'…a major destabilizing influence'
GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire; St. Martin’s Press, 2021, 412 pages. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. -Attributed to Mark Twain The tale journalist/historian Jonathon M. Katz tells in his new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, is an epic story that “rhymes” a …
As the US was making its exit from Afghanistan, on August 26th, thirteen US servicemen and -women were killed in a terrorist bomb at the Kabul airport; 20 more were wounded. The President saluted the coffins at Dover Air Force Base. Given the nature of a war like Afghanistan, this bombing put pressure on US …
Continue reading “The Disastrous Final Drone Strike Says It All”
Where is George W. Bush — the post-presidential, sensitive painter of humanity — when Joe Biden needs him? As chairman of the board of the US Constitution Center in Philadelphia, on Veterans’ Day 2018 Joe Biden arranged for Bush and his wife Laura to receive the coveted Liberty Medal for their work with veterans. Biden, …
When will they ever learn, oh when will they ever learn? – Pete Seeger The scene of hundreds of desperate Afghanis running and trying absurdly to latch onto the skin of a massive C17 taxiing down a runway about to take off from Kabul Airport was the iconic image that stuck for me — like …
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. -D.H. Lawrence One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. -Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit I had an interesting exchange recently with a man I met at my local Panera where I often have a breakfast sandwich …
Everything has meaning. This is not a game. Learn to play the game. [ Q Drop # 885, March 8, 2018 ] In the early nineties, I was writing a novel about a young US military photographer in Honduras during the Contra War. I wanted one of the characters to be a science fiction reader. …
Continue reading “Between Q’s Headspace and the Hard Place of US History”
The far-right is focused hard on making a scandal of the current rush of refugees from Central America north through Mexico to our Southwestern border. It’s as if the refugee crisis on the border is a new Democratic Party scandal, instead of a festering hemispheric crisis-point that has been exacerbated but never seriously addressed. This …
Donald Trump is, in fact, the first president since Herbert Hoover to lead his party to losing the presidency, the House, and the Senate all in a single term. – Kevin D. Williamson, The National Review It wlll go down in history as a remarkable two-week period. It began on Wednesday, January 6th with an …
“Mac, who in hell are these vigilantes, anyway? What kind of guys are they?” “Why, they’re the dirtiest guys in any town. They’re the same ones that burned the houses of the old German people during the war. They’re the same ones that lynched Negroes. They like to be cruel. They like to hurt people, …
Last week, the New York Times ran an article about the current hostilities in the Middle East under The Abraham Accords and what they mean for an incoming Biden administration. These accords — diplomatically linking Israel with several Arab states — were negotiated by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose father, Charles, is a longtime donor …
Continue reading “The Abraham Accords Are Not a “Peace Deal””