Chuck Collins: Bring Back Eisenhower Socialism
During Eisenhower’s two terms between 1953 and 1960, the wealthy paid a top tax rate of 91 percent on incomes over the equivalent of $1.7 million for an individual and $3.4 million for a couple. That crafty pinko Eisenhower also presided over government-subsidized mortgages that helped millions of Americans purchase their first home and attend college for free.
John F. Kennedy: The Purpose of Poetry
In a 1963 eulogy for Robert Frost, John F. Kennedy described poetry as “the means of saving power from itself.”
Thomas Sayers Ellis: Godzilla’s Avocado
An artichoke’s heart does not pump ketchup.
It pumps pesto,
oily, olive clots of guacamole.
Louie Skipper: Staying put, the contented man looks inward
A poem in my own hand
that goes on without my help or knowledge.
Peter Makuck: Grackles
But after a few minutes
they become bold and
like dark thoughts
return
Karen J. Greenberg: Donald Trump Is Annihilating Truth Itself
The focus on Donald Trump’s blatant and persistent lying only serves to obfuscate other no less destructive methods of deceiving the public that preceded him into the White House and helped create the conditions that make the president’s lies so destabilizing.
Nathan Williams: Experiencing Firsthand Failures of UN Climate Politics, I Realized Civil Disobedience Only Route Left
We exist in the midst of planetary tragedy. A tragedy that demands we face the truth and ask the hardest questions about how we now must live.
Video: Patti Smith sings “The Tyger” by William Blake
Through song and story, Patti Smith gives us new insight into the transcendent genius of William Blake.
James Wright: Northern Pike
We prayed for the game warden’s blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
George Monbiot: The Unlearning
Boarding school, a peculiarly British form of abuse, has devastating impacts not only on the boarders, but on those they grow up to dominate.
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J S Davies: Why Aren’t People in the US Rising Up Like Those Elsewhere in the World?
Without a mass movement continually pushing and prodding for real change and holding politicians accountable—for their policies as well as their words—our neoliberal rulers assume that they can safely ignore the concerns and interests of ordinary people.
Michael T. Klare: Welcome to a World in Which All Hell Is Breaking Loose
A prelude to what can be expected in the future was provided by the events of August and September 2017, when the military was called upon to provide disaster relief in the wake of three particularly powerful hurricanes — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — at the very moment California and the state of Washington were being ravaged by powerful wildfires.
Stephen Pyne: California wildfires signal the arrival of a planetary fire age
We can envision Earth entering a fire age comparable to the ice ages of the Pleistocene, complete with the pyric equivalent of ice sheets, pluvial lakes, periglacial outwash plains, mass extinctions, and sea level changes.
