NICK PERMBERTON—What is not said enough is that gun violence is a natural consequence of a society that solves its problems through violence and conquest abroad. A society that promises an American dream and never gives anything in return leaves a trail of despair. A society that defines success as profit off of others no doubt makes others into adversaries.
AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
-
-
JOHN STEPPLING—For the propagandists of the exceptional and indispensable nation the by-product of their creative activities is Nikolas Cruz. Trump shares with the far right parties growing across Europe the open disdain for democracy and free speech. Cruz was wearing a Trump cap in one of his Instagram photos. He wasn’t wearing a Che t-shirt. He wanted to kill antifa. He was not an isolated mentally disturbed killer. He was a fascist killer. He wanted to be made whole and inviolate. The way all fascists want to be whole, but cannot.
-
JOHN ESKOW—Every time he dares to ad-lib a single word beyond the mediocre, soul-deadening speeches that some fascist factotum in the West Wing has scripted for him, he’s forced to cobble together some semblance of speech from the pitifully few readymades that he can somehow remember: “that I can tell you,” “strongly,” “special people,” etc. “Special” gets an especially big workout. Veterans are “special.” Cops are “special.” A Playboy centerfold dumb enough to fuck him, and doubly dumb enough to refuse his offer of postcoital cash, is “special.” So many people are special that there’s no one left to be pedestrian.
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License ALL CAPTIONS…
-
FINIAN CUNNINGHAM—One thing, however, seems abundantly clear. The US is embarking on a global war plan, as can be discerned from the grave developments unfolding in Syria, the Korean Peninsula and Ukraine. Each scenario can be understood as a pressure point on Moscow or China to in some way acquiesce to American ambitions for global dominance.