Joe Posnanski gets out his sackcloth and ashes and mournfully chants the litany of baseball’s historic racist sins.
Year: 2024
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A Book That Needs No Sequel
Rachel Maddow plays up the danger of a reemergence of America’s 1930s and 1940s domestic fascist movements to an absurd extent.
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Books in Brief: May 2024
Short reviews of Bartleby & Me by Gay Talese and Southern Poets and Poems, 1606 -1860: The Land They Loved by Clyde N. Wilson.
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Republics Ancient and Postmodern: From Rome to America
That Trump is a would-be dictator has been a recurring narrative on the left for nearly a decade now—and so has the wish that he would be done away with, by one means or another—even violence, if necessary.
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American Fiction Is American Reality
'American Fiction' has penetrated the thick permafrost that wokesters have imposed on our cultural landscape.
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Wars, Rumors, and Geopolitical Logic
When nations put ideology before real-world geopolitics in formulating grand strategy they embark upon a sure path to failure.
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The Man Who Made Cultural Marxism
Herbert Marcuse saw the transformation of the culture as the sine qua non of revolutionary change. He understood that the working classes of Europe and America wanted better wages, not the radical destruction of the western way of life.
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Kayfabe U.S.A.
Donald Trump continues an American political tradition that appears tough and adversarial, but is strictly theatrical. Wrestlers call it "kayfabe."
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Sympathy for Blue-Eyed White Devils
Whites are under the gun today for a very simple reason: Their past implies a position of cultural supremacy. This is a fact confirmed by the history of civilization.
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The Fearful Cinematic Symmetry of Our Time
Several late 20th-century films presaged some of the worst events and developments of our times. And the horror show is now playing nationwide.
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Wokedom Westernizes Russia to Malign Her
By describing Russia as an heir to the habits of Western imperialism, the current woke psychosis, combined with crisis escalation in Ukraine, has the potential to destroy the remnant of our common European civilization.
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Nationalists of the World, Unite?
If there's going to be any democracy in the 21st century—in America, Europe, Israel or anywhere—there must be nations and nationalists willing to stand for them.
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Why They Want Us to Eat Bugs
The push for the eating of bugs is the epitome of rationalist thinking and the destruction of the sacred.
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Hemingway, McCarthy, and Our ‘Used Up’ Words
People do not want to read words that do not correspond with anything real. They want to feel. Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy understood and delivered.
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The New College of Florida Experiment Must Succeed
If New College succeeds, it will stiffen the spines of other governors to do what needed to be done a generation ago. But if it fails, it’s hard to see any hope of regaining higher education.
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Stop Importing Ungrateful, Spoiled Criminals
If one valid criticism of American society is that our high standard of living had made our population lazy, entitled, and unappreciative, then why are we importing so many new people with the same qualities?
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‘Risky Business’ As Conservative Morality Tale?
“Risky Business” wasn’t supposed to be a sly indictment of capitalism. A coming re-release from the Criterion Collection restores the director’s original intention as a warning about crazy women and the power of sex to destroy men.
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MTG’s Admirable Pugnacity Needs a Reality Check
Republicans should hammer the border issue but otherwise keep a low profile right now and wait to see if they can pull out a November win.
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There’s No Right to Sleep Outdoors
Supreme Court arguments on Monday suggest the Court will rule 6-3 or 5-4 that municipalities can ban sleeping on public property. The ruling will affect the entire nation.
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Speaker Johnson Gets Swamped Over Ukraine
The return of GOP’s minority-party mindset is very likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy come November.
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Foreign Policy Splits the Parties
When it comes to foreign policy America’s two political parties are split—not so much against each other—but against themselves.
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Biden Pins His Hopes on Abortion
Democrats are desperate to make the election a referendum on Dobbs. Trump is right to refuse to resist that.
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The Logic of ‘Laci and Conner’s Law’ is Undeniable
A society that treats the death of the unborn son of Scott Peterson at the hands of his father as an unspeakable crime but would have licensed his death at the hands of his mother will eventually be forced to confront its own incoherence.
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Aaron Wolf, Memory Eternal
Remembering the significant contributions of former Chronicles executive editor Aaron Wolf on the fifth anniversary of his passing.
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Biohacking Into Oblivion
A question biohackers ought to ask is: How much time have I lost by attempting to become younger and live longer?
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Cancer and American Films
Hollywood’s decades-long fascination with the 0the struggles of cancer patients may tell us more about the human condition than many people traumatized by the disease want to know.
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A Hallucinogenic and Unrepentant Rant
Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser in the infamous 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has written an unrepentant and incoherent book while showing no remorse for the ordeal she caused others and the nation.
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O.J. Simpson Is Dead—Ron and Nicole Are Unavailable for Comment
What can one say other than this? O.J. Simpson has died. Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were unavailable for comment.
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Alvin Bragg’s Witch Trial
Bragg’s indictment repeatedly alleges Donald Trump made a false business entry to, “commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.” But Bragg does not specify what the original crime was.
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Trump and the Pro-Life Dilemma
Pro-lifers upset with Trump mistake their situation. They're not missing an opportunity to declare a universal right to life; they're rather in a pitched battle to stop the other side from reestablishing a universal right to abortion.
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Iran vs. Israel: De-Escalation Likely, for Now
In the fullness of time Israel will probably retaliate in some limited form, but under American pressure it will calibrate its response so that it does not prompt an uncontrollable spiral of escalation.
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An Inept Takedown of William F. Buckley
PBS’s “Incomparable Mr. Buckley” offers a left-wing caricature of a complex man and the conservative way of life he advocated.
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Trump, Abortion, and the 2024 Election
Overall, the pro-life cause must be less concerned with short-term tactical disagreements and more concerned with unanimity as to the long-term goal.
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The NPR-Listening ‘Elite 1%’
The publicly subsidized programming of National Public Radio draws a mostly white, high-income earning audience with degrees from elite institutions. It should be no surprise this group trusts government to uphold its interests, given they have the same interests.
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Key Bridge Collapse Now an Illegal Immigration Political Football
The effort to make the illegal immigrant workers who died in the Key Bridge collapse into the moral equivalent of emergency responders rushing into the World Trade Center on 9/11 is little more than a cheap appeal to manipulate the public’s emotions.
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H5N1 Pandemic Test Case—Biden Administration Not Ready
To prepare for a pandemic, start by curbing the government's power over your decisions.
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George Kennan: A Great and Good Man
The results of rejecting Kennan’s counsel have been disastrous, and the ongoing failure to draw upon his wisdom is a tragedy.
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PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
In failing to mention Communism, the makers of a PBS documentary about William F. Buckley unintentionally remind viewers of why Buckley was needed in the first place—and why he still is.
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Worse Is Worse: Why We Shouldn’t Root for the Demise of the Establishment Right
The truly right-wing may wish for the demise of establishment conservative parties so that a real opposition to the left may emerge. They are fooling themselves and underestimating the danger of an unopposed left.
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Exploring Beyond the Internet
The only certainty is that uncertainty is one of the best prompts for asking what it means to be human.
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Is Rob Henderson ‘Troubled’ or Blessed?
Rob Henderson’s memoir “Troubled” demonstrates why it’s not enough for a writer to dwell on the problems that afflict a person and his community. Henderson should now turn his focus to what makes him, and his circle, blessed.
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John Eastman and the Left’s War on the Legal Profession
The ultimate aim of the Jacobins prosecuting and disbarring lawyers who represent high-profile Republican clients is the subordination of the rule of law and cowing into submission political opposition.
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John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark Cases Defy the Rule of Law
The rule of law is the American answer to despotism and totalitarianism. It is under attack today by the very people meant to uphold it.
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Liberals Love the Minimum Wage—Though It Hurts People Liberals Love
A much-touted study on the effects of minimum wage is really a study in confirmation bias.
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Understanding the Shifting Realities of the Right
Historical circumstances make realignments inescapable and attempts to define “conservatism” apart from an understanding of these shifts results in wild mischaracterizations.
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Teach Migrant Children English—Bilingual Ed Is a Scam
Bilingual education creates linguistic chaos in the classroom, and it is failing nearly everywhere it is tried.
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Questioning the Pill Triggers a Big Pharma Backlash
Women learned during the COVID vaccine mandates that pharmaceutical companies are willing to sacrifice their reproductive health for profits. Now they are questioning the health risks of birth control pills, and big pharma has summoned its media allies to silence them.
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Nation of Squatters
A state in which people are essentially free to plunder the property of their neighbors is in a state of war. And when the legal system tips the scales of justice in favor of the pillagers, it becomes a kind of institutionalized tyranny.