John Foster is a librarian, writer, and musician based in Cleveland, Ohio. When not writing or attending shows, he can usually be found cursing at his television during Arsenal matches.
There is something to be said for relatability in a politician. Even Franklin Roosevelt, whose background was as firmly patrician as that of any US president, managed through the medium of fireside chats delivered over the radio to convince Americans the he understood their situation and cared about their fate. (More…)
It is now nearly ten months since Donald Trump took up the reins of power in Washington. It is fair to say that this has been the oddest, and perhaps the most disturbing period since Watergate. Mr. Trump and his associates have been busy philosophizing with hammers, speaking as if they were making the word of their agenda flesh, but governing with a mixture of bluster and indecision. (More…)
It will be a couple of weeks before you read this, but I was reminded this morning that today (October 7th) is the one year anniversary of the coming to light of Mr. Trump’s Discourse on the Proper Wooing and Treatment of Women, so eloquently delivered to Billy Bush of Access Hollywood. (More…)
Nothing so perfectly illustrates the singular position of the United States among industrialized democracies as the propensity of its citizens to shoot each other in groups four or more. (More…)
Out of respect for the editors of this fine publication, I will resist the temptation to make some joke about spending a relaxing morning sipping fine Namibian #covfefe. The Internet has been ablaze with humor on this theme, but at this point it is a matter of liberals (mostly) laughing to keep from crying. (More…)
It is hard to get away from the impression that we are epigones. This is not, or not merely, the case due to the carnage wrought by Mr. Trump and his various protégés on the none too august institutions of American liberal democracy. (More…)
Of the many malign effects that the Trump regime has had on modern civilization (a term one uses advisedly at the best of times), one of the most alarming has been the degradation of epistemology. For the average person, the question of how one knows what one knows is, quite literally, an academic matter. (More…)
One occasionally hears it said that just when you think something is foolproof they come out with a better quality of fool. Alarming as it is, this is one of those principles so universally admitted that one hardly thinks that any gentleman (or gentlewoman) would deny it. (More…)
It all started so innocently. On a Saturday afternoon at Comic-con, the cast of the popular CW Network show Supergirl was putting on a pretty standard session to recap their previous season and preview the upcoming one. (More…)
This has been one of the more unfortunate weeks of late for the Trump Administration. For a regime that has been shambling from disaster to crisis, that’s really saying something. (More…)
Science fiction as a genre has expanded dramatically in terms of content in the last half-century, but its continued importance rests on its accomplishing one of two tasks (or a combination of both). (More…)
Even at this late date, the influence of the Russian Revolution would be difficult to overstate. It was, in its most significant political contours, similar to the French Revolution a hundred and thirty years previously. Like its predecessor, it wrought far-reaching changes to the political formations of world politics and to the language used to describe them. (More…)