Hannah Arendt famously wrote, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer
I drove home to San Francisco from New Mexico last weekend, and in the western Mojave desert of California I passed in quick succession three vast renewable energy sites: the first was three solar concentrator power plants, the kind where rings of mirrors reflect sun onto a central tower, which
I and we are wildlife whose natural habitat is libraries, when it comes to physical space, because they contain books in which minds roam free through time and space, encounter Dogen and Dante and Sappho and Black Elk and others long since gone, meet ideas and possibilities, meet each other
Twenty years ago, on August 29, 2005, a huge hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. New Orleans's levees failed, as had been predicted, and much of the city went underwater. Although the authorities had issued a mandatory evacuation order, they had provided no resources to the many who were
Someone made this extra-grumpy meme about the fact that football player and podcaster Travis Kelce proposed to pop superstar Taylor Swift and now they're engaged, or rather about the fact that of course lots of people and media outlets are paying lots of attention, which Grumpy Meme believes
There's a reason why sports teams don't chant "I believe that we will lose" before a game, a reason so obvious that I'm pretty sure it needs no explanation in that context. Words have power. They not only describe but shape reality;
On July 31, the Washington Post ran a story noting that the National Museum of American History, a branch of the Smithsonian, took down a portion of an exhibit about presidential impeachment concerning Trump's two impeachments. The piece quoted an unnamed source: "A person familiar with the
The ability to tell your own story is already a victory.
I've been traveling, which means being blessedly offline a lot more than usual, but I'm settled for a while, and there's so much to say. Before I say anything elaborate or essayistic, I just want to say THERE IS A LOT OF RESISTANCE GOING
This is the forty-fifth post since I launched on February 2. It's been a wild ride and a lot of fun and quite thrilling to see so many of you join me (there are a bit over 30k subscribers now). To celebrate I dropped the – strictly optional but
On July 2, the jury delivered a guilty verdict on some of the charges against music mogul Sean Combs for his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women with the help of his extensive staff and deep pockets. He's also accused in many civil suits of sexual abuse
I write while staying in one of the great forests of British Columbia, a forest in which the inextricability of life from death is gorgeously evident. Several kinds of fern spring from this soil, some taller than me, birds move among the branches, many kinds of berries abound. It is
Yesterday I wrote, "The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn't making that clear. It's when you assemble the whole picture that you have to raise the question if the intention is to destroy this country and whether this country is
The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn't making that clear. When I was a kid, there was a popular phrase--"what if they had a war and no one came?" What if we were in a war and no one noticed?
It has never been easy to be an immigrant to the United States – for most economic, linguistic, and cultural barriers make life here a struggle, even if they were escaping a worse life elsewhere. The utterly evil bill that just squeaked through in Congress, among other harms, aims to make
We have distant enemies, the enemies of truth, justice, human rights, and environmental protection, and they are easy to recognize and oppose. We also have near enemies, the cynics and defeatists among us who in theory agree with our goals but in practice are forever sabotaging them by insisting that
It's high summer in San Francisco and apricots, peaches, cherries, and corn are in season at the farmers markets and kids are out of school and Pride weekend is here, and on the days when the fog doesn't hang over us, the sunlight is glorious. Beautiful,
For a lot of people in public life women's rights are something to make a lot of noise about when it's convenient and sweep aside when it's not. Or so it seems with the rush to forgive and whitewash or just deny sexual abuse,
I was writing about last week's news when I was interrupted by this week's news, – I joked a few days ago that the whole country would love a slow news week, and I sure would. For one thing we could think about where we are and
No one can ignore or smooth over or play down that the Trumpists are going full authoritarian now. So we must go full resistance, and it's good to see that many elected officials are addressing this emergency forcefully and fearlessly, tens of thousands have been acting in solidarity