Dementia is not a punchline. It is a long goodbye. I know this not from headlines or campaign ads, but from my own life: from loved ones whose memories frayed like old cloth, from early slips and stumbles that turned into blank looks and lost names, from the slow, cruel unspooling of a person you […]
Category: Essays (Page 5 of 14)
Marjorie Taylor Greene is once again making the rounds with her “I have regrets” routine, a performance of reflection, gentleness, and Christian humility that materializes only when she’s politically cornered. She thinks we’ve forgotten. She thinks we don’t keep receipts. She thinks we’ll believe her simply because she whispers Jesus like it’s a magic word […]
Karoline Leavitt reminds us so often it practically counts as a devotional ritual: The Trump administration is the most transparent administration in American history. And who are we to question this gospel? Let us instead examine the brilliant examples of this legendary transparency, many examples drawn from just the past few weeks, where Trump’s openness […]
Forty days. Forty days of shutdown, fear, and uncertainty. Forty days of workers without pay, travelers stranded, and families wondering if their next doctor’s visit would be covered. And for what? For nothing. Absolutely nothing. The longest government shutdown in American history has ended not with victory, not with progress, but with surrender. A surrender […]
There is a particular kind of contempt in America that makes my blood boil. It isn’t the kind that comes from hate. Hate is at least honest. It’s the kind that comes from smugness, that quiet moral sneer reserved for those who rely on government assistance to eat, to live, to keep the lights on. […]
“All we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID” — President Donald J. Trump It sounds simple — obvious, even. That’s the trick. Authoritarians have always loved the obvious answer because it disguises the malicious one. The United […]
Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump on the greatest nine months in the history of the presidency. Truly, what a time to be alive — assuming, of course, you can still afford to be. Congratulations, Mr. President, even though inflation is at its highest since February. Prices are soaring like your poll numbers in your […]
I have seen your beauty, America,and I have seen your cruelty.They live side by sideand I tread the road between them. brutus X I. Invocation: The Wound and the Wonder America, my beloved and bewildering country, you are forever suspended between the wound and the wonder. You are not an institution but a condition of […]
Bare, reflective, and waiting for mercy to be restocked. On November 1st, the federal government is set to halt SNAP benefits for millions of Americans. It’s a quiet act of cruelty—bureaucratic, bloodless, and devastating. In response, online chatter has erupted with threats of coordinated shoplifting sprees, a kind of desperate revolt against hunger and neglect. […]
The filibuster is not a law of nature. It’s a self-inflicted wound used to turn cowardice into strategy and accountability into myth. Make no mistake, my friends: the Republican Senate majority wants the government shut down. They always did. Everything you are witnessing is a charade. Whatever nonsense you may have heard, the United States […]