Midlife Meditation

Endangered species. Kansas. Montana. Georgia. South Carolina. Four Congressional vacancies. Four special elections. Four opportunities for Democrats to turn President Trump's historic unpopularity into a warning to Republican leaders on Capitol Hill: if you value your job, start representing the majority of your constituents, rather than pandering to the wealthy few. But if those elections were referenda on the Presidency, the net result fell far short of those national figures: every one of them went to the Republican candidate. Democratic responses run the gamut of disappointment to despair to fury at party leaders. As understandable as those feelings may be, I think they're all misguided. Don't get me wrong: I very much wanted every one of those elections to go the other way, to send four strong messages to Congress that the American people are fed up with Republican efforts to kill the ACA and transform its funding into massive tax cuts for the 1%. But in every...

Forget the title: this one's about how too much Trump is killing my muse. I've certainly written plenty about the insatiable maw who is our embarrassment-in-chief. Of all the topics I've covered since 2013, when Midlife Meditation came into being, none has consumed me as thoroughly as the phenomenon of Donald J. Trump. I don't have to go back and analyze any of those many posts to be able to tell you they're all critical of him. Trump is the living, breathing, bloviating embodiment of all that is wrong with America. He is a selfish, greedy, petty, heartless bastard who cares nothing for anyone but himself, and will not rest until his name is on the lips of every other human being. Trump has risen to national prominence not because of his lousy real estate empire, nor because of his golf courses or casinos, but solely on the sale and distribution of his name. Slap a gold "Trump" on a hotel, a steak, a bottle of wretched wine, a training course, a ...

To evil! (Due to the extraordinary energy demands of the last weeks of the school year, this essay was written in two bursts: Sunday, June 4, and Saturday, June 10. Some details in the first half may have become dated by the time the second begins.) Part I I love science fiction movies, superhero movies, spy movies, adventure movies, pretty much any movies that are most typically released during the summer or winter holidays. If they're part of any expanded universe, there will be at least one film that explores the hero's origin ( Superman-The Movie, Star Trek (the reboot), Casino Royale/Skyfall, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and so on and so on and so on ). There is almost always a supervillain, as well, whose origin may also be explored in parallel with the hero's. There will be at least one false ending, when, right on the verge of victory, the hero is beaten seemingly beyond redemption. This will be followed by a miraculous redemption, concluding with...