It really sticks in my craw. But that’s all right. I have a large craw. I suck it down and then I spit it out. I spit it out. According to the The Times of London (behind paywall) last week, Government efforts to cover up one of the worst episodes in British colonial history have […]
Birtherism and the Yearning for Reboot
Who is a conspiracy theorist but a diviner of the world’s order? What is a conspiracy theory but that order? In a world where either God or his plan – the teleological tit – has gone missing, the conspiracy is cold comfort: life has a meaning, though it may be to no one’s liking. Satan, […]
Libya and the End of the American Imperium
Watching the array of opinion on Libya play out over the screen of public pronouncement and positioning has been a marvel, a kind of international and inter-ideological performance art – the Western political mind CAT-scanned, back lit, and thrown onto a blotter. It looks a lot like a Pollack. We’ve got the neocon “freedom agenda,” […]
Dishonest Argument: the Social Divider
The other day I mentioned the argumentative reversal in debate, when one party makes use of the argument against it to try to turn the tables, sort of the way in Aikido, one does not directly counter the opponent, but redirects his attacking force back against him. The party implicitly accepts an argument – without […]
The Arab Revolution: a Case for Realism
If the oldest profession is prostitution, the second oldest pastime (the very oldest being left to the imagination) is heckling. There is, too, no more timeless heckle of the cautious leader than “Why don’t you do something!” Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East In the Middle East crisis, as on other […]