Twenty-two years ago, allied armies led by the United States thundered into Iraq with “shock and awe,” aiming to depose Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and take away weapons of mass destruction he supposedly possessed. We quickly learned he had no such weapons — our intelligence was bad — but we stayed on in ...
About 50 years ago as a Latin American Studies major at Tulane University, I learned about a political system that has plagued Latin America for centuries: the cult of the caudillo and its accompanying ideology, machismo. Rolled into one, the words describe a leader, or caudillo, who embodies extreme manliness, or machismo. Caudillos typically ...
My eagle-eyed editor spotted an article in the December issue of The Atlantic entitled The Walmart Effect. Having written three blogs on Walmart early in the life of The Quixotic Deacon, I was naturally interested in the article. If you’d like to read it before reading my reaction, here’s the link. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/walmart-prices-poverty-economy/681122/ The ...
Like many of you, I suspect, a great weariness came over me after the events of Nov. 5. I sought nothing but distraction from a crushing defeat. Seeking refuge in books, sporting events, and somewhat mindless television, I was able to rest from the great disappointment of the election. No TV news was a great ...
At 2:40 AM on the morning after our country first elected Donald Trump to be our President, David Remnick of the New Yorker wrote these words. I have kept them by my desk for the past 8 years. The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for ...
Twenty years ago President George W. Bush was running for a second term against Sen. John Kerry. The US was a year into our invasion of Iraq. Casualties were high, especially for Iraqi civilians caught in the crossfire between the invaders and the invaded. I remember how I felt about the election as if it ...
The other day Lucy and I were debating who to root for (euphemism for who to bet on) in an NFL game between the Patriots of New England and the Jets of New York. Neither of us has the least bit of affection for either team. So I blurted out that we should ...
The United States’ shameful treatment of Haiti, the world’s oldest Black republic, took another cruel turn this week and we have the MAGA crowd and its leader to thank. Haiti has been our punching bag for more than 160 years. We were the last country to recognize it as a nation, by decades; ...
I could have called this blog Reparations but I didn’t, fearing that even enlightened readers might click delete. Few subjects are more touchy in our country than talking about what might be owed to descendants of the formerly enslaved. Even liberals quake at the enormity and complexity of the issue. The usual reasons that ...
Before the recent French and British elections fade from the headlines, and before the maelstrom of our own unending political war, let’s take a moment to reflect on what happened in Europe. Britain On the surface the election in the United Kingdom went as predicted, but there are some interesting tidbits to glean from the ...
