WS Chronicle

By James B. Ewers Jr.

It is March and the game of basketball is front and center. The college season has been up and running since November and now is ending. Conference tournaments have started, and champions will be crowned. 

Fans are excited and the atmosphere is charged up as teams believe they can make a run to be a conference champion. Has your favorite played in its conference tournament yet? Many people plan their vacations around basketball tournaments. 

The phrase, March Madness, was coined by Henry V. Porter in 1939. He was an assistant executive secretary of the Illinois High School Association. 

Basketball tournaments, NCAA and NAIA bids are now on the minds of coaches and players alike. The joy of winning and the pain of losing will be the focus of everyone. 

I have been a basketball fan all my life. Most of the guys in my Winston-Salem neighborhood played basketball, so we watched how the game has evolved. We have seen how new rules and regulations have affected the sport. Rules have changed in both basketball and in life. 

Some changes have occurred in life which I will simply call American Madness. Some of these changes have come without warning. It is much like a robber coming in the night and taking all your goods and possessions. 

The loser in this is the American people. Our dignity has been damaged and destroyed by demons dressed up to look like leaders. 

Just last week, the shadow president, Elon Musk, was seen parading around the Conversative Political Action Conference with a chainsaw. His goal is to slice and dice jobs from the American people. 

He is also the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. As we know, he is the richest person in the world. Do you think he cares a hill of beans about whether you have a job? Do you think it matters to him if you can’t feed your family? The answer to both questions is no. 

Insensitivity and callousness are two terms to describe his behavior and lack of understanding. So simply put, he is the wrong man for that position. That’s American Madness. 

On Friday, Feb. 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with the new U.S. president and vice president. The meeting was contentious according to some news outlets. Our country’s leaders suggested that Ukraine started the war against Russia. 

We know that is false. Mr. Zelensky left the White House abruptly because of the tone and false accusations. The meeting was scheduled to be a starting point to ending the war with Russia. Instead, the meeting ended in confusion. 

Of course, the people who believe in the new U.S. president gave him high marks and said that he stood up for America. That is American Madness. 

The cost of goods and services continues to climb despite promises from the administration that they will drop. I remember some years back a song titled, “Promises, Promises.” Going into a grocery store these days gives us sticker shock. The cost of food keeps us anxious and apprehensive. 

We keep waiting for the prices to drop. They aren’t going to drop so we must buy less. That is not a good choice. 

Only weeks into his term the new president began talking about tariffs. Economists, regardless of their political stripes, stated that was a bad idea. 

At this moment, the new administration is unclear when it comes to imposing the tariffs. Chuck Dardas, president of AlphaUSA, an auto parts manufacturer in Livonia, Michigan, said, “The can keeps getting pushed, kicked down the road, and we don’t know what that means. To make investments and to do the things we need to do, we need certainty. The only thing, I guess, to be certain is that we’ve got 30 more days to worry about it.”  

This is American Madness. 

James B. Ewers Jr., Ed.D., is a former tennis champion at Atkins High School in Winston-Salem and played college tennis at Johnson C. Smith University, where he was all-conference for four years. He is a retired college administrator. He can be reached at overtimefergie.2020@yahoo.com.