Tag: history
-
TAPA # 154 FEAR OR FAVOR???
Four senior career prosecutors from the Department Justice Civil Rights Division resigned protesting the refusal of the DOJ to investigate the shooting of Renee Good. The former head of the Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clarke, said that “the officer-involved shooting of Renee Good is precisely the kind of case that the Civil Rights Division would…
-
TAPA # 153 I HATE THOSE BRIDGES TOO FAR!!!
A friend recently sent me an essay about how to hold fast to one’s values while engaging pragmatically with people who hold deeply opposed views. My takeaway was a reminder to try to remove the “edge” from my writing and from how I engage others. That is easier said than done. It is difficult not…
-
TAPA # 149 TRUMP TRUTH
The Authoritarian Playbook These are the defining features of a totalitarian system, according to Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher who fled Nazi Germany in 1933. Timothy Snyder, former Yale historian and author of On Tyranny, distilled the same danger into a single warning: “Post-truth is pre-fascism. “Once truth collapses, tyranny follows. If I didn’t know better, I would think…
-
TAPA # 148 FASCISM COMEMS TO AMERICA
The murder of Rene Good has exposed the true character of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. It is one of depraved indifference. What, exactly, has Trump done for ordinary Americans, the middle class and working poor? He is obsessed with building ballrooms, redecorating the White House, plastering his name on once-respected institutions, and rebuilding golf…
-
TAPA # 144 NO RESPECT
What the Trump administration is doing to Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is shameful. Sen. Kelly is a decorated U.S. Navy aviator who flew combat missions and later commanded NASA Space Shuttle missions. He is a national hero, someone who repeatedly risked his life in service to the United States, now being targeted by a cowardly five-time…
-
TAPA # 142 NEANDERTHAL THINKING
I’m sharing this article from The Atlantic because it helps explain the core motivation behind the Trump administration. Trump promised to be our “retribution,” and his entire playbook is rooted in getting even; taking advantage whenever possible, especially when the “other” is weaker. By hook or by crook, he has lied his way to the top of…
-
TAPA #121 THE SHIT SHOW
I’m still in disbelief over the video Trump disseminated. An American president literally defecating on his own people. Or perhaps, as reality suggests, trump isn’t truly our president; he’s his president. For those inside his tribe or the “dear leader” bubble, there’s an intellectual insulation, a numbness to his outrageous behavior. Anne Applebaum captured the fascist dynamic perfectly: “For…
-
TAPA #119 RHETORIC VS. REALITY
The past week has laid bare the true rot and diseased thinking infecting the Republican maga leadership. Those Republicans still trying to rationalize trump’s erratic, unprincipled, unconstitutional, and often illegal behavior now find themselves skating on cracking thin ice as they struggle to make sense of what has unfolded. Take, for instance, the case of…
-
TAPA # 102 WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN, WHEN…?
Reading Heather Cox Richardson this morning—a scholar who rigorously documents every claim—while scanning the headlines and catching a few news clips, I felt myself slipping into a fog. It was as if I were listening to a 1933 radio broadcast from Berlin or a 1947 propaganda report out of Moscow. The echoes are chilling. In…
THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE 