Earlier this month the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon after it crossed all of North America, lingering over military sites. It came down in U.S. territorial waters inside the 12-mile limit. On the other side of the world, the U.S. routinely conducts military flights over the South China Sea. S[...]
Archive for the ‘America’ Category
The politics of resentment
Many of history’s great movers and shakers exploited resentment to build a power base. Lenin and Hitler fall in this category. Each drove a revolution that overthrew an existing order, albeit one weakened by events they didn’t precipitate or control. But their revolutions, tied as they w[...]
A book of names (video)
How would you like to be imprisoned, without trial or due process, because you “look like the enemy”? Don’t let anyone tell you America is a perfect country, or allow politicians sweep its history under the rug. This isn’t about making white schoolchildren “feel bad&#[...]
Can we trust our military?
It’s hard to trust the military when top brass look stupid. In 1971, Charles M. Fair (bio here) wrote a book, “From the Jaws of Victory, A History of the Character, Causes, and Consequences of Military Stupidity, from Crassus to Johnson and Westmoreland,” whose title aptly describe[...]
It sucks to be a Russian soldier
“Advance at any cost.” Those are the marching orders being given to Russian soldiers fighting in eastern Ukraine; and by some accounts, the cost is very high. Ukraine claims it’s killing over a thousand Russians a day. While that can’t be verified, outside expert observers sa[...]
Book review: “To Rule the Waves”
If you read only one book on global politics and strategy this year, make it this one. The author, Bruce D. Jones (bio here), has an academic background and has worked for the U.N., World Bank, and is currently at the Brookings Institution. He’s been a fellow at Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and [...]
Have another serving of “Woke”
I’m not entirely sure what conservatives mean when they say “woke,” but they’re against everything (books, science, public health, etc.), so I guess “everything” works as a rough translation of “woke.” They don’t like Mexican immigrants in partic[...]
January 22nd, 2023 - 8:30 pm § in America, Christianity, Democrats, Donald Trump, Politics, Religion, Republicans
Americans are leaving religion behind
Organized religion in America is grappling with dwindling congregations and church closures (read story here). That’s less than shocking. The old churchgoing generations are dying off, and people who stopped attending during the pandemic have been slow to return. But there’s a bigger re[...]
January 15th, 2023 - 3:17 am § in America
Americans are gamblers at heart
They line up to plop down their money on the 320 million-to-1 odds of winning a lottery jackpot. They go online to gamble on “meme” stocks and cryptocurrencies. They love watching risk-takers like Evel Knievel and his son perform (both are now dead); and they jump out of airplanes, bunge[...]
January 12th, 2023 - 6:14 pm § in America, Biden, Donald Trump, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Republicans
Be careful who you trust with the nuclear codes
Part of America’s freedom is that we can elect our leaders. That has downsides, although so far not enough to replace democracy with some other system. One of the bigger downsides is that you might get a leader like Trump. America’s voters should think hard before they do that again. Tha[...]