Many years ago Buckminster Fuller, one of the greatest thinkers, engineers, and observers of life in all its micro and macro forms, suggested that democracy could be expressed more efficiently if people were allowed to vote by phone.
Nation
Letter From Mississippi
Hey Y’all,
Like most of y’all, my wife, Monica, is livid about the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Officer. Moreover, she is perplexed by my seeming lack of concern. She can’t understand why I’m not as outwardly angry as everyone else as she walks around the house, givin’ me that scolding black woman side-eye.
Letter from Charlie
Your editor passed on C. Leigh McInnes’ “Letter” to Charles Keil, who has long grasped imperatives of African American nationists. Keil responded with his own letter…
Brotherman
ICYMI, George Floyd’s brother Philonise and nephew Brendan…
Click Read More for a bigger screen.
Nine Minutes (i.m. of George Floyd)
Five hundred forty seconds.
Time in which an athlete
Can run a mile and a half.
A couple can have rushed,
Workday-morning sex.
A teacher can teach about the stars.
A killer can keep his knee
On the neck of a man.
Simple Justice & Complex Protests
Mass uprisings are complicated ecosystems. This one especially, perhaps, because of how unbelievably complicated our world has become.
Flakes of Wisdom
On the day that the fascist gangster in the White House declares anti-fascist activism as such a “terrorist organization,” I find myself wondering what words we will use to greet and know each other.
Street Legal
One bright spot–Trump’s tweet about his “vicious dogs and ominous weapons”–most protected man in the world and he’s scared–thinking of those gladiator movies where someone throws a spear at the Emperor–if only.
Pouring Salt on a Wound (Media Criticism)
A Salt Lake City cop was filmed throwing an elderly bystander to the pavement in the first 50 seconds of the video posted below. It’s just one of many brutal acts that have been committed by cops under pressure from protesters in cities all over America. (I’m not claiming that pressure has been all good. I doubt the woman who blew up a police van in New York with a molotov cocktail is George Floyd’s sister under the skin.) What distinguishes this scene of brutality, though, is the nada response of one reporter who witnessed it.
Notes on Being Down But Not Out with Hip-Hop
The author of this piece wrote it before the killing of George Floyd. (See his postscript on that score below.) Osborne notes “recent real-world events take precedence over bitching about good or bad rappers.” Your editor takes Osborne’s point but his act of imagination isn’t out of time. His refusal to buy into ugly images of black men is, in its sweet way, a contribution to the struggle against real killer cops.
Burning Down the House? Ben Carson and U.S. Housing Policy
MAGA-ites have leaned on Ben Carson’s bland invocations of color-blindness in the wake of George Floyd’s murder so it’s a good time to re-up on Brendan Williams’ lucid account of Carson’s deplorable record at the Department of Housing and Urban Development…
First Day Out (A Blue Sky Day Turns Grey)
Like a lot of New Yorkers, I’m missing the outside.
Inequality & Two Cheers for Capitalism
In these days of pandemic isolation, as the world reels from one gut punch to the next, the future looks anything but rosy. While the monied float on their yachts and in their two million dollar isolation rentals in the Hampton’s, the rest of us live in fear and anxiety.
Alter Cocker
Even after this crisis is over, I will never stop feeling old. That’s what I’ve learned from the coronavirus. Old is not wise. Not just archaic. It is susceptible, assailable, penetrable—vulnerable.
The Pharisee and the Coronavirus
I’ve been thinking about the Old Testament prophets lately. I distrust end-is-nigh-ism; that “end” is often just the destruction of some solipsistic fantasy. Life goes on in whatever seemingly hobbled form. The fundamentalists I grew up with understood those OT doom-sayers quite literally. The surreal omens promised a real-world destruction always five minutes from a moment exactly like now. But that now never comes.