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Showing posts from August, 2020

Dystopia or Oblivion: a discursive fantasy reply to Heather Cox Richardson

 I've touted Heather Cox Richardson frequently and today, I'm touting her again. This is not one of her commentaries/analsyes on how a current move by the administration developed out of historical antecedent, nor is it a look at the evolution of Movement Conservatism into the Republican Party as we know it today. Before reading my post any further, read hers : https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-15-2020-saturday It is a warning, though. It reads as hypothetical, but I detect a tone of agitation that  is typically foreign to the writer's voice. As I read it and reread it, I am struck by its starkness and how it supports a worst-case scenario, one that I've wondered about in my more apocalyptic moments. I wish I could say that there's little to support her post today. However, that's not the case. We have seen the systematic "deconstruction" as Steve Bannon put it, of the functionality of the Federal Government over the past almost four y...

Man is a mad animal: thoughts on Hiroshima

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“Man is a mad animal.” – Orson Welles On the eve of the 75 th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, it’s time for a reassessment of the mental state of the human race. Have we learned anything from the wiping out of hundreds of thousands civilians? On August 6, 1945, the United States became an imperial force. Some have argued it was better to have the U.S.A. than the U.S.S.R. in control and there may be merit in that statement. However, at the end of the day, is the adage about the corrupting aspect of power comes to mind. The decision to employ nuclear weapons against Japan was a signal, not to the Japanese – who were beaten and ready to surrender – but to Russia and yes, yes, to the Japanese in terms of decimating them and punishing them for their imperial hubris(1). An act of supreme barbarism was used as a flexing of devastating leverage to bring the communist state to heel, to put them on guard and be made aware of how mighty we were. It was an act worthy of the most barb...