Tag Archives: history

Continuing from last week, a few more favorites of the past 12 months (none of which were written all that recently). And a reminder that you can sign up to get posts by email. Gods of the Upper Air, by Charles King, alongside Euphoria, by Lily King (and Gillian Tett’s Anthrovision for good measure) Euphoria was my recommendation for best book in 2015. “Pioneering anthropologists in the field, making it up as they go along: The novel,” was my description. It was a thinly-veiled...

I subscribe to various sites from which I extract data. Each morning, this is my read while drinking my coffee – black. A brief Introduction as taken from Professor Richardson’s site: This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be...

A bit of Tom Sullivan @ Hullabaloo this day. Democrat Moe Davis lost the race last fall for the congressional seat in NC-11 to Republican Madison Cawthorn. The seat was left open when Rep. Mark Meadows vacated it to fumble around for the Trump White House. Moe Davis tweeted this morning in response to a local letter to the editor denying the assault on the Capitol even happened. And the Letter: “Denialism is alive and well “Tom...

No doubt, they saw these decisions as moments of greatness. Or, at least hoped that history would see it that way. One, an egotistical ass who used his intellect as a cudgel with which to intimidate, to bully others. The other, simply a small minded man selected for that very smallness of mind. The one, recently departed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The other, now Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Had Justice Scalia been even half...

The Hippie Dog Whistle Work Ethic Silent-Majority Counter-Offensive Following up on my last post, I was searching for coverage of Ronald Reagan’s infamous “strapping young buck” comment from 1976 and found this wonderful commentary by Ian Haney López on Bill Moyers’s show. [embedded content] In his book, Dog Whistle Politics, López mentions the “work ethic” angle several times. The narratives promoted alike by the ethnic turn and...

The “Work Ethic” Hoax The story has been told that Martin Luther invented the doctrine of the “calling” and that John Calvin (“my friends call me Jean”) intensified it with his doctrine of predestination. Subsequent pastoral literature softened the predestination blow with the Protestant ethic that working hard and succeeding would show that you were one of the elect. Max Weber told that story.  It was, of course, a fable. But that is beside...

The Death Of Yeshua bar Yosef Or if you prefer, “bin Miriam,” although no way he would have ever been called that in his life, but near as I know “Yeshua bar Yosef” (“Jesus son of Joseph”) was probably how he was most frequently identified in real life in the Aramaic language he mostly operated in, his mother tongue. It has been reported that he knew Hebrew, then strictly a liturgical language, given the reports of him at age 12 discoursing...

It appears, big business is “beginning” to take exception to what Republicans are doing at the local level to suppress the right to vote by the poor, the minorities, etc. It is about time for those who can exert such pressure on state legislatures to do so in support of the right to vote. It would be cool if the Coca Cola defied the Georgia government and handed out Dasani (water) to voters before they entered a voting line and if Pepsi did the...

Off and on, in 1967, 68, 69 & 70, I worked the San Francisco waterfront as a marine electrician troubleshooter while going to University. Then, there were still the freighters owned by big shipping lines, the cruise lines, and a lot of the old Victory ships coming and going from SF. I worked on all of them before they were no more. This was during the Vietnam war. In the early years, I saw stevedores and longshoremen working the docks, down in...

Utopian Socialism Brings About Toilet Paper Shortages Maybe In The Near Future  Yeah, to heck with “socialism” in any of its forms, even old varieties that Marx and Engels denounced, neologizing the label “utopian socialism” for its advocates, even as they made clear their respect for the intentions at least of their intentions, even as they did not provide an analysis of the historical dynamic of capitalism and the broader issues arising from...