Writing about it didn’t, alas, prevent it from happening. In the late 1940s, Gore Vidal lived in Guatemala, where he shared a house with the writer Anaïs Nin, lived on the cheap, and wrote Dark Green, Bright Red. Published in 1950, this undeservedly obscure novel describes how the operatives of the World Banana Company work… Continue reading Not-So-Magical Realism
In the high-vaulted main hall of Union Station in Washington, DC, the sound of a drone attack interrupts the morning rush hour. A dozen people suddenly freeze in place. Some point up into the air. Others crouch with hands over their heads in a vain attempt at self-protection. The commuters on their way to and… Continue reading The White Noise of War
The song Take This Job and Shove It hit No. 1 on the country music charts in 1978. The blue-collar worker in the song that Johnny Paycheck made famous was working up the nerve to leave the factory after 15 years on the production line. It wasn’t necessarily the best time to mouth off at… Continue reading Take This Job and….
The Great Recession may be officially over but the United States is stuck in a prolonged economic crisis, with joblessness hovering around 10 percent. Millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans are fed up. They want jobs. But many lawmakers are reluctant to invest more revenue in job creation because of concerns over the national debt.… Continue reading More Jobs, Less War
With the unemployment rate still hovering stubbornly around 10 percent, everyone is talking jobs. The White House is pressing for an extension of a subsidized jobs program that was part of the 2009 stimulus package. Candidates in the upcoming midterm elections are touting their own schemes to boost employment. The Tea Party movement and the… Continue reading We Have to Trim the Bloated Pentagon Budget
When he took over the top job in the Soviet Union in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev wasn’t tasked with — nor did he envision — dismantling the Soviet system. Yet after six years of economic and political reforms, the unintended consequence of Gorbachev’s restructuring was the 74-year-old empire’s collapse. In his prescient Granta essay on Gorbachev… Continue reading Gorbachev of the Pentagon
My neighbor two doors down flies a Confederate flag alongside his more conventional stars and stripes. He drives a pickup truck, sports a number of provocative tattoos, and is about as white as Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. I don’t know if he would vote for either Sarah or Newt, but he’s a pretty conservative… Continue reading “They” Are Not Taking “Our” Jobs
It seems to be an open-and-shut case. Nuclear weapons are bad. It’s best for the world if no more countries acquire nuclear weapons. Iran is currently engaged in uranium enrichment that could eventually produce a nuclear weapon. It built a secret facility to advance this program and might now be building another one. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s… Continue reading Dealing with Iran
To: Leon Panetta, Langley HQ From: Operative 650, Sana’a office Re: Memo XE1850 Leon: Greetings from Yemen. It’s been a year since I corresponded directly with you. Perhaps you remember my 2009 memo in which I recommended outsourcing our assassinations – er, sorry, our “targeted killings” – to China. I suggested that China would do… Continue reading Repackaging Assassination
Except for a few residual Know-Nothings, Americans wouldn’t think twice about voting for a Catholic president. In the last election, President Obama abolished the presidential race taboo. And we’re likely to have a woman president in the next decade or so. Of course, we haven’t elected a Catholic since Kennedy, we might not break the… Continue reading My Weak Muslim President