The great changes, the changes that matter, don’t always announce themselves with the blare of amplified voices or the distant thunder of cannons and bombs. As often as not they take place quietly, moving unnoticed through the crawlspaces of society, and it takes an attentive ear to subtle cues and whispers in the night to…
Tag: politics
Conversation as Commons
A little while back I fielded yet another attempt to bully me into censoring my comments pages. It was the same schtick as always. One of my commenters had expressed a point of view to which the would-be censor objected, and rather than being satisfied with presenting an opposing point of view on the forum…
Rice and Beans in the Outer Darkness
Psychotherapists figured out a long time ago that a roundabout approach is necessary if you want to tease out the origins of any serious psychological problem. You won’t get there by any direct approach, since the defensive maneuvers the patient uses to keep from thinking about the real source of his problems will keep you…
Strange Days Dawning
Late in 2019 I wrote a series of posts entitled “Dancers at the End of Time,” sketching out certain weird and deeply troubling shifts in the collective consciousness of our time; you can read them here, here, and here, if you like. They got about as much attention as my posts here generally do, and…
Into the Unknown Region
For most of the fourteen years I’ve been blogging, it’s been a habit of mine on the last post of the old year (or, now and then, the first post of the new one) to offer predictions for the year ahead. I won’t be doing that this year. I think it’s quite possible to predict…
The Great Leap Backward
If you happen to read the edgier end of the internet these days, you’ve probably seen talk about something called the Great Reset. I’ve been asked several times already what I think of it, and since the shape of the industrial world’s future is a longtime interest of mine, I was quite willing to discuss…
What Evil Lurks
One of the pleasant side effects of the series of vignettes about America’s magical history I’ve been posting here of late has been the chance to look into some of the odder aspects of this nation’s trajectory through time. The magical heritage of the United States has spread into some very strange corners of our…
An Astrological Interlude: Aries Ingress 2020
Before we go on to the next vignette from the magical history of the United States, it’s time to glance over the annual Aries ingress chart for the United States and glean what we can of the next year of American history from that source. Readers new to this blog may not yet be aware…
The End of the Dream
It may not be quite accurate to say that it’s all over but the shouting, but something of that sense seems to be catching on in America these days. The collapse of the Democratic attempt to get rid of Donald Trump via impeachment is one straw in the wind; another, even more telling, is the…
To the Shores of a Surging Ocean
I hope all of my readers who, like me, celebrated the solstice on Saturday had a grand time; that those who celebrated Hanukkah on Sunday did likewise; that those who celebrate Christmas are having a grand time today; and that those who celebrate other holidays around this time of year are feeling similarly blessed in…