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U.S. Decline: Three Strikes and You’re Out?
Photograph Source: Daniel Lobo – CC BY 2.0 Although the United States major league baseball season is suspended, the basics of three strikes and you’re out can still be used to describe politics. Three...
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A Scourge on the Earth
On my way back from my daily exercise routine, I pass the local junk/antiques emporium and notice that beneath the official Covid- 19 flyer some wag has put up a hand-written sign that reads, “Closed...
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Californians in Long-Term Care Remain at Risk Under Newsom
Photograph Source: Shiny Things – CC BY 2.0 During the current pandemic, California Governor Gavin Newsom has been widely praised for issuing a shelter in place directive ahead of other states, helping...
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COVID-19: How Big Pharma and Big Philanthropy Consume the World
Photograph Source: Jonas Bengtsson – CC BY 2.0 Under capitalism, disease is an immensely profitable industry, and huge pharmaceutical corporations excel at extracting enormous amounts of wealth from...
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Homeless, Hungry, Waiting for Government Help
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair A rent moratorium is knocking on Washington’s door. By early April almost 17 million people lost their jobs and 31 percent of renters did not pay. How could they? They...
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Pandemic Story: Failures, Forebodings, Signs of Solidarity
Photograph Source: Raed Mansour – CC BY 2.0 The long-term impact of the COVID 19 pandemic, while uncertain, promises to be far-reaching and profound. Here we look for signs evident now that point to...
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Syria and the Lust for Power
Sam Dagher’s “Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed” is the definitive chronicle of a tragic war that has left the country in the state described by Tacitus: “where...
View ArticleWant to Save the World? Don’t Buy What You Don’t Need
Is Covid-19 that just-big-enough-but-not-too-big catastrophe that is finally going to scare or inspire enough people to take realistic and constructive action to confront the major challenge of our...
View ArticleSo, Come and Get Me, Joe
As a conscientious voter who started this election cycle with clear standards of whom to support, I am left with no one from the blue side who meets my criteria. As 20 some candidates threw in their...
View ArticleWe Need a Progressive Alternative to the Humane Society Legislative Fund
The Humane Society Legislative Fund was launched in 2004 as a political voice for three animal-protection groups: The Doris Day Animal League, The Fund for Animals, and, of course, The Humane Society...
View ArticleRestoring the Interior Commons is the Best Hope for A Human-Supportive World
Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this [coronavirus] crisis…There is a social demand in the crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand. The two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we...
View ArticleFear and Loathing in Coronaville Volume 4: Insanity is a Virtue in a Mad World
As I scrawl the sloppy copy for my latest manifesto on a windowpane between my thoughts on string theory and Kevin Bacon’s connection to 9/11 (Madoff made him do it!), I am sincerely struck by...
View ArticleCan Democracy Survive COVID-19?
The COVID-19 global pandemic has prompted a major question about leadership in a time of crisis: how to balance the importance of public health with the respecting of individual liberty? The virus...
View ArticleEight Reasons Trump Doesn’t Need to “Cancel the Election”
As the presidential race grinds on, more blue-leaning voters are expressing worry that Trump will “cancel the election.” I don’t doubt that there are moments when Trump likes the idea of being a...
View ArticleTime to Declare an Outbreak of Peace
The Secretary General of the United Nations issued a plea to the countries of the world to declare an immediate ceasefire. “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war,” he said. “Let us...
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Corona and the Rise of the German Police State
Photo: author’s private collection. A few weeks ago, a German women did something illegal. She bought a book called 1984 in a local bookstore. The bookseller was crying because he had not seen a...
View ArticleHell is Other People: Pandemic Lifestyles and Domestic Violence
In No Exit, the translated title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, Huis Clos, three deceased characters find themselves in a room, ostensibly in Hell, in what transpires as a permanent wait. Locked after...
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The Problem With Conservation Easements
Agricultural lands in Montana’s Gallatin Valley are largely ecological deserts. Photo: George Wuerthner. The Washington Post recently published an article that repeated the old and flawed idea that...
View ArticleClass, Caste and the End of the American Dream
What awaits the U.S. when the coronavirus is contained? Will America’s great ideological glue – the belief in social mobility – be finally exposed as a caste system? Caste is a very old Indian...
View ArticleCollateral Damage and the “War on COVID-19”
I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what...
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