Tagged “politics”


I Am White

The Associated Press has decided to capitalize Black.  They are finally acknowledging that “the lowercase black is a color, not a person.” But the change is not only practical, it’s political, based on “the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language.” I made my own decision sometime back to capitalize Black for the strictly practical... Read More

Posted on August 3, 2020 at 10:41 pm under Life & Culture

I Don’t Want Trump Impeached

What I want for Trump is much simpler than impeachment: I want to see his approval rating fall to the low twenties, then to the teens. The low teens. I want to see him repudiated by America, and especially by the nearly half of voting Americans who thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he would be a suitable president. Is that too much to ask? I know there’s an intransigent... Read More

Posted on November 2, 2017 at 11:40 am under Life & Culture

Trump, Kim, and Wilhelm II

How close are we to nuclear war? Really? It’s September 2017, and we seem to be in the middle of a classic conflict spiral with North Korea that, without heroic intervention, will end up where conflict spirals usually end up: war. It’s disheartening to find myself hoping the other side will produce the hero—especially when the other side is a North Korea—but that’s where I am. President... Read More

Posted on September 25, 2017 at 6:47 pm under Life & Culture

The Call

It was confirmed yesterday: we live in one of those neighborhoods where neighbors—grown, adult neighbors—get into fistfights. Perhaps it was a once-in-a-decade event, but it has somewhat darkened my view of the neighborhood. Particularly after Bellevue. Peaceful Bellevue. There, people didn’t attack one another in the street. A fight was the neighbor looking the other way when you said hi.... Read More

Posted on July 21, 2017 at 8:22 am under Life & Culture

My Imperfect Relationship with the Truth

“The last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees lived six million years ago.” I like that statement, and I believe it. Don’t we all believe things we like, things we want to believe? I like the idea that I’m closely related to chimpanzees. It reinforces my worldview, my makeshift model of the world where I live. That worldview is constructed one found object at a time with no... Read More

Posted on June 8, 2017 at 11:16 am under Life & Culture

Who Goes Nazi?

I recently came across Dorothy Thompson’s 1941 Harper’s piece, “Who Goes Nazi?” In it she describes a party game in which you look around the room and decide who at the party would embrace Nazism in America. Thompson had been a correspondent in Germany during the 1920s and 30s before being expelled by the Nazis, so she was in a good position to make the call. In the article she plays out... Read More

Posted on February 28, 2017 at 5:47 pm under Life & Culture

Civil Discourse

Facebook post to a “political discussion group” a week or two into Trump’s presidency: “Hey, I’ve been checking in occasionally without participating, but I have a question. What do you think about President Trump’s constant lying? Is it important or unimportant? We’ve seen him lie about a number of small things this week, but do you think he will also lie about bigger things?... Read More

Posted on February 27, 2017 at 8:54 am under Life & Culture

My Obama

I dreamed last night that President Obama was at our house doing handyman work. He wore the dark suit and tie, looking presidential, but he was building something. He had run out of nails, so I was collecting old ones and cleaning them up for him. He opened a trap door in the yard and scrounged through the shelves down there. He picked up a jar, sniffed it and said, “This is tetraethyl lead,... Read More

Posted on January 23, 2017 at 12:30 pm under Life & Culture

Family Feud

I recently humiliated someone very dear to me—publicly—and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I wish he hadn’t felt humiliated; on the other, I don’t regret what I did. This, I guess, is how feuds start. It began when he forwarded an email to me and about twenty other people. He didn’t write anything himself, he simply forwarded the email. I felt the message was... Read More

Posted on February 6, 2016 at 12:15 pm under Life & Culture

The Greatest Generation

I came across this while researching the War in the Pacific: “Some journalists were visiting a Japanese school. During a chat with one class of youngsters, a journalist asked about the war between Japan and the U.S. One student asked, ‘The United States and Japan were in a war?’ Yes, the journalist replied, to which the student asked, ‘Who won?’” There are many ways to interpret... Read More

Posted on February 23, 2013 at 9:20 pm under Life & Culture