“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
Edward Hoagland is dead, who helped me to see and fall in love. He died in February. In the outpouring of media trash and catastrophe, I missed it. From the summer of 1977 and into the early 80’s I read all of his essays . His observations on turtles, tigers, bears, wolves, rivers and walking and woods felt as if I had found Thoreau’s more prickly, direct and ironic descendent, but someone just as […]
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Welcome to mid-July 2026 when Canadian wildfire smoke lies upon us, The Atlantic reports that we are entering a post-literate age when books and serious, in depth reading will become the pleasure and skill-set of a tiny part of the American population, where twice as many people placed a bet last year as read even 1 book, where ICE death squads roam the nation killing as freely as Murder Inc. , and responsible […]
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How could this happen, the genocide of six million, the mass murder of countless millions? How do functionaries of the nation reach the point where they willingly participate in systematically destroying other human beings? Heredity had nothing to do with it. No intrinsically evil people exist. There is no ‘evil’ gene. Germans are no more uniquely evil than Americans are uniquely good. Upbringing and environment can be contributing factors. Let […]
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I Hans Frank, Governor General of Poland, “wanted a Reich under the law (230)” as long as the law could be used to justify anything. One pointed the law toward a desired end and drafted laws that fulfilled that end. Like Himmler , Frank wished for the elimination of “all feelings of pity (217).”@ At 18, he was already anti-Semitic and right-wing. Fanaticism works on the young. Its certitude appeals to their […]
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