Two truths: (1) Since time immemorial, people have been decrying the death of courtesy. “What once were vices are manners now,” wrote Seneca two thousand years ago, and I’m betting some Egyptologist can point me to the equivalent in hieroglyphics. (2) Just because a kvetch has been repeated in the past, that doesn’t make it …
“No matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up.” (Lily Tomlin) I have a friend who talks about “the default world.” He means the one in which we adjust to absurdity, tolerating behavior that we ought to rebuke, simply because in that diminished reality it has become normalized. In the default world, U.S. elections …
The kind of hope that interests me is grounded in reality: not crossing one’s fingers and buying a lottery ticket, but noticing the signs and reminders that suggest possibility. One thing that gives me hope is the presence of fellow-travelers. More and more, I see people standing up to say, “Stop! In the name of …
This year marks the 50th anniverary of The Port Huron Statement, a democratic manifesto drafted largely by Tom Hayden and modified and adopted by Students for a Democratic Society, a leading activist organization of that period. For many people like myself who came up in the sixties, it was an important articulation of political values. …
Have you got it yet? The Surreal Season Headache-and-a-Half? I start to feel my SSHH! when the presidential election campaigns ramps up during the summer before the election, and the pounding doesn’t usually stop till November at the earliest. It’s an overdose of surrealism, plain and simple: while this over-the-top waste of time and money …
We’ve been having those freezing summer mornings in the Bay Area. The wind rattled my windows all night long, and right now, the sky is the color of dirty snow. The leaves are shivering. Me too. The physical sensation is reminiscent of fear and of love, which have been much on my mind. Summer is …
Fireworks last night in Richmond, which sponsors a convivial gathering every July third. There’s a great view of the display from the lawn across from my apartment. A cover-band version of “Street Fighting Man” wafted through the window, then an announcer’s voice saying, “Fireworks in fifteen minutes.” “Why July third?” someone asked as we found …
If the question had been put outright, my friend and I agreed, a supermajority would have voted on our side: Do you want to live in a nation where a few ultra-rich individuals own as much as everyone else put together, have carte blanche to use their wealth to shape public policy, yet feel completely …
Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and globalization critic, has a must-read essay in the current Vanity Fair, excerpted from his forthcoming book. He analyzes the consensus among plutocrats that our ever-widening wealth disparity is a jolly good thing, and concludes that for their own good, they had better reconsider the flimsy …
We need a new rallying cry. Van Jones has an idea that’s not quite cooked, but suggestive. On Saturday, someone who heard Jones address a Scott Walker recall rally in Wisconsin tweeted this quote from Jones’ remarks: “Don’t adapt to absurdity.” He was making the point that over time, even what seems preposterous becomes normalized. …