A depiction of the murder of St. Thomas Becket by knights of his friend King Henry II of England. From the Carrow Psalter, 1250, ink, gold and parchment. Courtesy Walters Art Museum.
OK, so who had Pope Leo XIV versus President Donald J. Trump on their fight card, let alone bingo card?
Today, many shocked posters on the internet are saying they didn’t. But I did.
Read MoreNikolai Ge’s “What is Truth?” (1890) crystallizes the biblical encounter between Pontius Pilate and Jesus, between military might and spiritual transcendence.
Sometimes you can say the right thing – the “true” thing – and still be wrong.
So we have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the limits of Jesus Christ and actor Timothée Chalamet on the limits of ballet and opera. Both offered a realistic assessment of the world as it is. But both failed to see the world beyond its limitations.
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Read More“The Bier of Iskandar” illustrates a scene from the “Great Mongol Shahnameh” (the Persian “Book of Kings”), which recasts the life of Iskandar, or Alexander the Great, as a Persian ruler rather than a Greco-Macedonian one (circa 1330, ink, gold and watercolors). Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Lost in the fog of war or any geopolitical crisis is its cultural-historical aspect. This is especially true of the Iran War, which reveals a clash of cultures that in some ways are surprisingly similar.
It was President George W. Bush who said that Americans are not good at looking in the rearview mirror. And so lost on the United States is the irony of a country that fought a revolution against an empire that never understand it only to become an empire that never understood the countries it kept invading.
Read MoreOn Feb. 6, the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group was deployed to the U.S.Fifth Fleet area of operations to support maritime security and stability in the Middle East. Photograph by U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jesse Monford/
I was going to write about the U.S.A. men’s hockey team’s and Kash Patel’s less than golden locker room moment – which to me was more about professionalism than politics – but then the United States and Israel attacked Iran, and all bets were off.
Read MoreFrom left, President Donald J. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in Washington, D.C. on May 6, 2025. Carney’s willingness to take on Trump by moving past him has raised his profile on the world stage. Photograph by Gabriel B. Kotico/the White House.
There is another approach to narcissism that I had forgotten – to stand up to the narcissistic, bullying abuse and either directly (Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney) or indirectly (Pope Leo XIV) announce that you are not going to stand for it and will build a world around, through or without it.
Read MoreFormer Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse seen in his 2016 U.S. Senate portrait. He’s announced that at 53 he has terminal pancreatic cancer. Courtesy U.S. Senate.
Ryan Holiday’s “The Daily Stoic” – generally inspirational although too hard on Alexander the Great and too easy on Marcus Aurelius – says that December is the month of endings in which we must contemplate our own. Meanwhile, there have been a number of high profile endings of different sorts, so let’s delve into them, shall we?
Read MoreThe gentlemanly surrender of British Gen. John Burgoyne to Patriot Gen. Horatio Gates after the Battle of Saratoga on Oct. 16, 1777, as depicted by John Trumbull in this 1818 painting, is how we tend to think of the American Revolution after the fact — nice and stately. Instead, it was a long, brutal guerrilla conflict, and though Saratoga would prove its turning point for the Patriots, it would still drag on for six more years.
Next year marks the United States’ 250th birthday and already plans are underway for the celebration, with the nonprofit America250 Commission https://america250.org/ charged with staging different events and programs to mark the occasion. (Each of the 50 states has also created its own commission, with plenty of cultural organizations contributing exhibits and performances.)
Though ostensibly bipartisan, America250 has come under the aegis of the Trump Administration, which wants to ensure that American history is portrayed in such a way that Americans don’t feel ashamed of their past. But Ken Burns – whose “The American Revolution” aired on PBS Nov. 16 through Nov. 21 and is streaming free there through Dec. 14 – has said in interviews that we owe it to ourselves to tell the truth about the revolution and let the chips fall where they may. Far from shaming us, Burns and producing partner Sarah Botstein have said, the revolution should inspire and enlighten us as ordinary citizens overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to buck the British Empire and create the world’s oldest modern democracy.
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