“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
Maybe this extended metaphor describes this summer of 2026, on the 513th day of Trump’s second term. You and I and other friends and family are having dinner in someone’s multi-story older home. We’re packed into a large dining room. We have good food before us. Our cars are in the driveway. We have money in our pockets. The sun is out. All through dinner though, plaster has been […]
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1 It’s been 16 years since I left teaching. As another retired friend said this week, “That feels like another life.” I don’t miss it. Nostalgia has always struck me as a dead end. Move or fade away I’ve always thought. But memory is different as long as one acknowledges one’s failures, as long as memory does not get mixed up with a dismissal of losses or regrets. I’m coming […]
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“Glyph” raises the ethical stakes even more. Set in a cultural moment defined by an unsteady relationship to reality — that is, right about now — it depicts people accustomed to scrolling by human atrocities on social media. Passive-voice headlines prop up the illusion that no one is responsible for them. Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid are shot for sport; asylum seekers are firebombed; journalists turn up in body bags. […]
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Maybe I’m making that terrible mistake of imagining I know something about the inner lives of our crew of national leaders and tech edge lords – Trump and Musk, Altman, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Andreessen, so many others in this American epoch of brutality and decay. Actually, I imagine emptiness, a zone of disinterest or worse, a generalized, free-floating contempt. Not a howling void, but a brightly lit, almost blinding echo […]
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