Uncivil, huh?
There are real people out there comparing mail bombs to citizens confronting their employees (elected officials) in public places. Like they are both equally impolite.
WTAF? No. Alphabet euphemisms won’t do here. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? Read more about Uncivil
“I know a lot of liberal, college-educated, intelligent people who voted for Trump,” said a visiting friend last week. (paraphrase)
“They call him The Bomb.”
I knew just what she was talking about. I’ve been thinking something similar.
The question is, will it have been worth it? Read more about The Bomb
I’ve been reading Arnold J. Toynbee’s A Study of History, in an abridgement put together by one D.C. Somervell. I understand that his influence is not today what it was during the middle of the 20th Century. Read more about The Challenge
Trump goes to a NATO meeting and tells off the Secretary General of NATO, over breakfast. The next day he comes out and claims victory for things the Obama administration had already accomplished, giving a back handed “you’re welcome” to his European confederates for thank you’s he claims to have received. No European leader admits to having thanked him for anything. Read more about The Age of Thanos
The World as We Know It has ended several times over the eons and across the continents. I can count at least 3 for what we call Western Civ, beginning with William the Conqueror and going on through Christopher Columbus to the First World War. Each time, something (Saxon England, the Middle Ages, and what I might call the Golden Years of pre-Industrial Europe), began to run out of steam and concluded with a thunderclap. Sorry for the mixed metaphors. Lots more on the way. Read more about The World Is Ending Again
I’m watching the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale, and I encourage everyone who can (it’s on Hulu) to join me.
Here’s the thing: this season spends some time chronicling the first intimations of change in what was, at the beginning, a world we recognize as our own. Suddenly there are more intrusive questions asked, women need a husband’s signature for birth control pills, identification as LGBTQ becomes, not illegal but … problematic. Read more about The Handmaid’s Tale - A Primer
Nobody on my side of the aisle is asking that question. The assumption is that he is guilty of collusion with Russia, among other things, and that he is more than impeachable. He is imprisonable.
There are a lot of reasons for believing in his guilt, beginning with the assumption that an innocent man does not behave the way that Donald Trump behaves. I agree with them, because Donald Trump is guilty of a great many things. There is never a reason to believe him innocent of anything. Read more about Is Donald Trump Innocent?
It’s fair to say I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, although that may actually have begun with Kennedy. My father was an Eisenhower Republican; my mother likely a closet Kennedy Democrat like me. But I had no qualms at all in voting for a Republican woman, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, in the Illinois Republican primary back in 1964 when she was running against Barry Goldwater. Was that the beginning of the end of the respectable Republicans? Lincoln, Grant, TR, Eisenhower. Were there more of which the country can be proud? I don’t remember. They are all gone now. Read more about The Loyal Opposition
This latest wave of feminist uprising has gotten me thinking about my own life, my own choices. I'm still trying to figure it all out.
I have not been treated badly by men. Read more about Men – A Litany
I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things ...
(Frodo to Sam, The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien)
We come at last to the end of 2017, and I am in an apocalyptic mood.
Why?
I tried listing the reasons, but there are too many to list. All around us, agency after agency, courtroom after courtroom, police and fire and local administrations, structures and strictures that we have long counted on to be there when we need them are being gutted almost behind our backs. Read more about The End of All Things