Reflections on our age of misrule

Donald Trump’s unceasing media travesty brings to mind studies of societal collapse from Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History [he looked at 26 civilizations] through to Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Ronald Wright’s book A Short History of Progress, which Quebec filmmaker Mathieu Roy and I adapted into the theatrical documentary Surviving Progress.  Each of them identify as a primary cause of collapse – Wright calls them “progress traps”  - the disastrous leadership of elites.  They are shown to misgovern through ignorance, self–serving belief systems, and their growing insulation from the interests of the larger society. 

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Essays and Reviews, Art & Dance Nicholas Zurko Essays and Reviews, Art & Dance Nicholas Zurko

Kara Walker Show

It was as horrifying as it was life-changing, the lack of any facial feature or details erased from her quasi-cartoonish figures engaging in a chaotic interplay of violent revenge and total domination, confronting the viewer with the stubbornness of slavery’s legacy that had been transmuted into 150 years of racist governmental policy and cultural stereotypes.

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Essays and Reviews, Literature Joanna Sit Essays and Reviews, Literature Joanna Sit

Heaven and Earth: Starshine & Clay by Kamilah Aisha Moon

If we were to accept the notion that the individual body is a microcosm of the world, and a person’s disease and illness can be mirrored in the ruin of the broader world, then we would have no trouble believing that somehow, each of us struggles between the proclivity for self-destruction and the perpetual hope for healing and survival.

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Essays and Reviews, Politics & History Fred Sievert Essays and Reviews, Politics & History Fred Sievert

America’s Opioid Crisis: Pray for and Trust in God’s Grace

Every day in America, approximately 91 people die of an opioid overdose. According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 2000 to 2015, more than half a million Americans died of drug overdoses, and opioids account for most of those deaths. This epidemic is so serious that President Trump declared it a national emergency on August 10, 2017. This epidemic could be impacting your family members or friends.

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Politics & History, Essays and Reviews Ryder W. Miller Politics & History, Essays and Reviews Ryder W. Miller

Empire and Isolationism: Stephen Kinzer's The True Flag

Having guided America through the assassination of an American President, Roosevelt was a belligerent presence and a powerful leader on the world stage fighting for the American Way of Life. Not everybody liked the first Roosevelt though. Unusual in appearance, there are still unflattering cartoons of him, like the one on the cover, that remain to this day

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Essays and Reviews, Art & Dance Norman Douglas Essays and Reviews, Art & Dance Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas is Compelled to Present Several Thoughts that He Believes Worth Sharing with Respect to the Exhibition at Sikemma Jenkins of Artworks Created by Kara Walker

‘Skin me, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘snatch out my eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,’ sezee, ‘but do please, Brer Fox, don’t fling me in dat brier- patch,’ sezee.
Co’se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch ’im by de behime legs en slung ’im right in de middle er de brier-patch.’

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