In my most recent post, I asserted that the ultimate license to kill belongs to a nation’s ruler. The military is only his instrument. Though once soldiers enlist or are drafted, they get what we might call sub-licenses—they can kill whomever their leaders designate as enemies and be lauded as heroes rather than condemned as…

Remember James Bond? The fictional, glamorous Agent 007 of the British Secret Service, the man with “a license to kill?” Designed as the epitome of masculinity, with his high-powered cars and guns and his gorgeous women (one dubbed Pussy Galore), he dove into danger without fear, knowing he would emerge ever triumphant. I wish I…

An old friend, Denise Tuggle, has written a 12-point “Dear White People” letter which I share with you. She is living near Portland, ME, where over 200 people have been detained by ICE–most seem to have been “disappeared.” One, a Black corrections officer was arrested as he left his job (he had a pending asylum…

In my last two posts, I wrote about how modern media have created images glorifying certain politicians in order to sell them to us, and discussed those aspects of our nature that leave us vulnerable to exploitation by a so-called leader, whether king, president, televangelist, or cult guru. Today I want to speculate about what…

In my last post I discussed the role image plays in how contemporary Americans have elected “leaders”—or really, had their leaders selected by party honchos and mass media. Today I want to speculate on why so many of us follow them. To a degree, the tendency toward subservience is built into our species. We start…

Lately I’ve been thinking—as we all have—about what looks like a rapid march to fascism in the United States, and what some news media call the rise of authoritarianism in nations that at least used to pay lip service to democracy. What do people look for, what do they see, in an individual they choose…

2001 had been a hard year, and I wanted some fun. I got the notion to visit Pinnacles National Park for my birthday, which is at the end of December. The park is dry and rugged, great for hiking anytime except summer, when temperatures often go over 100°. We called motels in the area. The…

On January 3rd I woke up—as you all did—to the news that our government had kidnapped Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela and, as Trump announced, that the United States is going to “run” that country in the future. The right-wing media are celebrating this. For months they’ve continued to flog the lies that the people…

At the end of the previous post I pointed out that the Trump administration is focusing its cruelty on immigrants who haven’t yet been sworn in as citizens, though they may be at various stages in the process. But what if the courts grant Trump’s wishes, and give him the ability to strip anyone—the naturalized…

I’m not talking about the period after the French Revolution. I’m talking about the contemporary situation in the USA. The Memorandum On September 25 Trump issued a memorandum defining certain beliefs—unconnected to any criminal activity—as domestic terrorism. These include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” “support for the overthrow of” the federal government, “extremism on migration, race,…