Tag Archives: politics

On Grammys and Afghanistan

A while ago I wrote about some work I did, more than a year and a half ago, during the fall of Kabul, to help evacuate the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. That effort, laid out very well by Daily … Continue reading

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Our Empty Future

In 383 A.D. when the Roman legions pulled out of their centuries old occupation of the British Isle, there were about 3.6 million people living in England south of Hadrian’s wall. Four hundred years later, when at last people started … Continue reading

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Wars of Nostalgia

Things move slowly, for a long time, and then very fast. Europe has long become a museum to its own past; which is why we love it. We walk the cobblestone streets; dine in the ancient taverns under empty castles … Continue reading

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Kaplan on Order

Continuing on, adding some thoughts here about “The Tragic Mind” by Robert D. Kaplan, the issue of order continues to weigh on me. When I was a fellow at the George W. Bush Institute, and before, I was part of … Continue reading

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Robert D. Kaplan’s “The Tragic Mind”

This short book is one of Kaplan’s most personal. Kaplan has been a foreign correspondent and has written many books about the struggles of politics under the tyranny of geography in faraway places. Unlike most of his other works, “The … Continue reading

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On Conservative Reaction

It’s hard for me to imagine the excitement people must have felt when they first got their hands on John Locke’s “First and Second Treatises of Government”. Emerging from tyranny, the wickedness of a vile nobility, absolute monarchy, the horrible … Continue reading

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Ozymandias (Harry Melling in Buster Scruggs)

I have become haunted by this poem by Percy Shelley, particularly as read by Harry Melling in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”. Melling is a genius, probably the only good thing to come out of the Harry Potter series. Shelley … Continue reading

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Our Age of Un-Ideas

Listening to the United Nations General Assembly today, which I do out of habit not interest, was uninspiring. The Iranians blasted ‘hegemony’ (whatever that means); the Argentines complained about how the U.S. treats Cuba (and demanded the Falkland Islands back). … Continue reading

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The Approaching Event

The Dogon, who live in cliff dwellings nestled into the sides of a mountain range in central Mali have star charts that show Serius B, the white dwarf star that accompanies Serius A. If you climb the cliff-side (I have) … Continue reading

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More on Money

One (of the many) issues which caused me to quit social media (Facebook and Twitter specifically) was the monetization of ‘interactions’ – likes and shares and retweets. People with many ‘followers’, generating lots of ‘views’ or ‘engagements’ were able to … Continue reading

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