary School, Yatesville High
School, West Georgia College and fi
nally Medical College of Georgia
School of Dentistry where he gradu
ated in 1977. He then returned to
Thomaston where he has been prac
ticing for over 40 years. He is a deacon
at Trinity Baptist Church and an ac
tive participant in TUAC productions.
He married his college sweetheart
(Sheryl Jean Allen) and they are the
proud parents of two children (Josh
and Tyla) and more importantly, four
lovely grandchildren. He is firmly an
chored in Christian principles. He is
kind, generous and committed to love
of all mankind. He has a passion for
Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace you
have been saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves; it is the gift of
God, not of works, lest anyone should
boast. For we are His workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared before
hand that we should walk in them.”
As a result, he has been on several
missions to third world countries pul
ling teeth and educating everyone
who will listen about prevention.
There is power in knowledge. Baptist
Medical/Dental Missions Inter
national has allowed him to travel and
treat patients in Zambezi (three
times), Honduras (three times), and
Guatemala. Each time he has been
able to help people that don’t have ac
cess to dental care.
Servitude is the aspect of dentistry
that he is most passionate about.
Being in a position of service is what
gets him up and going in the morning.
Serving the dental needs of the people
in Upson County brings him enor
mous satisfaction. For the past six
years he has been a part of a mobile
dental clinic for Upson, Lamar, Spald
ing, and Pike counties. He works with
Ted Kandler and other dentists to pro
vide free dental care to any member of
people in our community.
This past year (due to COVID-19)
the mobile clinic didn’t operate, but he
is hopeful that by this fall he will be
able to continue working with the mo
bile clinic. There is a shortage of den
tists in Middle Georgia and every one
of us should adopt a mission to bring
more dentists to town.
Finally, do you wonder why the
toothbrush is not called a teeth brush?
Do you suppose it was invented by
someone with only one tooth?
"Tough
conversations
are worth
having"
Here in the south, everyone is a
friend. When we converse, the
pleasantries flow effortlessly. On
topics where we are passionate and
happen to disagree, we tend to talk
past each other. Look no further
than social media to see opinionated
rants that solve nothing.
Sometimes though, it is nec
essary to have tough conversations.
We need to be able to communicate
with each other on difficult topics by
listening carefully to each other's
views and responding honestly and
thoughtfully. This is how we build
an understanding of each other to
find common ground in hopes to
work together toward a mutual pur
pose.
Sometimes a tough conversation
can offend our pride, so we hate hav
ing talks like this with each other.
Anyone who has ever been in any
sort of relationship understands
this, but it is how relationships grow
and flourish.
Those of you who know Chris
know he is a rather large gentleman.
A while back we had a discussion
where we acknowledged how our
weight is affecting our lives. It was
not easy to hear, but it was nec
essary. We conversed about how we
both wanted to be in better shape.
We made a commitment to our
selves and to each other to become
healthier. Since that time, we have
lost a combined 180 pounds. Praise
God, but we have more to go.
Being human makes us prone to
stumble on our weight loss journey.
After the first of the year, we
stopped being as diligent as we
needed to be. A month ago, we sat
down and talked about our goals
this time including what we were
(and were not) willing to do to reach
them. It was a tough conversation
that helped us refocus, and now we
are back on track. It made us better,
stronger.
Have you ever tried to talk about
issues like wage disparity, health
care, or women's reproductive rights
with a friend or neighbor, and had
the conversation devolve into a
smattering of rhetoric and insults?
It seems that our society has lost
both the willingness and the ability
to have these tough conversations.
But why?
Common "wisdom" is that if we
want the conversation to remain
friendly, we should avoid discussing
politics and religion entirely. We
find it easier to avoid conversations
that challenge us to see beyond our
own perspective than to face solv
able problems head on all because of
pride. We “listen” to respond in
stead of gaining a true understand
ing of what others are trying to
communicate.
Those people in our lives who
have different views on issues are
not our enemies. Growth only comes
when we can accept that we might
not have all the answers; we are not
always right. It does require a touch
of humility, but Proverbs 11:2 tells
us that humility is not weakness; it
is wisdom when it reads “When
pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with the humble is wisdom.”
We all enjoy small talks. The
chatting about anything from our
families, the weather, sports, you
name it, is welcomed. Our hope
though, is that when the need for
tough conversation arises, we em
brace it. We tackle them with love
and humility. If we happen to con
tinue to disagree, that is okay. We
still end it with a hug and a smile.
This is family; this is community;
this is growth for us and our nation.