The struggle to identify and report what constitutes ‘enough’

I would like today to write about the Oxford comma. Or maybe the curiosity of watching candidates of similar politics begin to beat each other up to gain purchase on their party’s nomination for public office. Or on the pleasures of reflecting on a Super Bowl victory 40 years past after the prospects of one two weeks hence have blinked away. Or … or … or … or anything, really, other than what seems to be commanding the public’s attention in these troubled weeks.

But almost any topic seems a shrinking trifle in the midst of the tragic conflicts we are witnessing on city streets.

Yet, what is there to be said of that in this column? My objective is not, and never has been, to persuade your thinking toward one side of an issue or another. It is my goal, primarily, to help you understand how we at the Daily Herald marshal and deploy the resources we have to provide a locally focused report on the events of the day, especially those that occur within the bounds of the suburban region but also those that occur around the nation and the world. To help you better appreciate where we live and engage in the processes — local and worldwide — that influence our everyday quality of life.

I am not here to convince you that our streets are swarming with “jackbooted thugs” or with “domestic terrorists,” but to point you in some directions that might help you answer such questions for yourself. That much does not seem such a difficult job. You can see the masked soldiers with their camouflage, their body armor and their menacing array of weaponry and draw your own conclusions about whether they are similar to uniformed street soldiers from regimes gone by or to your local police doing their jobs to protect against wrongdoers. Just as you can see the fist-pumping students, moms and dads challenging them in their winter coats and creeping SUVS while wielding cellphones, whistles and angry cardboard signs and decide for yourself how much they compare to bomb-throwing street fighters bent on destruction and mass murder or to peaceful, law-abiding citizens exercising their right to publicly express themselves.

The larger issue here is not what is going on but why — and then, recognizing that the complexities of the latter point are so easily buried under the simplicities partisan forces use to seduce us to some distortion of the former.

So I struggle here with what a newspaper person can tell you about reporting on what you are seeing and why you are seeing it as you do. I’m left to express trust in your judgment, and to plead with you to employ it carefully. I’m drawn to utter words of thanks for the ubiquitous cell-phone cameras that document what’s happening so that you don’t have to rely solely on the descriptions you see here or in other media. But I also emphasize that word carefully. You can — indeed must — use some blend of the shocking images abounding in social media and the more-reserved descriptions, portrayals and explanations in standard broadcast and print outlets to inform your opinions.

And I am humbled by the inadequacy of the task facing reputable media and by the enormity of the responsibility a conscientious public faces in sorting through it all.

As I see pictures of the mountains of flowers emerging at makeshift memorials for Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, I consider the immense poignancy and meaning in the displays, yet keep coming back to the ambiguous yet stark lyrics of Ian Hunter’s song “Flowers.”

“Hunger, anger, propaganda,” he sings. “Ain't it time we all grew up / And we all got dreams but nobody's listening / Sometimes flowers ain't enough … I can't see God, the trees are in the way / I can't see hope, can't find love / Every man killed is an insult to any faith / Sometimes flowers ain't enough.”

Oh, if I only knew what were.

Instead, I’m left to commend the images and the descriptions and the many diverse analyses to your attention, and pray that, in the search for what is “enough,” we will use it all wisely together.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World” is a 2025 Chicago Writers Association ‘Book of the Year’ and is available at eckhartzpress.com.