“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
The pictures matter more than the words some political consultant once said so begin with the rectangular frame made by your TV screen. This is the background shot and is meant to be filled with individuals who will clap, hoot, laugh and smile as prompted by Trump and his set-up speakers. As near as I can tell, they are all white. The shot centers on the podium with the Presidential […]
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To the strains of “I’m Proud to Be an American”, Trump emerges from the tunnel, a heaviness in his bearing. He is 6’2” tall and well over 250 pounds, a very big man. The first impression I have is that I do not think a 5’6” or 5’7” Trump would have been elected. Remember all those images of him at the Republican debates, towering over the other candidates? He […]
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Shakespeare understood the desire for absolute power, how it may come to invest itself in one person and how it destroys safeguards meant to protect liberty: “Under what circumstances, Shakespeare asked himself, do … cherished institutions, seemingly deep rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile? Why do large numbers of people knowingly accept being lied to? How does a … Richard III or Macbeth” acquire power?” (1) In the 2nd […]
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Do we all grieve for people we have never met, whose deaths knock us down because of what they have come to represent to us and others? Two or three million Frenchmen and women are said to have come out for Victor Hugo’s funeral procession in Paris in May of 1885. Untold numbers lined the tracks to pay respect to Lincoln’s and FDR’s and Robert Kennedy’s bodies as they […]
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