Alfred McCoy: While America Was Sleeping
After four years of Donald Trump’s fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition.
Majid Naficy: Seven Poems During Trump
You are that apple worm which overnight
Grew into a bloodthirsty dragon
Like Haftvad’s worm in the “Ardashir Chronicles”.
Pierre Tristam: No, Open Sedition Is Not a First Amendment Right
Making up facts and assaulting truth are hallmarks of the Trump cult.
Bill Moyers, Heather Cox Richardson: The Day the Confederate Flag Flew in the United States Capitol
What happened in the 1850s and what happened in the present are very similar in a number of ways, though the symbol of the insurrectionist Confederate army never flew in that nation’s capitol—not once—until January 6, 2021.
John Edward Simms: The Populist
The citizens had become victims of a corrupt elite, The Man said, and that is why they could not succeed in society. The Man explained that the corrupt were parasites who sucked the life out of a strong people.
Christine Rhein: The President’s Clothes
the drape made to cover any backside,
the pleats to hide extra-
deep pockets. Of course, you can take it
to the bank.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: This Is America
We’re not asking you to shoot them like you shoot us, we’re asking you to NOT shoot us like you don’t shoot them…
Walden Bello: The United States Has Entered a Frightening Weimar Era
The violent storming of the Capitol by pro-Trump extremists underlines the face of crises to come.
Jessica Corbett: Progressives Back Rep. Cori Bush’s Resolution to Expel Lawmakers Who Incited Violent Siege of Capitol
The siege of the Capitol came after an inflammatory speech by the president and as over 100 Republicans in Congress were in the process of contesting the Electoral College victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
Tom Engelhardt: Saying Goodbye to the Con-Man-in-Chief
De-mining America After The Donald
Peter Lake: On Republicanism, Before and After Trump
A good deal of recent commentary about the Republican Party conceives of it as a Trumpist rump devoid of any ideology save the acquisition and maintenance of power[….] This is nonsense.
David Adès: Tomorrow
the day ticks inexorably by with its seepage of light, and I note the stirring in the air
as neither warning nor blessing
Michael Simms: The Great Conjunction
I think of the sun rising between
great standing stones,
and the Persians gathering for Yaldā Night
to eat pomegranates
and recite the poems of Hafez.
Paul Buchheit: How Right-Wing Conservatives Have Laid Waste to America for 50 Years
Thanks to a half century of insidious “trickle-down” philosophy—which astoundingly continues to be preached by many of the super-rich—inequality has stretched our nation nearly to the breaking point.
