“American Exceptionalism” Does Not Mean What We Think It Means In the movie “The Princess Bride” the character Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) keeps referring to things that are actually happening as being “inconceivable”. This prompts the classic rejoinder from Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin): “You keep using that word, but I don’t think you know what it…
I doubt that I will ever forget Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention. The one where he talked about “American carnage” and said that he alone could fix it (good grief!). That night Trump painted a picture of an America that was unfamiliar to me. Sure the U.S. had it’s problems, but in 2016…
VOTE. HIM. OUT! Boy am I furious. As a rule, anger is not my favorite emotion, but it is pouring out of me today in buckets. Yes, President Tweety (aka Fat Donny) has angered me hundreds of times since taking office. Ripping young children from their parents and putting them in cages; eviscerating the rule…
When Did Republicans Become Anarchists? “Anarchy”, as a political mindset, is usually associated with whatever remains of the far left. It conjures up images of masked (though not for health reasons), black-clad disrupters running through the streets, smashing windows, turning over cars etc. Now I grew up thinking of conservative Republicans as country club types…
What Comes Next? What comes next for the U.S.A? Right now we’re all wondering what our communities will look like post-pandemic. Will our old favorite shops and restaurants still be there? How many familiar faces will be missing? Will we ever feel “normal” again, and if so, how long will it take? Those are immediate…
Casual Death My tongue-in-cheek definition of “minor surgery” is surgery that’s performed on somebody else. I’m reminded of this every time a Republican talks about the need for us, as a society, to “sacrifice” some people as a way to save the American economy. For them death’s okay, so long as it happens to someone…
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly I live in an apartment in Manhattan with my wife and two sons. Our apartment has a small terrace, and during the pandemic we have been going out on our terrace every night at 7pm to join our fellow New Yorkers in cheering for medical workers and first…
True Believers? Shortly after Vice President Mike Pence was picked to lead the Trump regime’s response (such as it is) to the coronavirus, a picture was released from the White House showing the Virus Task Force kneeling in prayer, led by Mr. Pence. I guess at that point they still hadn’t wasted enough time in…
Our Imaginary Humanist President What if our president were a Humanist? (We can dream, can’t we?) The Trump regime’s response to the Covid-19 crisis has been pretty predictable, as well as terrifying, infuriating, and depressing, and would be borderline comical if it weren’t so tragic. The only way Donald J. Trump would be a Humanist…
If God Is So Good, Why Are Things So Bad? On April 12, we were treated in the Times Sunday Review section to all sorts of religious gobbledygook. One of my favorites was from Ross Douthat (“The Pandemic and the Will of God”) in which he stated “The purpose of suffering may be mysterious, but…
True Believers? Shortly after Vice President Mike Pence was picked to lead the Trump regime’s response (such as it is) to the coronavirus, a picture was released from the White House showing the Virus Task Force kneeling in prayer, led by Mr. Pence. I guess at that point they still hadn’t wasted enough time in…
The Rule of Law Is Everything We’ve all read and heard recently about the degradation of the rule of law in the United States that has occurred under the Trump regime. It is therefore imperative that the American people understand what the rule of law is, and why it is essential to a functioning democracy.…
Don’t Blame Us For those of us who follow what they used to call “current events” back when I was in grade school, these are indeed terrifying times. This applies to local, national, and international news stories. I’ll take a look at some specific issues later in this essay, but the main point I want…
You Don’t Need Religion To Be a Mensch The religious right, never a paragon of reason and rationality, has gone nuts. Recently, both pastors and politicians have taken to declaring that Donald Trump was picked by their god to be president. Examples abound. In November of 2019 then Secretary of Energy Rick Perry referred to…
Star Trek Knows One of the things I like about the “Star Trek” franchise is its vision of the future. If Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is right, hundreds of years from now the people of our planet will be led by a single government, having done away with the nationalism that has produced so…
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