Dispatches From Exile
"At the juncture of politics, history, theology, and the arts"
What does it mean to be “woke?”
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." Lewis Carrol and Alice Gerstenberg, Alice in Wonderland: A Dramatization of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", (Project Gutenberg,...
We Are Not Descended from Fearful Men
On this day of celebrating our independence, I think it is well to remember its cost. The men who led what the Declaration calls the "united States" (note the capitalization) into rebellion pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to create a new...
Esperanza – Hope
"When the storm passes" (Esperanza - Hope) by Alexis ValdésTranslation of Alexis Valdés poem "Esperanza" (Hope) written in Spanish in March 2020 about the humanitarian crisis brought "by the Coronavirus and the "hope" of how we will feel when the "Storm Passes"...
‘Enabling It to Happen Again’: How Charlottesville Led to the Capitol Attack
How Charlottesville Led to the Capitol Attack | "Trump's American Carnage" | FRONTLINEA scene from the FRONTLINE documentary "Trump's American Carnage" shows how the 2017 Unite the Right rally and President Trump's response foreshadowed Jan. 6...
Kristallnacht
Former California Governor, Terminator, and Conan the Barbarian offers a heartfelt and unsparing critique of the events in the Capital January 6, comparing it to Kristallnacht, which occurred in his native Austria in 1938....
Trump’s Gotterdammerung
Gotterdammerung((The last days of the Third Reich, taking its name from the end of Wagner's ‘Der Ring des Nibellungen.' The word means "Twilight of the Gods," and signals the end with chaos and destruction.)) Our understanding of historical narrative is not static....
CNN: This is the woman whose statue will replace that of Robert E. Lee in the US Capitol
This is the woman whose statue will replace that of Robert E. Lee in the US CapitolWhen Barbara Johns was just 16 years old, she led a walkout at her high school to protest poor and unequal school conditions. The moment is one that many historians believe helped...
The Consumer Citizen. Not.
I read an article this morning that considered a recent book The Consumer Citizen by Ethan Porter. The gist of Porter's argument is that Americans don't think like citizens but rather consumers. The difference is that citizenship implies responsibilities and...
Washington Post: Dolly Parton is the superhero America needs in 2020
Opinion | Dolly Parton is the superhero America needs in 2020 American audiences spent more than a decade worshiping at the big-screen altar of comic book characters. But the tumult of 2020 demanded a very different kind of superhero. You can't thump a pandemic into...