Category: World Politics

Necessity and Invention, War and Art

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” as we moderns are so fond of saying. There is probably no serious adage about the soul which is subject to a greater gap between the number of people who cite it and the number who understand it. Apart from that sad fact, however, it is notable that late modernity has gradually transformed the expression from general...

Random Reflections On Current Nonsense

Donald Trump attended the G7 economic summit, as American presidents always do. And as Donald Trump always does at such summits — unlike all other American presidents — he used his opening public remarks at the conference to advocate yet again for the interests of Russian “President” Vladimir Putin and to berate America’s major democratic allies for not including and embracing the notably...

When the Slime at the Bottom of Any Old Barrel Is Your King

Donald Trump, proving himself yet again to be the softest of soft tacos, has answered his own recent weakly-uttered and moral-equivalency-diluted half-criticism of Vladimir Putin’s maniacal bloodlust by immediately, and in the most public way, returning to his knees before his master, in the process thereby returning his country, the former United States of America, to the status of unequivocal fellow traveller of,...

The Wrong Side of History

Ukraine has just carried out a stunningly clever military operation at multiple and far-flung locations throughout Russia, successfully destroying a remarkable proportion of Vladimir Putin’s military aircraft at their home bases, before they could be used to inflict more destruction upon Ukraine’s civilian population and infrastructure. This operation was apparently planned and prepared for over a year in secret. It continues in spectacular...

Thoughts On The Fifty-First State

I am writing this early in the morning of April 29th in Korea, which means it is mid-to-late afternoon on the 28th in my native Canada, and Canadians are now at the polls choosing a new government and a new prime minister during a time of peculiarly existential pressure from their American neighbours, and primarily of course from one Donald J. Trump. Some...

Comments in real time…

Purely by accident, as I sit down to eat my breakfast this morning in Korea, I have stumbled upon the live broadcast of Trump’s latest White House clown show, this time with special guest Giorgia Meloni. And as usual with all the world leaders who dare to humiliate themselves this way — with the possible exception of Keir Starmer — I have to...

Passing Thoughts On One Man’s Fantasy Life

Surprisingly, Donald Trump’s latest sociopathic fantasy lunge at becoming the most influential and beloved human who ever lived — namely his utterly illegal, immoral, and anti-American attempt to assume single-handed control over the entire world’s economy by way of a near-universal and whimsical imposition of wealth-killing tariffs — has had one, and only one, unequivocally positive effect. It has blessed us all with...

Passing Along A Word That Deaf Ears Will Never Hear

Since my website has essentially become a repository of judgments and reflections that almost no one currently alive on this planet will ever read, let alone care about, why not open it up today for the words of another man in a similar situation, though one whose voice speaks with considerably more practical urgency than mine? His pleas will fall on ears at...

Depth Perception

Donald Trump says that Volodymyr Zelensky is the primary obstacle to peace in Ukraine. Elon Musk, in one of those pot-calling-kettle-black moments that have defined the Trump era of the Republican Party, has called Democratic Senator Mark Kelly “a traitor” for daring to disagree with the Trump-Vance-Musk deliverance of American foreign policy to the Kremlin, and in an ant-calling-lion-little moment, replied to doubts...

Time Isn’t Money, and Other Facts

I see a headline informing me that Donald Trump is giving a speech to Congress this evening (U.S. time), which I am told I can watch “live.” I am not even remotely tempted. First of all, I have a habit of not listening to Vladimir Putin’s official spokesmen, regardless of which language they happen to be butchering. Second, if you have endlessly mounting...