There is an everyday scandal in the WH, everyday the administration hands more and more of the country to the oligarchs, and what is left of our faire land is now “deregulated” for profit. The crisis before us is America’s deeper failure of character, a reckoning with our shadow that may never happen. But...
Continue readingAtheism, the Grinding Axe, and the Mortal Coil
There is an interesting piece in The Atlantic magazine about the first chair of Atheism in a University and the study of atheism as a movement, etc. It lays out the facts, all of which strike me all too obvious; for example, not being a believer in god is vilified and largely unacceptable to the...
Continue readingThe Wall Inside
As Trump goes to Davos and events of the past week once again included talk of building walls, I admit to being a bit slow on the uptake. We can carry on about Trump’s wall with practical and honest arguments, declaring it to be unnecessary given rates of real undocumented border crossings or for...
Continue readingA Letter to Men, Part One. To Strive And Not to Yield: Moral Lassitude, Collective Responsibility, and Respecting the Shadow of Corruption
We have intimacy problems. Perhaps like we have never had before. Those problems are not only a feature of our gross failures as men since the beginning of civilization but a result of incremental strides forward as women have empowered themselves and pursued both equality and equity. Not all men resent progress though the...
Continue readingA Few Words about Dr. King and Donald Trump: A Reckoning with America’s Light and Shadow
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In celebration of Dr. King today it strikes me as particularly important to begin with the truth....
Continue reading“Religion” We Can Live With: An Essay on Belief and the Impossible
I was born to believe and I’ve spent my life trying that on. It’s not for lack of trying but I’m a believer in nothing supernatural. And I’d rather not quibble over what “supernatural” means either. I won’t substitute either a belief in humans or some claim to the goodness of humanity. What’s important...
Continue readingMoving Aside and Moving Forward: The Rot vs. The Circular Firing Squad
Today’s one screed is brought to you by multiple editorials in the WaPo, NYT, etc., all inspired by Righties embarrassed but not enough by being Republicans. They are still wrong. The Left, meh. Not a winner. You needn’t read further if you just came for the 411. As a kid I thought the best...
Continue readingIt’s About the Feeling of “Us”
As the facts roll out about the impact of the tax bill we, the rational doing the math and, dare I say, secular wonder how is it that Trump voters swallow this toxic swill. Let’s assume for a moment that they believed his populist backlash message: that elites had failed to deliver and that...
Continue readingOur Darkest Demons and the Better Angels of Our Nature
When Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, the very foundations of country, both its hypocrisies and ideals, were being measured in blood, in the face of the continuance of the morally inexcusable subjugation of people treated as chattel, in a test that was not only for the immediate political future but for the generations to come....
Continue readingAbout Wednesdays
It is a truth culled from India’s genius that memory outlives those who possess memories, that time is the divine itself, _whatever_ we might mean by that, and so impossible things can be worth their failure because there is more to life than just success. Rajanaka is, at least in part, about these truths,...
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