On the morning of 28 October 2018 Robert Bowers walked into a suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania synagogue filled with worshippers. He was armed with an assault rifle and several handguns. Bowers proceeded to kill eleven people and wound six. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. Continue reading
The prospect of drastic climate change is back in the news. But, for all too many people it is just that, a news item. It is like other eye-grabbing stories: a bit scary, but also happening somewhere else and at some other time. Of course, if you happen to be at that other place or approximate to that time (the latest examples would be the Florida Panhandle in mid-October and Mexico’s southwestern coast in late October), things get more immediate, more real. But otherwise it is theory. Examine your own sense of urgency as you read on. Continue reading
If you look up the meaning of the term “reactionary,” you will probably get something like the following: “A reactionary is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which they believe possessed characteristics that are . . . absent from the contemporary status quo of a society.” Continue reading
The United States is politically fragmenting. It would seem that the various cultural and ideological stresses impacting the nation are destabilizing the country’s two traditional political parties. Continue reading
Julian Assange is the Australian founder of WikiLeaks—a website dedicated to the public’s right to know what governments and other powerful organizations are doing. WikiLeaks pursues this goal by posting revelatory documents, often acquired unofficially, that bring to light the criminal behavior that results in wars and other man-made disasters. Because WikiLeaks’ very existence encourages “leaks,” government officials fear the website, and particularly dislike Julian Assange. Continue reading
If you search the topic boycotts on Google you immediately realize how historically common they are. There are a lot to choose from, and one of the first listed is the 1769 boycott instituted by the First Continental Congress against Great Britain over the issue of “taxation without representation.” That makes a boycott against a perceived oppressive power an integral part of American heritage. Continue reading
Among the more egregious movements now active on the American scene are those that seek to undermine the expression of reality within the public sphere. A good example of this is the long-running effort of some Protestant fundamentalists who seek to challenge the notion of evolution in public school textbooks and classrooms. This particular effort not only pits the unprovable religious beliefs of a relatively small number of ideologues against one of the best-demonstrated scientific theories of the modern age, but also seeks to shut down the public’s “right to know” the difference between opinion and fact. Continue reading
For all those who in 2016 closed their eyes, held their noses and took a leap into the unknown by voting for Donald Trump, it is time to pry open those eyelids, gaze upon what they have wrought, and smell the decay pervading the country’s public sphere. And indeed, it seems that growing numbers have, rather belatedly, noticed the signs of moral degeneracy coming from the Oval Office. What took them so long? Continue reading
The Republican Party has been falling apart for at least 54 years. The official start of this process can be dated to 1964, when the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater captured the GOP nomination for president. When asked his plans if elected, he replied, “I do not plan to pass laws. I plan to repeal them.” That was a signal that he was intent on changing the role of government. His goal was to narrow the government down to the basic tasks of defending the realm (the military), enforcing a diminishing number of federal laws (the courts), and providing only those few necessary services that the “free market” could not take care of. Continue reading
The United States is at war with itself. It is actually a function of the nation’s heritage—the past contesting specific aspects of a modern present. This results in traditions in flux. Some examples of this are the racism, the pseudo-frontier mentality, and the religious fundamentalism that persist into the present moment. Continue reading
In a 2 April 2018 interview in the Atlantic, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly declared that the Israelis “have a right to live in their own land just like the Palestinians.” It is a problematic assumption, given that the Israelis’ “own land” is the land they took away from the Palestinians. This, and much else, has been either forgotten or ignored by the Saudi crown prince. Continue reading
For much of human history, the idea of freedom had little meaning. This was because life was, as Thomas Hobbes put it, “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And while he thought this descriptor applied to life outside of society, for a long time it did not really matter—life within pre-modern societies often had the same limiting character. Religious belief in these same times reflected this depressing fact by asserting that there was no hope of meaningful freedom in this life. To achieve it you would have to die and go to Heaven. So, what set you free was death. Continue reading
Back in October 2016 I wrote an analysis entitled “Natural Born Killers?” It described and commented on research on the origins of human violence published in the science journal Nature. The conclusion offered in the article is that humans come from an evolutionary line that has the capability for violent behavior genetically built into it. It is a reasonable hypothesis. As just about every serious historian knows, the human propensity for lethal violence goes back as far as the evidence can take us—so far that there can be little doubt that this trait is inherited from our pre-human ancestors. Continue reading
If you go to the Wikipedia page that gives a timeline of U.S. foreign military operations between 1775 and 2010, you are likely to come away in shock. It seems that ever since the founding of the country, the United States has been at war. It is as if Americans just could not (and still cannot) sit still, but had to (and still have to) force themselves on others through military action. Often this is aimed at controlling foreign resources, thus forcing upon others the consequences of their own capitalist avarice. At other times the violence is spurred on by an ideology that confuses U.S. interests with civilization and freedom. Only very rarely is Washington out there on the side of the angels. Regardless, the bottom line seems to be that peace has never been a deeply ingrained cultural value for the citizens of the United States. As pertains to foreign policy, America’s national culture is a war culture. Continue reading
In the last few weeks President Trump has gone through a series of defining moments, in which his disturbing rhetorical reactions to historical developments have opened a window on his sense of the world and the nation. Continue reading
In case you haven’t noticed, the United States is a country deeply divided on a large number of basic issues: racial issues, gender issues, issues of sexual preference, the role of government in society, the role of religious views in shaping laws, and so on. Influential institutions, such as media outlets, are being labeled as “left” or “right” depending on how they report or relate on these issues. Continue reading
There is a lot of violence in the United States, and if you look at the news it appears that things are getting worse. The nation is armed to the teeth, which means that any out-of-control angry person can vent in lethal fashion. Or, maybe they can choose to vent in the European style by using their car as a battering ram. Continue reading
There is an ongoing reality that is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East. And though most Americans are ignorant of the fact, and many of those who should be in the know would deny it, the suffering flows directly from decisions taken by Washington over the last 27 years. Continue reading
You would think that learning from experience is a common thing to do. But, for the Democratic Party’s leadership this seems not to be the case. After the landslide victory of Trump’s version of the Republican Party in the 2016 national election, it is fair to say that the Democratic Party is in big trouble. As Senator Bernie Sanders has observed, the party needs to reform. Continue reading
For those who might wonder why foreign policy makers repeatedly make bad choices, some insight might be drawn from the following analysis. The action here plays out in the United States, but the lessons are probably universal. Continue reading
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Israel’s ‘psychological obstacles to peace’
Posted on October 24, 2018 by Lawrence Davidson
There is a difference between understanding and excusing. I might understand the arguments of Donald Trump and John Bolton, but by virtue of that very understanding I find their arguments inexcusable. The same goes for the arguments of the Israeli leadership and their diaspora allies. I hear their words and find that they can never excuse their actions. Continue reading →