Dimensionally Barrett

  There’s a Tis-Tok video making the rounds of a woman mocking immigrants who have been separated from their families with an astonishing lack of empathy, a metric ton of bile and racism, and an even greater amount of general ugliness. She reiterates that she finds them sub-human, it’s not even that she cares so little; that it’s actually good that they’re being separated. And she ends with a “what about those poor people arrested on January 6 who were separated from their families? Bet you didn’t think about them!” (Paraphrase; I don’t want to revisit the video and I’m not posting it because I want no link between her and me, at all. Having said that, I do think it’s important to acknowledge, if not watch, these documents. They are documents of our present and our future. We see play out in real time, precisely the result of the Republican strategy. My immediate response to this particular video was a deep sense of loss on this woman’s behalf. She has foresworn her sense of empath...

Source: rothkochapel.org I came around the corner of the Rothko Chapel in Houston by way of the meditation park that abuts the chapel. From speakers set up outside, I could hear the beginning of Dr. King’s address   Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence , delivered April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City. You can download a pdf from the Civil Rights Archive here . Visiting the chapel is always a balm for me. Today was especially necessary. Every year, I give some thought over to and meditate on Dr. King’s lessons and example. Today, however, was more of the moment. Today, Dr. King’s words are more necessary than ever and his address on U.S. involvement in Vietnam may hold more relevance for us than ever. He touches on aspects of, not just America’s disastrous, imperialist foreign policy, but something more innate to the nation.  He found “[t]he war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit” and what followed was a list of elemen...

Smokey, the fur ball of my heart. He has no politics, just cuddles! Last year, I had the idea to produce a series on what to keep our eyes on with the coming administration, but I realized a few things. One is that plenty of other people were doing similar and better work than I. The other is that this is not just a passing from now administration to another, it’s the passage from one era into another. We have now officially entered the U.S. Era of the Oligarchs.  Comparatively little of what we’re going to encounter has to do with Trump. He’s a babbling front for a fairly well-organized coalition of righ-wing evangelicals, billionaires, and the usual gang of Fox News grifters and adjacent hangers-on. Attention should be focused on matters of substance, not what Trump says, regardless of how outrageous or absurd.  By now, people should be aware of the smokescreen tactics, the feints, and the utter bullshit that is his stock in trade.  In the coming days, weeks, months, an...