b. traven After the events of the last week, with the turmoil in the Trump administration, I began to wonder how Trump supporters were reacting. It would be interesting to know if there is a possibility that a true believer in MAGA (Make America Great Again) was ready to second guess the great, orange leader.…
Vietnam will be revisited starting September 17th by a Ken Burns documentary series. Greg Laxer is a Vietnam-era army veteran who refused to go to Vietnam on principal, and was subsequently court-martialled for this. It affected his entire life, and even as he ages, he has not softened his critical views of state misuse of…
Bill Edley, a former Illinois legislator knows the Democratic Party from the inside out. When he rings the alarm bell it’s time to do something. When he points fingers at Illinois senior Senator, Dick Durban, for talking compromise over the Health Care bill with a Republican congressman start to worry. Particularly worry that since this…
Don Rose I have never seen this country more dangerously divided and possibly at the brink of serious violence. Set the Civil War aside. I wasn’t around then, so I can only speak of the decades since World War II when I lived through the darkness of McCarthyism, blacklisting and the cold war–then the political…
b. traven The quote is the opening statement from a speech by our ever suffering President to congratulate Coast Guard Academy graduates who will be sent on perilous missions to save others lives at sea. In his suffering to make “America Great Again,” our President apparently does not think that the assassination of Lincoln, McKinley,…
Racism in our country today lies at the core of the appeal put out by the cynical Republican politicians now in power. They first connived with the neo-liberal Democrats to export well-paying unionized manufacturing jobs to cheap labor countries then used the anguish of those who lost their jobs to blame it on the Mexicans,…
Matthew Hoh I did an interview with Scott Horton a couple of weeks back on Afghanistan and then the United States dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever to be used against life in the history of mankind a couple of days later. I know the district it was used in. I was close to Achin in…
b. traven Merriam-Webster definition. PEEVED: irritated, exasperated, nettled, provoked, riled, peeved means to excite a feeling of anger or annoyance. irritate implies an often gradual arousing of angry feelings that may range from mere impatience to rage (constant nagging that irritated me greatly). exasperate suggests galling annoyance and the arousing of extreme impatience. My pet…
Don Rose has an interesting insight into H. R. McMaster’s role in the Trump Administration melodrama. He seems to have predicted what came soon after his piece below went to press on his blog. But rather than McMaster having to quit, it was Trump’s so-called “Chief Strategist” who got booted off the National Security Council. …
Don Rose WARNING: This column contains Freudian language. The ascension and behavior of Donald Trump have given rise to a cottage industry of amateur and professional psychoanalysts who explain Trump along with the amateur and professional political analysts. None have examined him personally, but we hear terms such as “narcissist,” “pathological liar” and “sociopath” tossed…
The Contrary Perspective 