A Complicated American Life for our Times

The Rhymes of Imperial Gangsterism

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 …

An Apt Metaphor for the Entire Afghan War

The Disastrous Final Drone Strike Says It All

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 …

Exiting a Debacle Requires Courage and Support

The Ex-President As Suffering Artist

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, …

Facts, Legends, Big Lies, Bullshit and Fairy Tales

A Right Wing Call For Rough Men

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 …

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore

Between Q’s Headspace and the Hard Place of US History

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. …

Poor Central Americans are not the problem

The Real Immigration Scandal

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 …

Selective Enforcement and the Struggle For Justice

Redirect Enforcement Against the Right

“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, …