Decide: The French Election and the Untenable Position of Abstention
Slavoj Žižek bemoans in The Independent that the upcoming French run-off election means no choice at all because between Le Pen and Macron, the French people fa...
Category: opinion
Art Is Worth Fighting For
Science, we march for. The humanities, however, have not fared well lately. That is, the way we talk about the humanities has not been much in the way of apprec...
The Center Must Hold for a Peaceful Europe
It is not an exaggeration to say that with the upcoming French presidential election, the future of Europe hangs in the balance. To wit, Europe, not simply, not...
Donald Trump Is No Lyndon Johnson
John Fund at the National Review recently compared Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump. Citing also this blog, he argued that there were similarities between the two...
Life on Mars, 2016
We pick our heroines and our heroes and we pick our battles and our places to stand. We may be wrong in these choices sometimes, but if our compass is true then...
Against Fear
What is terror, and who is a terrorist? The question comes up a lot these days. In Germany, the Berlin Christmas market attack was labeled a terrorist act prett...
There’s Precedent for All of This Except Everything
Donald Trump will put all his business dealings in a blind trust. Except it’s not a blind trust, because it will be run by his kids. Not to worry. It̵...
One Nation, Divisible
There’s no sugarcoating it. This is it. This is the end of a noble dream of progress, dreamt happily and fully still a week ago by those who thought the m...
Note to Self: Do Not Normalize the Trump Presidency
You’ve already heard and read much about what the stunning result of Tuesday’s U.S. election means. Opinions are about a-plenty, so I won’t ma...
After Trump, What Now? Tell True Stories Well
True stories save lives and change the world. Historians, cultural anthropologists and other students of the culture, ideas and inner workings of societies past...