Studying Greek mythology and the origins of Christianity and Judaism this spring & summer, I have a banal observation: What a people believes shapes their material reality (and vice-versa). I apply it to contemporary America. We are indoctrinated from birth to believe that Economic Growth Is Good. The mechanisms and…

Among the tens of thousands of hours of television I’ve surely watched, the instant of Sinead O’Connor’s ripping up a photo of the pope live on TV as she declared, “Fight the real enemy,” stands out most strongly, most starkly among all the moments and non-moments. It was a: “Yes…

How to explain Trump’s extreme and panicked behavior since losing in 2020? The manic beer belly putsch coup attempt on 1/6/21. The seemingly inexplicable and self-defeating stuffing of a Jersey-bound plane in Florida with boxes of subpoenaed, classified documents. Why? We are witnessing a prolonged & convulsive episode of narcissistic…

America rewards — and lavishly so — the ruthless. It rewards compartmentalization and the absence of critical thought. It rewards those who operate with a reduced or a vanished conscience. America rewards those who reflect back to it its sins of avarice & callousness, as long as they do so…

CNN broadcast a grotesque “Town Hall” spectacle last night wherein Trump blithely lied about the most basic and well-established facts of the E Jean Carroll case and much more. Former Daily Caller employee, host Caitlin Collins was underprepared or uninterested in countering each point in the tsunami of lies. And……

I. A.I. “arts” is coming and is coming fast. Like every other technology that has emerged in the last 200 years (e.g. cars, smart phones, processed “foods,” plastic), its benefit or harm to humanity and to the other members of the ecosphere plays no role whatsoever in whether or not…

The idea that illness and injury are political events is a theme that runs throughout the excellent documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, (2022) about the artist & activist Nan Goldin, directed by Laura Poitras. The notion is present in the way that the bold curiosity, creative spirit, and…

This Is Us, I mean This Is the Last of Us, I mean The Last of Us (!), the HBO series based on the third person player video game, depicts a humanity ravaged by a fungal spore that’s gone out of control, nesting in people’s brains and converting them into…

The reason Jack Kerouac novels and, in recent years, Roberto Bolaño novels are always in demand — virtually jumping off the shelves at used bookstores across the country — is because they depict characters who refuse to relinquish their poetic vision of life and the world to the Moloch maw…