The lotus represents karma in that it holds its seeds as it flowers. Photograph by Nevit Dilmen.
Violence is never the answer, but it is often the question. The attempt on former President Donald J. Trump’s life is nothing to celebrate as the taking of a life in anything but self-defense is morally and legally wrong.
But after almost 10 years of vitriol on the campaign trail and in office, he has come to his encounter with karma.
Read MoreKarl von Piloty’s “The Murder of Caesar” (1865, oil on canvas).Courtesy Landesmuseum Hannover. Both Dante and Shakespeare, who understood political instability, would tip the scales in favor of Caesar’s character against his assassins as would Shaw and the 1963 film “Cleopatra.” In reality, Caesar pitted the mob against the so-called elites and destroyed those he deemed “other,” paying the ultimate price.
The tagline of the PBS series “Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator,” is “Nearly five centuries of ancient Roman democracy were overthrown in 16 years by one man.”
Will we even get to 250 on July 4, 2026? Here’s how Time magazine summarized two interviews with former President Donald J. Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants for a cover story.
Read MoreMug shot from O.J. Simpson’s arrest for the murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Time magazine would be criticized for darkening the photograph when it ran on the cover, underscoring a trial that proved to be less about domestic violence and more about race in the United States.
When I think of O.J. Simpson, who died Wednesday, April 10 of prostate cancer at age 76 in Las Vegas, I think of the short story '“Appointment in Samarra,” often retold in novels. The protagonist encounters the figure of Death, and to elude the dreaded specter, runs off to Samarra, only to find Death waiting there at the place where they were destined to meet. You cannot escape fate — or the consequences of your actions, no matter what else you do in life. Such is the Hindu and Buddhist principle of karma.
Read MoreAndrey Rublev at the 2023 Monte Carlo Masters. After losing to Carlos Alcaraz at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, recently, he reacted by hitting himself in the knee to the point of drawing blood. Photograph by si.robi.
From the courts of the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, to the halls of the United States Congress, these have not been the best of times for men and anger management.
Read More“Achilles in the Court of King Lycomedes“ (marble, 240). Musée du Louvre. The Greeks’ greatest warrior and a king in his own right, Achilles is the main character and antihero of Homer’s “The Iliad.” His rage at his humiliation by Agamemnon, the Greek high king and commander, during a quarrel over women as war prizes sets in motion the catastrophic events of Homer’s “The Iliad,” about a critical moment in the Trojan War.
Do we believe in coincidence or predestination? Is everything happenstance or is it a case that there are no accidents (Freud) and that “God does not play dice with the universe” (Einstein)?
Is that universe sending us a message by releasing a new translation of Homer’s “The Iliad” by University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson just as Hamas savagely attacked Israel and Israel responded with a ferocious declaration of war? It would seem so, for the ancient Greek epic has much to tell us about issues that speak to our time, not the least of which are overweening male pride and rage, power as a zero sum game and stupefyingly bad leadership.
Read MoreFormer Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on the day he was elected speaker — Jan. 7, 2023 — after 15 attempts. Now he is gone after almost nine months, about the time it takes for a full-term pregnancy and with no baby to show for it. Courtesy the former Speaker.
The Oct. 3 ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a man brought down as much by his own ambition as by the hard right of the Republican Party and the united Democrats, who refused to oppose it — echoes ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, to say nothing of the Hindu/Buddhist principle of karma and Randy Rainbow, who parodied McCarthy’s pathetic groveling for the speakership in a takeoff on “Les Misérables’” “Master of the House.”
Read MoreThe Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, includes a wall that contains part of the improvised speech Kennedy made before a Black crowd in Indianapolis on the night the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, April 4, 1968. It’s considered one of the great empathetic speeches of the modern era. Photograph by Rob Miller.
What are we to make of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bid for the presidency? After he was overwhelmingly reelected governor last November, the New York Post dubbed him “De Future.” But he stumbled early on the campaign trail — bleeding money and staffers, hardly confidence-inspiring in a man looking to become the most powerful executive in the world; sliding in the polls; and turning in a mediocre performance in the Republicans debate, after which everyone was talking about irritating, more-Trump-than-vous Vivek Ramaswamy and, to a lesser extent, disapproving schoolmarm Nikki Haley, Christian milquetoast Mike Pence, blustery Jersey boy Chris Christie and steel magnolia Asa Hutchinson.
Read More
