Whether the ultimate showdown occurs on Monday or not, there is certainly a moment of great historical significance in the making at Standing Rock. The two ends of the chain of (what I will call) "absurd brutality" and "brutal absurdity" are connected there, the chain set in motion by European colonialism and presently manifesting in postmodern capitalism. At either end of the chain there is a supposed "question" that is absurd, ridiculous, crazy. In this meeting point of the two ends of the chain we see a world that appears to have spiraled into not only insanity but even into a late stage of dementia.

Before getting all world-historical, let's look at the lines that are being drawn. First and foremost, there is the line that is being drawn by the Lakota Sioux. This is an unambiguous case of where the line separates the good people from the bad people. How far the scope of the term "bad people" reaches beyond those on the frontline of attacking the Water Protectors is ambiguous--in some sense it reaches out to all of us who take advantage of energy production in the global economy. At the least, this spreading wave of complicity represents a demand that we take a stand on the side of the Lakota Sioux. More

Here we are, weeks after the 2016 election and Green candidate Jill Stein and her campaign committee are looming larger in the news than they ever did during the presidential race itself. Her efforts to raise money for a formal recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have gained regular national attention and involves much more money than the campaign itself had raised. Proponents insist that this drive to win a recount in three pivotal states that turned the election against Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with cozying up to the Democrats and is about nothing less than the integrity of the electoral process itself. More

President-elect Donald Trump probably never read Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey’s “Seven Days in May” in 1962 and never saw John Frankenheimer’s film version in 1964, which dealt with the threat of a military coup due to opposition to a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. President John F. Kennedy read the book after the Cuban missile crisis and found the scenario credible, probably because of the opposition and bizarre antics of Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, during the crisis. Perhaps Donald Trump should become familiar with the book or the movie before he names one more retired general to his national security team.

In a very few weeks, Trump has surrounded himself with a group of erratic advisers and has appointed several pugnacious and partisan figures to key national security positions. As a result, the appointment of retired Marine General James Mattis has been welcomed by the mainstream media, including the staid New York Times. The media’s consensus appears to be that, since Mattis, a four-star general, once outranked the controversial national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, a three-star, and, unlike the president-elect, actually reads and collects books that he will bring a voice of reason to the policymaking circle in the White House. Not so fast! More