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~Truth~
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TJP
They Die, We Die: An essay on life and...
By Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive Editor, Salem-News.com“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less..."
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
At birth we join society (in progress) as a nascent thread; when we exit society, we leave a rip in the social fabric.
John Steinbeck observed in one of his novels: “When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so, you’ve got two new people.” Society is created and sustained by these ongoing interactions of its members—a non-stop fluxion of interrelationships.
What Can Love Conquer?
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.comLove is not all: it is not meat nor drink, said the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
There is a young couple, both 17, under threat of death in Afghanistan. He is Rafi Mohammed and she is Halima Mohammedi.
They met in an ice cream factory and exchanged furtive looks and hellos until one day she put her phone number on a scrap of paper and dropped it for him to pick up.
The Wit and Wisdom of Gordon Gekko
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.com“You’re all pretty much f*cked. You don’t know it yet, but you’re the Ninja generation—no income, no job, no assets.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
Gordon Gekko is a fictional movie character played by Michael Douglas (a role for which he won the best actor Academy Award).
At the end of the first movie, in 1987, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) has turned him in for insider trading and the viewer is left with the impression that GG will go to jail. It’s 1993 before he “actually” does and he is in for almost eight years—released just after 9/11.
Capitalism only works for the ca-pittle-ists
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.comEven George Orwell in 1984 did not imagine this degree of intrusion into private lives.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
Americans love freedom. They love it so much that they’ll even pretend they have it, when they haven’t had it for very long time.
Are you free?
My Collection Agency Career
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.comThe first day the boss upbraided me for sitting at my desk too much. You have to get up and walk around he said. And you have to yell and be louder.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
This story is not a continuation of "From I to We" but is, rather, a vignette to complement it.
Celebrating America, on this July 4th
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.comIf, as an American, you feel a bit puffed up on this July 4, you have some justification.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
A thousand years from now, the Greeks will still be remembered for their founding of philosophy; the Americans will be remembered for opening the door to the universe.
This is why Americans should support the space program expenditures. Americans weren’t the first into space—the Russians were—but the lead they had did not last long. Within five years—particularly after President Kennedy’s declaration of putting a man on the moon within the decade—America began to pull steadily ahead.
The genesis of bleeding-heart liberalism and heartless conservatism
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.comLiberals and conservatives are more made than born; but once made and passed into adulthood, they are, like the leopard, unlikely to change their spots.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
The natural world has perils to which humans must adapt or die; but the perils of the social world exist only because humans have both created those perils and maintains them.
I am liberal, hear me roar*
By Daniel Johnson, Associate Editor, Salem-News.comIt's long past time for liberals to repossess the word that identifies them which has been stolen and mutilated in reprehensible ways. If we can accomplish this, then conservatives will have to criticize ideas, rather than just obfuscate with their use of liberal as an unchallenged code word.
(CALGARY, Alberta) -
If modern “conservatives” wish to see themselves, define themselves, as opposite to the hated liberals, then you can understand how we liberals can honestly see conservatives as not very nice people.
They say things like, 'Liberalism is a disease, almost as dangerous as Islam, and must be excised from western civilization by...'
Conservatives are winning battles, but losing the War
By Daniel Johnson, Associate editor, Salem-News.comThere will be no return to the bad old days, for which many conservatives still pine.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
For those conservatives who argue that the future belongs to them, a look at the bigger picture—history—will be informative, if not discouraging.
Conservatives were, indeed, in charge a century or more ago. But the forces for progress and human rights have continued to evolve and expand. Slavery, although condoned in the Untied States wonderful (LOL) Constitution, no longer exists although its effects still haunt the nation.
Gurgle, Gurgle
Daniel Johnson Salem-News.comDown the drain...
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
Sometimes, late at night, when it is very quiet, I can hear a faint gurgling sound. I wondered what it was and finally realized that it comes in my south window. It turns out to be coming from across the 49th parallel only a hundred or so miles away.
It’s the ominous and unfortunate sound of The Untied States going down the drain.
Daniel Johnson - Canada
Deputy Executive Editor, Salem-News.com
Email: omnisavant@shaw.ca
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, as a teenager, Daniel Johnson aspired to be a writer. Always a voracious reader, he reads more books in a month than many people read in a lifetime. He knew early that in order to be a writer, you have to be a reader.
Another early bit of self-knowledge was that writers need experience. So, in the first seven years after high school he worked at 42 different jobs ranging from management trainee in a bank (four branches in three cities), inside and outside jobs at a railroad (in two cities), then A & W, factories and assembly lines, driving cabs (three different companies), collection agent, a variety of office jobs, John Howard Society, crisis counsellor at an emergency shelter, salesman in a variety of industries (building supplies, used cars, photocopy machines)and on and on. You get the picture.
In 1968, he was between jobs and eligible for unemployment benefits, so he decided to take the winter off and just write. The epiphany there, he said, was that after about two weeks, “I realized I had nothing to say.” So back to regular work.
He has always been concerned about fairness in the world and the plight of the underprivileged/underdog. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that he understood where that motivation came from. Diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) he researched the topic and, among others, read a book Scattered Minds by Dr. Gabor Maté, an ADD person himself. Maté wrote: "[A] feeling of duty toward the whole world is not limited to ADD but is typical of it. No one with ADD is without it."
That explains his motivation. Hard-wired.
As a professional writer he sold his first paid article in 1974 and, while employed at other jobs, started selling a few pieces in assorted places. He created his first journalism gig. In the late 1970s, when the world was recovering from a recession, the Canadian federal government had a job creation program where, if an employer created a new job, the government would pay part of the wage for the first year or two. The local weekly paper was growing, so he approached the publisher and said this was an opportunity for him to hire a new reporter. The publisher had been thinking along those lines but cost was a factor. No longer.
Over the next 15 years, Daniel eked out a living as a writer doing, among other things, national writing and both radio and TV broadcasting for the CBC, Maclean’s (the national newsmagazine) and a host of smaller publications. Interweaved throughout this period was soul-killing corporate and public relations writing.
It was through the 1960s and 1970s that he got his university experience. In his first year at the University of Calgary, he majored in psychology/mathematics; in his second year he switched to physics/mathematics. He then learned of an independent study program at the University of Lethbridge where he attended the next two years, studying philosophy and economics. In the end he attended university over nine years (four full time) but never qualified for a degree because he didn't have the right number of courses in any particular field.
In 1990 he published his first (and so far, only) book: Practical History: A guide to Will and Ariel Durant’s “The Story of Civilization” (Polymath Press, Calgary)
Newly appointed as the Deputy Executive Editor in August 2011, he has been writing exclusively for Salem-News.com since March 2009 and, as of summer 2011, has published more than 160 stories.
He continues to work on a second book which he began in 1998 with the working title Cosmology of the Ants.
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