The recent kerfuffle over politician Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test proving that she has Native American blood (a degree denoting a likely ancestor dating back from the early 19th Century) is a fine illustration of the continuity and persistence of the American fixation on race. I will leave it to others to parse the implications of the unseemly politics […]
Beware The Outrage Trolls
“A tongue can accuse and carry bad news The seeds of distrust it will sow But unless you’ve made no mistakes in your life Be careful of stones that you throw… — Hank Williams, “Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw” * This is how this rolls: Somebody, somewhere, with an ax to grind digs up some stupid thing someone […]
Talk Sexy To Me, Alexa!
“This is the kind of surveillance that people can actually like. There’s satellites up there not only to spy on us, but to help us lead better lives.” — Marcel Salathé, head of the Digital Epidemiology Lab at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne on using satellite photographs to correlate obesity and environment. Oh, fuck off Marcel. […]
Sunset 2030?
Cardi B and Nicki Minaj are feuding. Stormy Daniels has described Donald Trump’s penis for us. A big storm in North Carolina demanded 24/7 coverage, even if reporters had to fake it. Meanwhile, in other news: The Shanghai International Port Group is expected to take management of a new private seaport at Haifa, Israel in 2021, bringing a Chinese presence to […]
The New Counterculture In A Time Of Collapse
By Rick Schwertfeger for RunningIronReport.com Evidence increases in the United States today of two processes underway simultaneously: One, a potential collapse of key institutions that underlie the existing American economic, political, and social systems. Evidence abounds of an economic system that concentrates wealth in a small minority of Americans, and leaves the majority struggling with insufficient income, […]
Fault Lines
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make […]
On Political Correctness
A recent letter to the editor in The Nugget Newspaper, which I edit and where Craig has a column, defended “political correctness” as “basically another term for respect, consideration, kindness, and generosity towards others despite their race, ethnicity, gender, or disability.” This definition elides the modern origins of the term, which lie in totalitarian attempts to own language, […]
Continuity & Persistence
“Beowulf lying wrapped in a blanket among his platoon of drunken thanes in the Gothland billet; Judith going for a promenade to Holofernes’s staff tent; and Brunaburgh with its bayonet-and-cosh fight — all of this came closer to most of us than the drawing room and deer-park atmosphere of the eighteenth century.” — Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That […]
Calling Interference
It must seem like a pretty good joke in the labyrinthine halls of the Kremlin: the Americans in a giant, going-on-two-years twist about Russian interference in the 2016 election. We ought to recognize it when we see it. The Russians understand — better than 99 percent of Americans — that the USA is the world champion of […]
Sinners & Cynics
“How is it,” asks my interlocutor, “that you immerse yourself in all of this dark history, and yet you don’t seem cynical?” Well, that’s a fair question. I’m tempted to simply throw down another Edward Abbey quote and let it go at that: “Don’t let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. […]
Busting Out Of The Binary Box
After a quarter-century as an Oregonian, I finally experienced one of the state’s iconic events. My daughter and I attended the Oregon Country Fair. This countercultural extravaganza on six acres of oaks along the Long Tom River west of Eugene has been encouraging thousands to let their freak flag fly since 1969. There are multitudes of angles to take […]
Blues For America
My hometown is fixin’ to get the blues in a big way the first weekend of August. A couple of music-lovin’, cable-stringin,’ hammer swingers are making it happen out of their own passion and pocket. I love that. I love it in the abstract, and I love it because it’s the same damn-fool thing I and a few other people did more […]
