Monthly Archives: November 2012
Small Calamities
The Arabs, I am told, have a saying: “Everything starts small except calamity.” If you think about this aphorism for a minute, a sort of witty definitional wisdom comes through. The problem is that sometimes calamity starts small, too. Yesterday’s … Continue reading
Shock the Casbah
Again I come late to the gabfest, this time about the Hamas-IDF confrontation in and around Gaza. So much has already been said, and it falls in the usual categories: the thinly didactic, the fatuous, the banal, the shrewd and, … Continue reading
The Government We Deserve
We briefly interrupt this multi-part series on “What’s Wrong and How to Fix It” to comment on—you guessed it—the elections. What can I possibly say that hundreds of other people have not already said, or are about to say? It’s … Continue reading
What’s Wrong, and How to Fix It, Part 4, Television and Politics
Now that the three groups of explanation for American political dysfunction have been laid out and their mutual connections sketched (in parts one, two and three), we can begin to discuss programmatic solutions for our problems. The ten proposals below … Continue reading
Will Obama Pull out a November Surprise?
It’s too late in the 2012 campaign season for an October surprise. But it isn’t too late for an early November surprise. With President Obama apparently now behind in the projected popular vote (although who knows with these polls?), what … Continue reading
