Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Ohio newspapers:
The science of gratitude
The Toldeo Blade
Dec. 28
What does it mean to be grateful?
At its root, it’s a dual action, a combination of appreciating the good things in life and recognizing that someone else is responsible for them.
This year has provided no shortage of things to decry. There’s no need to list them here, but for evidence of the year’s negative impacts on the American psyche, see the spiking anxiety depression rates around the country. Suicide, too, has become an even greater concern - the pandemic and its economic fallout in particular have pushed many to the brink and beyond.
But getting back to gratitude, researchers are uncovering links between feeling grateful and expressing gratitude and other positive emotions, including joy and optimism. This can also correlate with greater sense of purpose in life, higher quality, mutually supportive relationships, and lower levels of negative emotions including shame and depression.
One study even reports that grateful people tend to sleep better at night.
This might sound like a magic bullet. Giving thanks and showing appreciation for others requires little effort after all. Who wouldn’t want to sleep better and increase their happiness?
But this is where research suggests a sharp divide between an overall lifestyle that includes experiencing and expressing gratitude and a deliberate effort to simply act grateful.
Studies have shown that performing gratitude exercises suggests that they actually have little effect on well-being overall.
Suddenly altering one’s lifestyle to include verbal affirmation for others will not cure anxiety or depression or miraculously alter one’s mindset.
Rather, making a concerted effort to show gratitude for others in one’s life can help them feel supported. It creates a sort of network of goodwill.
Those relationships, multiplied, become our social fabric, badly frayed of late by politics and toxic media and the erosion of community and fraternal organizations.
A simple “thank you” to health care workers or anyone in your life who has done you a kindness may not help you start sleeping better. But it may make them feel seen, heard, and appreciated. Supporting others by affirmation encourages them to support others in a similar manner. Furthermore, a deliberate effort to remember the good things in life on a regular basis, whether the roof overhead or the kindness of strangers, can and does have significant health outcomes in the long run.
Above all, remembering that this time is temporary and shall pass should encourage us to look ahead with optimism. As we approach the end of the year, difficult though it has been, there is always something to be grateful for.
Online: https://bit.ly/3pw2Som
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Freedom of speech stops with threats
The Tribune Chronicle
Dec. 28
We Americans treasure our freedom of speech. We defend it staunchly. As the old saying goes, we may not agree with what some people say, but we defend their right to say it.
Unless it is intended to incite violence to harm people otherwise. There, we draw the line.
In August 2019, a federal judge in Missoula, Montana, ruled that the publisher of a neo-Nazi website had stepped across that line. Andrew Anglin, founder and operator of The Daily Stormer website, had orchestrated a campaign intended to harass a Jewish family, Judge Dana Christensen decided in a lawsuit filed by a member of the family, Tanya Gersh, of Whitefish, Montana.
Anglin was ordered to pay a $14 million judgment to end the lawsuit. Similar judgments have been made in other lawsuits against Anglin, in Ohio and Washington.
Now, Gersh’s lawyers are back in court, seeking new action against Anglin - because he has not paid any of the $14 million judgment. In fact, the attorneys say, Anglin cannot be located. It seems he has gone underground in an attempt to dodge his financial obligations. It may be that Anglin has left the country.
Anglin and others enamored of Nazism are entitled to their despicable beliefs. They are not entitled to harm others in any way, however.
To this point, it appears Anglin has not run afoul of criminal law. His court trouble has been in civil cases - but attempting to dodge judges’ orders in such situations can be a criminal offense.
He should be hunted down and held accountable for any harm the courts find he has caused.
Online: https://bit.ly/34LKErd
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Lawmakers pander
The Sandusky Register
Dec. 23
There are some things most people agree upon, including the commandment “thou shall not kill.” The only ones among us who disagree are the criminally deranged, the severely mentally impaired and those who support capital punishment. Science and experts have brought us a long way toward a better understanding of mental health illnesses. But the law, by-and-large, has not kept pace with that understanding.
There are examples, however, in which making law and enforcing it has evolved. It was not that long ago that individuals suffering from epileptic seizures were brought to the local jail, and that was the treatment. More recently, individuals suffering from addiction too often got clean in jail because there were no other alternative sites where detoxifying could happen with medical supervision. Our understanding of the cycle of addiction, its causes and triggers, has enabled a better response to it today than was there even just a few years ago.
It is still true that law enforcement agencies are charged with “getting the bad guys off the streets.” But it’s also true that police leaders have a greater understanding that a revolving door of justice is counterproductive, and they know too that society cannot build enough prisons to deal with crime; there must be a different response. That’s where lawmakers can make a difference. A deliberative body is designed to be just that. The Ohio Legislature is just that, but its deliberations are hit-and-miss of late.
Its job is to carefully consider matters of importance and deliberate in an honest, open way before approving new law, or changes in regulations that impact people. We’re not seeing that from the Statehouse in Columbus. The Legislature’s deliberations about public health law have been slipshod, at best, and likely downright dangerous to the public health more than being productive. It’s been a knee-jerk 2020 reaction from lawmakers hoping to win favor from a vocal but misinformed portion of the electorate. Their response to the pandemic has been political, not deliberative.
It’s that kind of behavior we hope is put to an end, but lawmakers are actively undermining common sense responses to the pandemic and other important issues facing Ohio, pandering more than having those true and honest deliberations that democracy requires. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine asked lawmakers to consider increasing the criminal penalties for people charged with carrying weapons under disability - meaning they have prior felony convictions and are prohibited from possessing a firearm. DeWine’s reasoning is that a small portion of the population - convicted criminals who carry guns - are responsible for a large percentage of violent crime.
That’s a topic worthy of deliberation, in our view, but lawmakers’ answer to the governor’s request was to approve a controversial “stand your ground” law viewed by many - including civil rights organizations - as racist. In our view, lawmakers are feeding red meat to that same angry portion of the electorate with this legislation. This law, similar to laws adopted years ago in other states, expands the definition of self-defense. In reality, its impact is not to address a real problem; its purpose is to fire up the base.
Lawmakers should raise their expectations. Do better than this.
Online: https://bit.ly/3hn7kmN
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Muskingum judge shows poor judgment
The Marietta Times
Dec. 28
Muskingum County Court Judge Mark Fleegle might want to take another look at his own judgment, after Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor was forced to remove him from two cases because of his careless attitude toward coronavirus prevention measures.
One would be hard pressed to find a Buckeye State resident who does not understand we are under a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, a statewide mask-wearing mandate and restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people. But according to a complaint filed by a defense attorney, in Fleegle’s little corner of the judicial branch there was no mask mandate in his courtrooms, social distancing was limited, there was no discernible air circulation and no barriers between participants. The attorney reported during one recent trial “a significant number of jurors (three or four) never wore masks.”
Aware of the complaint, Fleegle announces a few preventive steps, but still failed to put written procedures in place.
His justification? Fleegle says only one positive case has been traced to the court under his prior procedures and the risk of exposure is part of being an essential worker.
Such an attitude is appalling in a public official with so great a responsibility as Fleegle’s.
Failure to understand all it takes is one positive case to kill someone; and that, in fact, proper preventive measures can lower the risk even for essential workers, should amount to punishable incompetence. O’Connor did the right thing by removing him from the two cases in question, and to use her ruling on Fleegle to require written protocols in courtrooms. She may have saved some lives.
But there is still the matter of a delay in justice for those involved in the cases in question.
At the very least, Fleegle is in need of a little continuing education so future plaintiffs, defendants, attorneys, jurors and staff will not feel as though their health is at risk in his courtrooms.
Online: https://bit.ly/38LAhVm
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