How bad have things gotten?
So bad that people are now feeling sorry for Jeff Sessions.
The attorney general is the new President Donald J. Trump whipping boy. If only Sesh hadn’t recused himself from the Russia investigation, Trumpet wouldn’t be in the fix he’s in – so the twisted thinking of the president goes. In the world of the narcissist, the context has to keep changing to ensure that the narcissist is always right. Trump’s feeling the heat of Russkiegate but can’t blame himself for it and so has to find a vehicle, and a diversion, for his anger. Thus, Sessions is suddenly no good. I’m no fan of his, but how was he supposed to know when he recused himself that the Trump Administration would be investigated for its Russian ties? ...
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Read MoreSome years ago, I saw an exhibit at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass. in which a male artist included an image of the Y chromosome. It’s much smaller than the X chromosome. And it’s been shrinking.
I couldn’t help but think of this on the death of Otto Warmbier, the young American imprisoned and apparently tortured for allegedly taking a propaganda poster off the wall of a North Korean hotel. Returned to his homeland in a coma, he died six days later on June 19.
Lost, however, in the geopolitical story – the barbarism of North Korea, the failure of the Chinese to contain it and the challenge this poses for America – is both the larger and deeper cultural and psychological story. It is a narrative that says simply no one does stupid like a stupid man. ...
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Read MoreThe year 2017 is not quite half over but it’s already shaping up to be an annus horribilus, to borrow from Queen Elizabeth II. If the trend continues, we may look back on this past week as one of the most miserable of a miserable year.
The London fire, the Congressional shooting, the Michelle Carter case, the latest developments in Russiagate all point to a ruinous selfishness. ...
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Read MoreFor years, we have endured shooting after shooting in America. And Congress has done little to reform gun laws, caving to the National Rifle Association.
Today that indifference came full circle as an anti-Trump gunman opened fire on practice for a Congressional charity baseball game to be played tomorrow night, striking pro-gun Congressman Steve Scalise, the Majority Whip, and injuring three others as well. ...
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Read More“These are the times that try men’s souls,” the great American patriot Thomas Paine wrote. We could use the strength of Paine and people like him at this moment.
Yesterday’s terrorist attack in London – which left seven dead and dozens wounded, including 21 critically – was not merely a momentary victory for the terrorists. It was a win for the strongmen of the world like President Donald J. Trump, whose response to them is more hatred and more irrational violence. Notice I wrote, “irrational violence.” ...
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Read MoreThe Manchester bombing is just the latest example of man’s inhumanity to man. But it’s hardly the only one.
There’s the caning of two men in Indonesia for no other reason than they engaged in gay sex.
Then there’s the Trump budget, the anti-Robin Hood, taking from the poor to give to the rich. ...
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Read MoreThe recent removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans – which has hit a raw nerve in the South – says as much about our misconceptions about memorials and winning and losing as it does about racism’s bitter stranglehold on America.
Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, who appeared on PBS with historian Walter Isaacson to discuss what many blacks perceive to be symbols of lingering racism and some whites see as emblems of political correctness – is right to say that memorials are meant to honor their subjects. They do so not only in the display of what is often great art but in pride of place. ...
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