Published in BillMoyers.com The Russian president’s claims of “historical victimhood” in World War II try to justify his country’s present-day destructive behavior. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of…
Category: Articles
Why the Midwest Can’t Catch a Break
Published July 7, 2017 in Washington Monthly Beyond de-industrialization and consolidation, GOP politicians have dismantled the public infrastructure of the heartland. When I was in elementary school in the early 1960s, Summit County, Ohio was ranked second among all the counties in the United States by median household income. All four of the major…
Must They Have So Little Dignity?
Published in BillMoyers.com Reince Priebus’ fall is a sad metaphor for Trump’s America. Must They Have So Little Dignity? Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is considered one of the great political novels of the last century, but it is also very puzzling. Why does Rubashov, the loyal old Bolshevik, confess to capital crimes he did not commit?…
The Trump Era: No One Can Stay Above the Fray
shed in Moyers & Company (link to article) Trump debases the country, and we will all have to get our hands dirty. Shape without form, shade without color, paralyzed force, gesture without motion. — T.S. ELIOT, THE HOLLOW MEN (1925) It has been six years since I last saw Capitol Hill and the Republican Party in the rearview…
Hobby Lobby Meets Indiana Jones
Published July 7, 2017 in Washington Monthly ( link to article) How stolen art fuels Middle Eastern terrorism. By now, everyone has heard of Hobby Lobby and its founder, Dave Green. Green is a fake Christian who uses his business as a vehicle to bully women and generally make a public nuisance of himself. Aside from lending credence…
Mitch McConnell’s Sinister Role in the Russian Hacks
Published June 28, 2017 in Washington Monthly ( link to article) With the normalization of Trump’s antics, it is unfortunately all too easy to overlook the sheer rottenness of Mitch McConnell. Gage Skidmore/Flickr Recently, I broached the “T” word (treason) with respect to Donald Trump’s actions. Strange and wonderful to relate, the heavens did not fall and lightning did…
When Should We Use the ‘T’ Word?
Published in Washington Monthly ( link to article) The mainstream media is skittish about invoking treason. The presidency of Donald J. Trump, with its ludicrous inauguration crowd estimates, 4 AM tweets, and non-stop gaffes, is sometimes difficult for grownups to take seriously in any sort of sustained way. But with the allegation that Jared Kushner,…