Last week I wrote about how the U.S. helped create an organization of fanatical Islamists in Afghanistan—the Taliban. Later we engaged in a long and fruitless war against them, and now we’re going to turn the country back to them. What I find most intriguing, and saddest, about this turn of events is that we’ve […]
A War to Help Women?
Women in Burkas in Afghanistan Two weeks ago I posted on hate crimes against women in the U.S. Today I’m going to look at our system of male domination, and how it plays out in our foreign policy. To recap, I asserted that these hate crimes are ubiquitous, yet mostly unseen. Women swim in a […]
The Peak of Empire
A trolley car in Brooklyn, 1948 Brooklyn, New York, 1948: There was always a big Memorial Day parade on Eastern Parkway. I was four, old enough to enjoy the spectacle, so Dad took me while my baby sister stayed home with Mom. I’d squeeze through a forest of adult legs and sit on the curb, […]
Reigns of Terror: A historical perspective
What we have come to call civilization is based on terror. The lower ranks (slaves, common laborers, and of course women) are kept in line through fear and/or dreadful punishments, while the upper ranks may commit crimes with minimal penalties or even impunity. For millennia we have been taught that this is right and just […]
On the Basis of Sex
As I noted last week, after the torture-murder of a gay student, the FBI was tasked with collecting hate crime statistics. Their reports began to appear in 1996, at which time the categories included were race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. In 1997, they added disabilities. Sex and gender identity were not added until 2013. […]
Hate Thy Neighbor
Last week I wrote about hate crimes based on race. This week I was going to look at sex and religion, but there’s too much to be said on each topic, so I’ll stick to religion. (I know you’re eager to get to sex, but that will have to wait until next week.) The Hate […]
American as Cherry Pie
“Violence is as American as cherry pie.” H. Rap Brown said that back in 1967, when he was 23. It is as true today as it was then. Perhaps if he’d been older, he might have learned that violence—the state-sanctioned variety in particular—is as old as civilization. In this post, however, I’d like to talk […]
The Love that Dare Not Speak its Name
Oscar Wilde & Lord Douglas “The love that dare not speak its name.” The expression is from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas, published in 1894. It seems clearly to refer to same-sex relationships, specifically his with Oscar Wilde. After 1969, author Robertson Davis complained that it had become “the love that won’t shut up.” […]
My First Job, Working for the Feds
The Typing Pool The first job I ever held was during the waning days of the McCarthy era. Here’s a story about it: Are you now or were you ever a member of the Communist Party? The Ku Klux Klan? The Nazi Party? The National Negro Labor Council or the Ukrainian-American Fraternal Union? The application […]
Response to the Review
I was, of course, delighted with Phyllis Chesler’s review of my novels, The Throne in the Heart of the Sea and The Stars in their Courses. However, I can’t resist writing a response. After all, as Phyllis indicates in her last line, we may disagree. First, a minor nit to pick: I don’t see my […]