To most of us, it may be hard to understand why birth control is a political issue rather than a private choice and why Christian fundamentalists oppose it.

Is it because keeping people frustrated and miserable makes it easier to control them?

Because power and domination are increased by denying permission whenever possible with no regard for the consequences, and without consequences for the elite who are simply excused from such restrictions? Because sexual freedom and happiness may be a seed of hope for larger freedoms?

Or should it not be explained as a conscious strategy but rather as instinctive hypocrisy or blind obstructionism, opposing any kind of progress or change as an erosion of existing authority? Why would procreation be deemed natural and pleasure not?   more »

Lyndon Johnson felt he had to escalate the Vietnam War or people would think he "lacked Kennedy's balls." "Acting presidential" has come to be media jargon for acting macho.

And the constant phallic phraseology--"Standing up to" other nations, "being firm", "standing tall", etc., may explain why the United States is so far behind the rest of the world in electing female political leaders.

It's considered 'presidential' to be incapable of learning from experience or profiting from one's mistakes.

This insistence on bullheaded machismo as the most important qualification for the presidency has produced several decades of disastrous military adventures, a refusal to cooperate to solve international crises, an inability to adapt to changing conditions.

American foreign policy has for decades been trapped in infantile behavior that mature men are supposed to outgrow once they get past adolescence.   more »

There is a mortal rot in the country, made manifest by many little rots that are hard to integrate mentally yet are, I think, somehow related.

The change is grave, accelerating, probably irreversible, and fascinating. Things are not as they were.

The United States is the most hated country on the planet, followed by, to the extent that there is a distinction, Israel. So far as I know, there are no other contenders.

You can say “Who cares?” as many will say, or “Screw’em if they can’t take a joke,” or “I’d rather be feared than loved.” All very droll.   more »

Does a day pass in Mediaworld without

being reminded of the Holocaust?

From Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN, to Jon Stewart,

South Park, the late night programming

on the Cartoon Network, or spouting politicians,

there's that relentless propaganda again

   more »

Who has seriously been deluded enough to consider the ideal of the US as a shining goal?: decimation of the First Nations; slavery; segregation.

Abject poverty; failure to provide universal healthcare; Vietnam; failure to enter the second world war or to assist the allied forces until they themselves were attacked; provision of military aid to despotic dictators.

Participation in the overthrow of democratically elected governments; the death penalty; exploding prison populations.

How can one take Gore seriously when he still believes in 'the war on terror' and is obviously racist in his views on radical Islam?   more »