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In the 2000s, I published this web site as an experiment in global-local journalism, reporting and writing stories about the international dimensions of life in southeast Minnesota.
I stopped writing for TMR in 2010 but wrote the article linked above and here—"The Spiritual Clarity of Donald Trump"—in January 2017 to express my belief that the prospect of a Trump presidency requires all citizens to look deeply into the causes of Trump's election and to consciously resist those forces as they certainly will play out, no doubt destructively, during his term.
Of course I am talking about the further erosion of democracy, constitutional values, environmental protection and human rights in the many ways that Trump has already explicitly promised.
But in my view, it was the prior catastrophic erosion of these values and of democracy itself as a result of decades of neoliberal economic policy, based on greed, and the ongoing project of American empire, based on greed and hatred, that created the conditions that enabled a demagogue like Trump to succeed in the first place.
I hope to play my part in investigating the roots of this tragic trajectory in the conflicted human heart, and in showing how these flaws in each of us as individuals inevitably shapes the policies and the destiny of whole nations.
In 2005, I was interviewed by NPR’s On the Media, which called me “Glocal Man” for using journalism to connect my patch of rural southeast Minnesota to the world.
The narrative nonfiction impressario Mark Kramer blurbed my 2007 book of global-local reportage -- “Here: A Global Citizen’s Journey” -- by saying:
“Doug McGill is a complete original. Heavyweight journalism + a grownup political consciousness + wry Zen consciousness.”
In the 2010’s, my growing interest in meditation and Buddhadharma led me to an ongoing project to reconcile journalistic free speech with the moral imperatives of right speech.
In recent years, I’ve been running the Rochester Meditation Center and teaching journalism at Carleton College and University of Minnesota Rochester.
Please do check out a recent creation though -- “The Leaf Artist” -- if you possibly can. I’m really proud of it, because I’m really proud of my 93-year-old Mom for dealing with her progressive dementia with such incredible creativity, wisdom and love. Many people have seen the site and let me know it’s brightened their world.
Love & connection,
Doug |
