Blogging the 2024 DNC
The Common Reader goes to Chicago to check in with the Democratic Party.
August 29, 2024
More by John Griswold
‘Go Bags’ in Relationships
The impulse is to think that someone who makes plans for something else also helps bring it about. That fantasy does not seem to be doing us much good as a body politic, but the idea has taken root everywhere, including at Department of State.
Murder in the Heart, Ink in the Veins
I found the book in a box in a storage locker just as I was writing a recent piece about a murderer. The amazing thing, the admirable thing, is that William Steig channeled his deep feeling into art over a very long life. The murder stayed in his dreams.
Bo Gritz, America’s Special Operations Problem, and the Tragedy of Pulp Masculinity
Having retired and returned to civilian life, what did Bo Gritz try to teach or communicate to us? Unlike, say, John McCain, he never modeled reconciliation with former enemies. He did not go to Vietnam after 1995 with veteran groups for humanitarian purposes. He did not preach against violence, or for peacefulness, responsibility, or inclusion. Mostly, he seemed interested in anti-social things: radical individualism, extreme autonomy, distrust of people, and the assumption of his own power, by violence if necessary.
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Bo Gritz, America’s Special Operations Problem, and the Tragedy of Pulp Masculinity
Having retired and returned to civilian life, what did Bo Gritz try to teach or communicate to us? Unlike, say, John McCain, he never modeled reconciliation with former enemies. He did not go to Vietnam after 1995 with veteran groups for humanitarian purposes. He did not preach against violence, or for peacefulness, responsibility, or inclusion. Mostly, he seemed interested in anti-social things: radical individualism, extreme autonomy, distrust of people, and the assumption of his own power, by violence if necessary.
The Culture of Animals, Why They Are Not Us, but Why We Need Them as Our Co-Creators of Reality
Language has allowed us to be bound together by codes of law; to move easily between past and present and future; to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe. But while scholars were busy defending our species’ superiority, biologists were uncovering mysteries of animal communication that shot down one “special” human capacity after another.
The Biography of a Library
I have always loved my library. I have kept it with me, growing with me, since adolescence, through marriages and divorces, through changes in occupation from student to steelworker, from truck driver to college professor, and moved it from San Diego to Chicago, to Los Angeles, to Cincinnati, and finally to New York City.