Category: The Nature of Evil
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White Supremacy Is The Thing Conservatives Really Want To Conserve
I take conservatives at their word. Well, at their name: conservatives want to conserve. Fair enough. The obvious question is “what”. WHAT do conservatives want to conserve? Just to narrow it down – we know it can’t be the future, it doesn’t exist yet. There’s nothing to conserve. That limits conservable things to the present…
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Before We Go Praising Mike Pence For “Saving The Republic”, Let’s Remind Ourselves How Much Of The Peril We’re In Is Mike Pence’s Fault
Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” while watching the trial of Nazi SS officer Adolph Eichmann in 1961. Arendt, one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century, saw in Eichmann not an Aryan god who represented a true “master race”, but a mediocre, over-confident petty bureaucrat just doing what…
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Vladimir Putin Is Waaaaay More Russia’s “Head Gangster” Than Russia’s “Head Of State”
Only in America – in America’s news media – is Vladimir Putin any sort of “legitimate head of state”. But then, for context, America’s news media still thinks of (and treats) the Republican Party as legitimate actors in American politics. Donald Trump has handed our press not merely a smoking gun, but a smoking thermonuclear…
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The Only Problem With The Rule Of Law Is That It Can’t Enforce Itself
A great idea is only that – a great idea – until somebody drags it kicking and screaming into reality. Inventions don’t invent themselves. An engaged, sentient mind must do the inventing. Humans aren’t the only intelligent creatures capable of “inventing” things. Prior to the first beaver building its first dam, no such thing existed.…
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Is Vlad Putin Auditioning To Be The Next Bond Villain?
Like it or not, world, we’re gonna have a new – and very different – James Bond. It goes without saying that our new Bond is gonna need new Bond Villains to match his/her/their/its particular newness. Gone are the Bloefelds of yesteryear! Forget about the Dr No’s and the Goldfingers. They’re cute but, in the…
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After Trump, There Won’t BE A Republican Party Anymore
A wise man (more like a wise guy actually) once tweeted ““If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.” That was Lindsey Graham and he knew exactly what he was talking about. What Lindsey understood – deep down, it turns out – is that Trump both personified the Republican Party’s…
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What If All The Dots – When Finally Connected – Spell Out “The Republicans Are Traitors”?
I confess: the moment Donald Trump said “Russia, if you’re listening…!” I concluded “That bloated orange bastard is a traitor!” To me, a presidential candidate reaching out to a hostile foreign government to help him get elected just seems treasonous. Ah, but feelings aren’t facts. “Seems” isn’t “is”. But, Trump hasn’t exactly been mysterious about…