Across the United States and most of the developed world, there is a growing awareness of the problems caused by over…
Nonfiction
Scrabble Can Build or Break Friendship
My Sunday morning began with a Wall Street Journal article about Scrabble. The story, which featured scrappy young Ni…
Last Week This Week 6-5-16
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The Burn Pit Registry
It started with a cough none of us could get rid of. Sure I smoked. Lots of us smoked but the non-smokers had it too,…
Last Week This Week 5-29-16
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Last Week This Week 5-22-16
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The Bloodiest American War Many Americans Have Never Heard Of
The title, which I selected myself, is a trick. Most citizens of the United States of America know their war his…
Last Week This Week 5-15-16
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Last Week This Week 5-8-16
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David Rieff’s In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies
In At The Mind’s Limits, a series of essays reflecting on his time spent in the Nazi concentration camps, Jean …
Last Week This Week 5-1-16
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Last Week This Week 4-24-16
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How to Mock a Dictator (and Get Away With It)
The German government, a coalition of Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Soci…
Last Week This Week 4-17-16
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Not Quite Ready to Die in the Anthropocene
(Originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian) The recent Paris Climate Conference has been called the last best ch…
Last Week This Week 4-10-16
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Rise of the Robots – Downfall of Humans?
What purpose does our economy serve—why do we seek greater profit? What does profit do for an individual, an in…
Week in Review 4-3-16
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Wrath-Bearing Tree Review 3/27/16
"But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the f…
The Enduring Legacy of Alexander Hamilton
It has come to my attention that there exists an award-winning Broadway musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilt…
The Unusually Literal World of Bowe Bergdahl
Military hyperbole is at the heart of Serial’s second season. Sarah Koenig has gambled that she can take a simp…
Proposal for Primary Reform: Demote Iowa and New Hampshire
Many Americans have been noticing, with more frequency, the inconvenient truth that our democratic system, by design,…
Bernie Sanders Wins in Iowa!
Photo Credit: J. David Ake, AP. Senator Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane. Regardless of what the official results might…
A Response to A Defense of Moderate, American Socialism
This essay is a short response to the great recent analysis on Socialism in America by my colleague on this…
Wrath of UCMJ: Against Crushing Bowe Bergdahl
Americans have become jaded by injustice. Wealthy and elitist citizens like Robert Durst and John du Pont bully, rape…
Bryan Hurt: The Next Ambassador to France
In a literary culture full of “McPoems” and hand-wringing over the homogenization of literature because of a supposed…
Star Wars: The Force Awakens–It Will Be Watched
By Adrian Bonenberger I wrote a long essay about Lindsay Graham’s candidacy a few months ago, when Craig Whitlock br…
Matthew Hefti’s A Hard and Heavy Thing
It’s not a suicide note; it’s a love song. Amazon • Barnes & Noble
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It’s Still Not Enough: Comments on the Paris Climate Accord
The long-awaited Paris Climate Accord has been finished and is widely reported to be the most successful and ambitiou…
Facile and Frequent: Our Ignorant Social Media Debates
By Matthew J. Hefti I can’t count the number of variations I’ve seen on this meme on social media. It has reached the…
Republican Reactionaries and the Road to Fascism
The Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote the following lines in his great work On Liberty: “A party of orde…
It’s All So Familiar; It’s All So Heartbreaking
Today, November 24th, 2015, Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Laquan McDonald in …
Are We Still Charlie Hebdo?: The Growing Dissonance between Extremism and Free Speech
I started preparing this essay a month or two ago to collect my thoughts about the after effects of the Charlie Hebdo…
Killing is Easy
Killing is the easiest thing in the world, easier than sex. Easier than raising a family or bringing a child into the…
Do Nazis Dream of WWII Dystopian Future Pasts?
The tired, simplistic, bargain-basement Cold War narrative of WWII sucks and it’s time we got over it. Accordi…
Letter to US #2: It’s Up to You
Dear NRA Members, 2nd Amendment lovers, Fraternal Order of Police members, legislators, judges, voters, prosec…
Why Black Literature Matters
“The Thankful Poor”, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1894 Last month in The Atlantic, Egyptian writer and activist …
Letters to Us: #1. May All Those Who Labor Find Rest
2015.09.06, Labor Day
Dear America,
You inspi…
The Racist Arguments For, Against Gun Control
Gun violence is deeply entrenched in America. Chances are, if you’ve spent any time outside the Upper East Side of Ma…
Reinhold Messner as Nietzschean Übermensch
One month ago, on July 24, 2015, the sixth and final Messner Mountain Museum opened to the public on the top of a mou…
Thoughts on the Zombie Apocalypse
A piece about who finds zombie narratives compelling and why.
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Dispatch from Greece: Myth, Tragedy, Resistance, and Hope
Herodotus begins his great work by tracing the historical origins of the Persian War to myths involving conflict betw…
Some Thoughts on the Assassination of Osama bin Laden
During my first tour in Afghanistan in 2005, I was one of those who still thought that the war was justified a…
The Death Penalty and State-Sanctioned Violence
A confluence of recent events has led to the practice of capital punishment in America becoming a matter of greater p…
Berlin, and the Trip East
They’re rebuilding Prussian Berlin. Not exactly the way it was before World War II, but Prussia is unquestionab…
Curzio Malaparte: Great & Anonymous WWII Writer
How World War II gets remembered isn’t accurate, and for Curzio Malaparte, it's not even true. Not the …
Why Don’t Afghans Love Us: Elliot Ackerman’s Green on Blue
There aren’t many “literary” fiction books out about Afghanistan, and almost none authored by…
The Land of the Balaklava
“Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death rode the six …
On Gun Violence and the Second Amendment
America has a problem with violence, and specifically gun violence. This is a fact, not an opinion, and is confirmed …