After my mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly earlier this month, I tried to console myself with the idea that her suffering had ended. But the more I thought about what her life had been like, the more confused I became. She had spent so many years coping with pain, that it was impossible for me to imagine her being free of it. It had fused with her identity (More…)
America is once again deploying that odd pantomime which arises when it becomes necessary to simultaneously affirm and negate the humanity of women. Brett Kavanaugh’s path to a lifetime tenure on the highest court in the land seemed straight and free of obstacles only two weeks ago. (More…)
I’m a big tennis fan, and I’m an ardent leftist. The Serena Williams affair at the US Open final on September 8th has suddenly put me at odds with a lot of my brethren on the left. Many have taken up the Serena banner as the victim of a grave injustice; Serena, they say, was once again thwarted by sexism, or racism, or both. I don’t agree. (More…)
While the death of Arizona Senator John McCain has inspired heartfelt tributes from mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike, his long-time detractors have shown little reluctance to call his legacy into question. Here in Arizona, where he was regularly criticized for his tendency to seek positive coverage in the national media instead of the legislative results his constituents were hoping for, many conservatives expressed relief that he was finally out of the way. (More…)
The insurgent New York State Senate campaign of Julia Salazar, a young democratic socialist looking to unseat an entrenched Democratic Party incumbent, is now the latest and most high-profile front in the American left’s electoral action. Like the successful campaigns of other socialists, her campaign has brought up questions who American cities and local governments serve: the rich or the 99 per cent? (More…)
The eminent jurist Learned Hand once wrote that “the spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right”. This particular shade, always a rather anaemic presence in American public life is now well and truly dead. The question that one is tempted to ask in our current circumstances is how long will it be until the republic joins it in the grave. (More…)
Shortly after I moved to the Sonoran desert, I developed a standard response for friends and family who wondered how I was holding up. “Yes,” I’d say, “it’s hot as hell in summer. And, yes, the landscape is full of danger. But that’s what makes it exciting. I mean, in half a day I can make it from a trailhead minutes from my house into extreme wilderness.” (More…)
On July 23-24, 1968, African American radicals engaged in a wild shootout with police in the Glenville section of Cleveland. When it was over, six people were dead and the raw racial tension that had simmered below the surface in the city since the Hough Riots two years earlier again flashed into the open. (More…)
Umberto Eco, who spent his early years in fascist Italy, once wrote, “Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric.” This is, perhaps, the most fundamentally apposite statement of the politics of Donald Trump. He has no philosophy beyond the grumpy natterings common to superannuated white men: raging against the dying of the light with the noontide of white privilege only barely receding. He has only bluster and threats and the lugubrious schmooze of the inveterate speculator. (More…)
Imagine a quickly assembled militia, with legally purchased firearms and military-like training, having a standoff with US Border Patrol over the family separations that have occurred at the border of the United States and Mexico. This imaginary armed group says that the law enforcement agency has unjustly violated the sovereignty of these families, and while US law says differently, the group maintains that the borders were drawn fictitiously and enforced by an undemocratic government. Bullets are exchanged. A few people on both sides are killed. (More…)
As I stood there in the brutal midday sun, I had a decision to make. Should I go back inside and leave the man trying to repair our air conditioning unit to do his work in silence? Or would it be more respectful to stand there and suffer with him? In the end, I stayed. He seemed happy to have the company. And I was, too. (More…)
The SCOTUS has now affirmed the legality of Mr. Trump’s travel ban. The ban itself is odious. It is unapologetically racist and erodes the standing of the United States in the world without, it must be said, standing the slightest chance of preventing actual acts of terrorism. (More…)