Chris Hedges (Courtesy of Truthdig) The increase in nihilistic violence such as school shootings and Friday’s lethal assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic, the frequent executions of poor people of color by police, and the rise of thuggish demagogues such as Donald Trump are symptoms of the collapse of our political and cultural institutions. These…
Nile Stanton At the reliably up-to-date and highly informative website Breaking Defense, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. reported that on June 16th, Lt Gen James Kowalski, Deputy Commander of the US Strategic Command, told a group, “We have to recognize that there are two authoritarian nuclear-armed regimes [China and Russia] dominating the Eurasian landmass, and they…
By Graciela Huth. Introduction by Michael Murry. Graciela (Grace) Huth calls herself “an old woman.” She says that she writes as a form of therapy, “to unload my anger and avoid having a stroke due to what is going on today in the USA.” Yet her long life of good citizenship and community activism testify…
W.J. Astore I read old stuff. Heck, I’m a historian: that’s what I’m supposed to do. So I was reading an old pamphlet on “The Indiana World War Memorial” (circa 1940) and came across the Pledge of Allegiance as it was recited before McCarthyism reared its ugly head in the 1950s: I pledge allegiance to…
W.J. Astore I can’t remember where exactly, but I stumbled across this apothegm of Karl Marx: “In every era, the ideas of the rulers are the ruling ideas.” Striving for even more brevity, I truncated it to rulers’ ideas rule. Contrarians of the world should unite to identify and challenge these ruling ideas. When they…
The Contrary Perspective 