Tag Archive | "Ronald Reagan"
My Dad, in 1984
by Danny Showalter I remember the presidential election between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. My Pop hated Mondale. That was 1984, and I was seven. I’ll come back to that after a brief digression. I grew up in rural Indiana. Shortly before I was born, my father, my mother, my aunt and my uncle, went [...]
Continue reading...Praying for peace, promoting war
Thursday, December 23, 2010
A Christmas card from one of the in-laws was unintentionally soaked in irony. I’ll skip the rant about celebrating Christ and mass, the two components of Christ’s mass (i.e., Christmas) in which I don’t believe, much less celebrate. And, too, I”ll forgo the equally tempting rant about a religious holiday that promotes conspicuous consumption in [...]
Continue reading...Prescription for (Killing) the Planet
Monday, February 22, 2010
Prescription for the Planet was written by Tom Blees and published in 2008. It was recommended to me, with a strong sense of urgency, by a couple friends. It is written in a very compelling style, which is too bad because it suckers people into the kind of wishing thinking for which we’ve become infamous [...]
Continue reading...Leadership in the post-carbon era
Friday, January 1, 2010
I’m getting cranky, judging from several comments on this blog and on Facebook (where my latest entries have been posted and then re-posted by contacts there). Not to pick nits, but I’m getting crankier. But, like all rationalizing animals, I have a good excuse. As my awareness grows, hopefully along with the awareness of other [...]
Continue reading...Abandoning a dream
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
I was among the final baby boomers born in the United States. Along with my entire generation, I owe the world an apology. My generation abandoned a worthy dream, and it will cost all of us, but nobody more than civilized members of industrial society.
Continue reading...Tarnished gold
Friday, October 9, 2009
War is peace. Life is death. Left is right. And this Orwellian world grows more Orwellian with each passing day.
Continue reading...Twilight of the Machines
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Shortly after Cain murdered Abel and then founded the first city, more cities began to dot the Mesopotamian landscape. The rewards of civilization allowed relatively few people to feed the majority, with the biggest rewards going to a select, powerful minority. From those days forward, cities have allowed, in Stanley Diamond's words, "conquest abroad and repression at home."
Continue reading...Neocon nation, redux
Monday, May 18, 2009
We cannot use politics as usual to deal with energy decline. Ditto for runaway greenhouse. In other words, there is no viable political solution to deal with either issue.
Continue reading...My life in song
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
At some point, not so far away, nature becomes the ultimate authority. And that's when I'll stop fighting authority. At that point, I'll need a new theme song. Got any ideas?
Continue reading...Neocon nation
Monday, November 17, 2008
As usual, I have good news if you don't like the direction the government and culture have taken: the problem's going to take care of itself. When the empire completes its fall, when the federal government loses the ability to control everything from foreign wars to domestic sex acts, when the dollar's even further in the toilet and the transportation networks are completely impotent, when the cheerleader-in-chief of American Empire can no longer destroy the lands and waters and the organisms on which we all depend, that's when we can bury the neoconservative agenda.
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Thursday, December 30, 2010
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