What You Wear to a Coup
It stands to reason that participants wanted to advertise, in costume, their political beliefs, because once you dive beneath support for Trump and blind faith that the election was stolen, the agendas vary dramatically.
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What Julius Caesar, Gertrude Stein, Donald Trump, Marilyn Monroe, Miss Manners, and Jesus Have in Common
Distancing the Self by addressing it in the second or third person is calming, neuropsychiatrists now tell us. It reduces “overwhelm,” a feeling so common these days that it has become a noun. Emotional distress drops quickly—within one second, in fact—when someone shifts to third person, seeing themselves as others might, or as they see others.
The Ad Hoc Tribes of Violence
Image capture of video on social media, showing a concerted group climbing the Capitol stairs. As law enforcement and amateur Internet sleuths continue to identify those who stormed Congress on Wednesday, some are poring over video of a “disciplined” group in tactical gear, who walk single-file, hand on…
A Less Than Civil War
Is there enough rage to launch a civil war? “Is there a way to avoid one?” counters the newly cynical voice inside my head. Because we cannot talk this through, operating as we are from entirely different assumptions about truth, facts, and the Constitution.
Why Did the Morons Cross the Threshold?
Photo by Jose M. via Unsplash Because they could. And because there was precedent. No, not the British, who burned the US Capitol Building along with most of official Washington, DC, in 1814. This comparison is pertinent mostly only because yesterday’s event was “the first time a malicious group…
Sick As a Dog
his is more than a story about how dogs bankrupt you and drive you crazy. It is a story about the damage that can be done to any of us when we do not get what we need.
Slow the Roll
As he tooled along, his car turned over 100,000 miles. He was a guy who had a car with a 100,000 miles on it. He had a lot of miles on him too. He wondered how many that would be, briefly tried to do the math.
The Most Important and Most Neglected Virtue
As director of The Honesty Project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Dr. Christian Miller wants to rectify the omission. “Honesty was neglected in the realm of academic philosophy for much of the twentieth century,” he points out, “and there’s no clear answer why.” Maybe it scares us.
Fate Can Be Cruel, Friends Crueller
Social media only exaggerates the power of a mean remark, spreading it far and wide, memorializing it forever. Which is why Mich Hancock, who built a company on her adroit use of social, is now pushing to “make the internet a kinder place.” She admits her plan sounds “a little fluffy”—but when she tells me what drove her, it is clear just how much weight has landed behind simple kindness.
The Mosquitoes of Winter
Thank goodness for the Christmas tree, bringer of joy and emotional warmth, driven down on a truck from Mississippi or North Carolina. Its tiny lights and ornaments collected for decades infuse the subtropical house with seasonal cheer, even if you can see the warm, wet road and piles of hurricane debris past it through the windows.