At a party a few years back I got into a disagreement with a rich man about the meaning of the American Dream. The man, who had earned his fortune honestly, said he’d achieved the American Dream by becoming wealthy. I told him that he needn’t have gotten rich, as the dream isn’t so much about riches as it was…
I was talking to my Republican friend on Friday’s ferry to Haines. Out the window, seagulls were clamoring above Lynn Canal. A week of north winds had churned up to the surface the big-eyed lampfish and maybe some other bottom-dwellers. The gulls were getting them while the getting was good. My friend was sitting at a cafeteria table alone, looking…
Joe Biden is promising to unify the country and certainly that needs doing. All Joe has to do is rebuild the middle class. Unity problem solved. No kidding. I know this because I grew up in a unified, lower-middle class neighborhood in the 1960s, and this is how it worked: All the guys on our street had jobs. They were…
The good Republican boys and girls in Congress are saying that maybe President Trump should be sent to his time-out room at Mar-A-Lago or maybe even be put on double-secret probation. Whoop. Dee. Doo. The mad president orchestrated – or, at the very least incited – a violent and fatal attack on the leadership of the United States government. That’s…
Hundreds of baboons stormed the U.S. Capitol building yesterday, attempting to seize control of the government, and they got off light. A few died, but had they been black, scores would be dead today. Don’t tell me, gentle reader, to not make this issue about race. It couldn’t be more about race. Race has been the issue all along for…
Well, that was close. Democrats and progressives have reason to be relieved, maybe even jubilant. But that’s tempered by the realization that had President Trump hired just one person to curb his most maniacal statements and behavior, he’d have been reelected. Had he just not hosted a super-spreader event in the Rose Garden, had he just not cleared peaceful protesters…
Australians have a word they use to describe young men long on testosterone and short on brains who drive around late at night, speeding and revving their muscle cars. The word is “hoons.” It’s a word that works on many levels, suggesting a special category of goon, perhaps one so lacking in personality as to be unable to attract attention…
You have to hand it to black pro athletes. They get it. They understand political stakes, and they play for keeps. They could teach a lesson to the rest of us. For three days in August they peacefully shut down the NBA finals and most of the sports world to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, the black man hit…
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” George Bernard Shaw All he had to do was look presidential. All he had to do was not rise to Trump’s bait. All he had to do to respond to President Trump’s lies was to say, every time, “That is simply not true.” Then…
In our town’s municipal election, I voted by email, from 4,000 miles away. It was simple, and I have no fear that my vote was discarded, intercepted or altered in any way. Alaska trails the rest of the nation in many areas – social advances, public education, and plumbing to name only a few – but the Last Frontier figured…