Ernest Dumas

That old bogeyman Ulysses S. Socialism has arrived again on the usual signal — an approaching election where medical care and social welfare are big issues with voters and politicians. It has been so for more than a century, although memories, as always, are in short supply.

If you are among the many Arkansans who weep over the occasionally stern treatment of white-collar crooks, July 29 had to be a heartwarming day.

The case of Acosta and the depraved sex predator he protected goes to the heart of both Trump’s election and his survival. It’s not complicated; it’s about sex. Absent the modern obsession with sex, Trump would still be a cipher unknown to most Americans, and it may yet be his undoing.

Like its federal counterpart, the Arkansas Supreme Court has had a run of ill fortune lately, at least by the lights of founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton, who said public confidence that judges were impartial and free of partisan influence would be vital to preserving the democratic experiment.

It's about race, still.

Fixing legal matters for troubled presidents — make that Republican presidents — has been William Barr’s calling card for 30 years. He pushed for a grand jury to be convened in Little Rock to investigate Bill Clinton shortly before the 1992 election.

Republican officeholders, in Arkansas and everywhere, have found themselves in an impossible catch-22 — caught between mutually conflicting political demands by their voters. I’m talking about the political dilemma of choosing between the widely hated Obamacare and the highly popular provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Anti-women. Anti-poor. Anti-black. Anti-people. Anti-old-style Republicans.

If you are worried about your health care — and that ought to be nearly everyone — pay no attention to the triumphant tweet of President Trump last Friday or the hurrah the same day from Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, after the most political judge in America declared the whole Affordable Care Act null and void.

No one, least of all Donald Trump, should be surprised when sex puts him in mortal jeopardy, which seemed to be the case last week when his personal lawyer pleaded guilty to violating the law by arranging $280,000 in hush payments to a porn actress and a Playboy model who were prepared to tell voters about having sex with him.

The beatification of George H.W. Bush, which even the current president signaled was OK, would have surprised the 41st president, who seemed to have accepted the public's verdict that, although a waffler, he was a decent man who did his best and didn't do any harm to the people of the country or the world with whose well-being he was entrusted for a time.

President Trump's casual disinterest in the murder of Jamaal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia's leaders, a crime he once abhorred, may be only the final repudiation of America's ancient obedience to human rights, but what if it is much more? What if it is a prelude to war?

Amid the biblical fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising seas that beset the heating Earth, the old blue orb occasionally absorbs some good news that suggests it may still harbor some hope for a sustainable future.

Courtney Goodson won her race to stay on the state Supreme Court last week with something to spare, in spite of the unprecedented sludge of dark-money ads that tried to persuade people that she was an execrable wench who was capable of almost anything.

Health care has moved to the top of people's concerns this election year even as the "good" news keeps coming. The question is, how much more good news can people stand?

Political courage — doing what needs to be done even if it is not wildly popular — is a vanishing commodity.

The history of voting in America and in our little corner of it has been the struggle to empower more and more people to have a say in how laws are made and are applied to them.

Disingenuous is a handy word for political discussions. Look it up or, better still, for a perfect definition, read last Sunday's op-ed article in the statewide newspaper written supposedly by state Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Berryville), a Northwest Arkansas Republican who is hoping for elevation to the Senate in November.

Brett Kavanaugh's dilemma over a prep-school tussle with a girl provokes many proverbs, but one that seems most apropos is "what goes around comes around."

Since President Trump has been terrifying us about a huge national crime epidemic, it's time to mention that we have a doozy in Arkansas. There's been nothing like it in at least a hundred years.