In Pittsburgh, where I worked for two months in 1986, I breathed clean air. The steel mills along the rivers leading into town were mottled with rust. The Steelers still played in Three Rivers Stadium in those days, but it was the glass towers of PPG Plaza — originally the headquarters of Pittsburgh Plate Glass… Continue reading Trump: Invasive Species
So, let me see if I’ve got this right. North Korea has been pushing its ally China to rein in the United States. Pyongyang is worried that Washington is about to launch a preemptive attack, so it has tried to use whatever minimal amount of influence it has to persuade China to use its considerable… Continue reading Trump Is from Mars
Even before the election of Donald Trump — and his extraordinary declaration that the media are the “enemies of the people” — U.S. journalism was in trouble. According to Gallup polling, American trust in mass media plummeted from an already low 40 percent in 2015 to a historic low of 32 percent in September 2016.… Continue reading I Am the Enemy
The political theorist Thomas Hobbes warned in the 17th century that without the modern state and its sovereign control of territory, humanity would slip back into a state of nature in which violence was uncontrolled and ever-present. “A war of all against all” would break out, he wrote, in which neighbor would turn against neighbor.… Continue reading The Cyberhacking of All Against All
Dystopias have recently achieved full-spectrum dominance. Kids are drawn to such stories — The Giver, Hunger Games — like Goths to piercings. TV shows about zombie apocalypses, pandemics, and technology run amok inspire binge watching. We’ve seen the world-gone-truly-bad a thousand times over on the big screen. This apocalyptic outpouring has been so intense that… Continue reading Trump: Doubling Down on Dystopia
It has all the hallmarks of a compelling thriller. A U.S. president willing to put his reputation on the line in the interests of peace and prosperity prepares to reach out to Russia. The Kremlin shows some cautious interest. But before the president can propose anything substantial, his opponents do everything possible to derail his… Continue reading Trump and Russia: Shortest Reset Ever
The first signs of decline are physical. Citizens don’t grow as tall. They don’t live as long. They start killing each other in large numbers. Sounds like the post-mortem for a society that disappeared long ago, a conclusion that archaeologists deliver after sifting through bone fragments and pottery shards. Why, the puzzled scholars ask, did… Continue reading Making America Mediocre Again
Let’s hope that Donald Trump is the political version of syrup of ipecac. The American system has been sick to its stomach for some time. Then along comes Donald Trump, America swallows him (hook, line, and sinker), and the system experiences gut-churning convulsions ever since. According to the most hopeful medical prognosis, America will eventually… Continue reading A Global Counter-Trump Movement Is Taking Shape
Donald Trump rode to power on a wave of fear. During his presidential campaign, he portrayed terrorists, immigrants, the Chinese government and many other people and entities as threats to America. But nothing proved more powerful as a mobilizing force than his anti-Islamic pronouncements. Other presidential candidates were careful to distinguish between what they considered… Continue reading Trump v. Islam
During the presidential campaign, when he was still battling an array of Republican heavyweights for the party’s nomination, Donald Trump indulged in a bit of hubris that would have buried a more conventional candidate. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Trump said at a campaign… Continue reading Killer Presidents
James Mattis visited Asia this month on his first foreign trip as the new head of the Pentagon. It was less a get-acquainted visit than a damage control tour. His boss, President Donald Trump, had threatened to escalate tensions with China and prevent North Korea from launching a nuclear-capable ICBM. He’d accused Japan of currency… Continue reading Will Trump Complete the Pivot to Asia?
Donald Trump is holding up the severed head of the Statue of Liberty. It’s a striking image for a magazine cover. But it’s not the front of the Nation or the ACLU newsletter. It’s this week’s issue of Der Spiegel, Germany’s version of Time Magazine. To punctuate the point, one of Spiegel’s articles declares Donald… Continue reading Forget America First: It’s America Alone
The resistance to Donald Trump’s presidency has been strong, sustained, and multi-dimensional. The women’s march after the inauguration deluged DC in a sea of pink hats and generated companion protests in an extraordinary 670 cities around the world. My in-box has been full ever since with calls to converge on the White House to protest… Continue reading Dividing the Right and Conquering Trump
PAPER a new play by John Feffer Teacher and student argue over a remark in class. Or a remark about class. Or was it race? Or gender? Take Rashomon, add Mamet, mix in Black Lives Matter, and stand back. Venue: Trinidad Theatre at Fringe HQ (1358 Florida Ave.,… Continue reading Paper
Donald Trump is a worldly fellow. He travels the globe on his private jet. He’s married to a Slovene and divorced from a Czech. He doesn’t speak any other languages, but hey, he’s an American, so monolingualism is his birthright. His fortune depends in large part on the global economy. He has business interests in… Continue reading Globalism of the One Percent
For Obama supporters, the last eight years have been a victory of wise leadership over the forces of darkness in Congress and the world at large. For critics of the outgoing president, Obama could do no right as he plunged the United States into the worst crisis in its 200-plus years of history. Between the… Continue reading Obama the Time Traveler
[I wrote this article about Russian efforts to cultivate Donald Trump as an asset last week for a Korean newspaper where it was published on Sunday. Little did I know that news would break this week of allegations that Russia has a file of damaging information it can use to blackmail President-elect Trump. In that… Continue reading The Russian Honeypot
Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, John Feffer’s striking new dystopian novel, takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. The European Union has broken apart. Multiethnic great powers like Russia and China have shriveled. America’s global military footprint has virtually disappeared and the United States remains… Continue reading Splinterlands
Two days before the November elections, Elizabeth Moreno was driving to the Democratic Party headquarters in Manassas to pick up a list of addresses. She was planning to spend another day of canvassing to get out the vote for her candidate Hillary Clinton. Elizabeth had taken off a full week from her job at one… Continue reading Goodbye, Clinton!
On a wall in Boston, artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo is taking a quiet but historic step forward in U.S.-Iranian relations. His fanciful mural on an air intake structure in Boston’s Dewey Square represents a first. Ghadyanloo, who has completed more than a hundred surrealistic murals in downtown Tehran, is the first Iranian artist to do work… Continue reading The Art of Detente
Review of Robert Boynton, The Invitation-Only Zone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 271 pages The abduction of Japanese citizens by the North Korean government is so fantastical a story that it seems to be the stuff of magical realism. It’s not surprising that so many Japanese refused for so long to believe… Continue reading The Invitation-Only Zone (Review)
How I Became a North Korean, Krys Lee (Viking, 2016), 246 pages It has become harder and harder these days to define what it means to be North Korean. During the heyday of Kim Il Sung, it was much easier to conflate individual North Koreans with their leader, their state, and the country’s prevailing… Continue reading How I Became a North Korean (Review)
Review of John Dower, The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War Two (Haymarket Books, 2017), 160 pages John Dower is one the most preeminent historians of World War II’s Pacific theater and the aftermath of the conflict in Asia. His book War Without Mercy (1986) described the racial component of the… Continue reading The Violent American Century (review)
Shortly after the November elections, a friend sent me a photo via Facebook. It was a sandwich board outside a bookstore in Massachusetts. It read: “Post-apocalyptic fiction has been moved to our current affairs section.” My friend added a note of her own: “Trump’s election should help with sales of your new book.” My gain,… Continue reading From Here to Dystopia
I didn’t vote in the pivotal American election of 2016. Thirty-five years ago, in that unseasonably warm month of November, I was in Antarctica’s Allan Hills taking ice core samples with a hand augur. The pictures I have from that time show my team drilling deep into the blue ice, but what we were actually… Continue reading How Donald Trump Changed Everything (2016-2020)
Shortly after taking office in 1969, President Richard Nixon devised his “madman theory.” It was the height of the Vietnam War, and Nixon believed that he could end the conflict. It just required a bit of unpredictability. “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop… Continue reading Trump the Predictable
Donald Trump might seem like a uniquely American phenomenon. The shape-shifting billionaire huckster reinvented himself first as a TV personality and then as a maverick populist politician. He rode to power on patriotic slogans – Make America Great Again – and tailored his policy prescriptions to specific American constituencies like West Virginia coal miners and… Continue reading What Europe Can Teach Us About Trump
The election of Donald Trump is not only a surprise for many American citizens. It’s a shock to the international community. In fact, the shock might be so severe that it will be the death of the international community. What has happened in the United States is not unprecedented. But, as with most things to… Continue reading The Death of the International Community
In my senior year of college, my Russian teacher pulled me aside. He told me that the CIA was recruiting on campus. I should consider applying for a job. It was 1986. Mikhail Gorbachev had taken the helm of the Soviet Union, but the Cold War was still very much in place. “The CIA?” I… Continue reading Bartleby the American