Farewell to Democracy? The Lady Will Remain Standing ‘I would have opened fire’ by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock      NEW YORK CITY, near America Consider these few hours in the repugnant life of a certain bailed-out criminal suspect, adjudicated sex abuser, world-class liar, and renown deadbeat who commands one-half of an American political duopoly that has devolved into a fascist confederation of the rich, the rascals, the racists, and the rubes: It was a Monday afternoon in late September when the suspect, odds-on favorite to captureRead More

Summer Hellfire & The Zombie Trump ‘I feel kind of sick’ by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Massachusetts—U.S.A. Overwhelming the abominations of Donald J. Trump and his cult of conspiracist fools and fascists who would trash common decency and smash the soul of American democracy is a profoundly greater horror: climate change that is burning our planet, a reality that Mr. Trump dismisses as a “hoax” invented by China.    Since global weather statistics were established in 1850, no summer has been more hellish thanRead More

Traitor ‘I’m the only one who can save this nation’ by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America The latest (but not the last) criminal indictment filed against one of the world’s foremost mobsters opens with these simple yet momentous words: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP Under the nearly fifty-page indictment, Mr. Trump is accused of traitorous conduct as delineated under the U.S. Espionage Act. The federal government has charged the man who ran the federal government from 2017-21 withRead More

Time Heals All Wounds? Pride of Texas: God, Guns & Greg ‘America is a gun’ by Thomas Adcock copyright © 2023 — Thomas Adcock TORONTO, Ontario – Canada We always remember the first time. When it happened; where it happened; how it felt bearing witness to mass murder, from however afar. And now, each news report of a fresh massacre south of here—down in the United States of America—our dreams are creeped with flashbacks of that very first time.  Again and again and again over the years the madness strikes;Read More

Dragnet ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America On the Tuesday afternoon of April 4, a penultimate chapter in the squalid biography of a Florida flimflammer and credibly accused rapist was written in a courtroom of New York City, birthplace of the man known in proceedings against him as Criminal Defendant #4913961R.  What happened that fine spring day was a promise of social redress quite beyond one man’s well deserved comeuppance. There is now a palpable feelingRead More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock I. EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — U.S.A. On a sunny Wednesday morning in early March, I arrived here to examine the scene of the crime, as it were—an explosive disaster that spread toxic filth all over this small Ohio town on the cold black night of February 3. The disaster could have and should have been entirely resistible. Like disasters elsewhere in the country, news of this one in East Palestine blared for a little while in national headlines. Then like nearlyRead More

Yankee Doodle Nazis Cheeseburger King of Mar-a-Lago ‘I shot and killed people because they were black’ by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 • Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Not for a lack of trying, but last month’s “Day of Hate”—a much ballyhooed racist  jamboree that American anti-Semites expected would attract coast-to-coast throngs of like-minded christo-nationalists, anti-science morons, kluxers, ammosexuals and QAnon conspiracists—was a capital-B bust.   Even droolers still enthralled with the Cheeseburger King of Mar-a-Lago kept clear of the national town square—a disappointment for Fox TV “News”Read More

I. NEW YORK CITY, near America Proving yet again that America is the world’s most exotic country, now comes the pudgy fabulist and fraudster George Santos as leading man in a  Republican Party cast of kooks and clowns sworn into office last month as members of the United States Congress.  Measured by the volume of headlines he’s inspired, Mr. Santos is flashiest of the flock. He has a penchant for auburn wigs, ruby red lipstick, and feathered gowns accented in rhinestone. Never mind the style being officially frowned upon byRead More

Split Screen ‘Fat Don’ Trumped on TV by Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock  NEW YORK CITY, near America During the week before Christmas 2022, American television viewers witnessed capital-I irony in the appearance of two vastly different men. Both were television entertainers not long ago; each was elected the improbable president of his respective country. One man’s post-TV performance in Washington bombed, the other triumphed in his new rôle in Kyiv. Today, they are central characters in a true-life global drama posing the existential question: Can democracy surviveRead More

By Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America In mid-November, one of the world’s most frequently alleged criminals announced his intention to once more seek the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States. The campaign slogan this time: “Make America Glorious Again.” This big news of little surprise came as part of a nearly ninety-minute litany of Donald J. Trump’s usual resentments, delivered from behind a gold-plated dais before a captive audience in a banquet room at Mar-a-Lago, the golf resort in FloridaRead More

By Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America On the Friday afternoon of October 21, three bombs were dropped on Mar-a-Lago, the Florida golf resort where Donald J. Trump sleeps with a stash of highly classified government documents, if not his wife. Loyalists of the élite criminal caste, were rattled, fearing an unprecedented loss of their untouchable status. Their king was himself dazed, though still walking, if not talking—for once. Then things quickly went south in Trumpworld. Eight days later, again on a Friday inRead More

Death of The Donald Wither Orange Jesus? The buoyancy of hope vs. the fatigue of despair By Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Six days after his furious speech before a rally of his flag-waving flock—the afterglow to a courtroom triumph that would shortly boomerang—the plodding big-bellied man with an obvious diabetic condition and a sanctimonious worldview sat down for what was, to him, a routine midnight supper: two roast chickens soaked in gravy accompanied by sweet potatoes and rice, carrot and turnipRead More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America The verdict is in, so to speak. Heavyweights of the American juridical universe are confident that Donald Trump will be held formally accountable in multiple courts for the disgrace, dishonor, and delinquency of his twice-impeached, one-term presidency. Mr. Trump’s comeuppance could arrive as early as this month of September. But swift justice is only a first phase in the moral, legal, and political reckoning to follow. We shall be put to The Test, with its profoundRead More

Walking and Talking Crime in New York City Nach zwei Jahren Corona und Travel Ban: längst fällige Besuche bei Krimiautoren und Streifzüge durch kriminelle Viertel in Manhattan und Brooklyn  – Von Johannes Groschupf. Hell’s Kitchen “Da drüben war das Hauptquartier der Westies”, sagt Thomas Adcock auf dem Balkon seiner Wohnung im 43. Stock in Midtown Manhattan. Das Viertel wurde früher Hell’s Kitchen genannt, heute sagen die Stadtentwickler lieber Clinton, um die anrüchige Vergangenheit der Gegend vergessen zu machen. Die Westies waren eine irische Gang des organisierten Verbrechens, ihre Blütezeit hatteRead More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America On the fourth day of this month of July, the United States will mark the 246th anniversary of our revolutionary break from the monarchy of Great Britain—the signing of the Declaration of Independence, among the world’s most eloquent documents of political courage. This holiday, my personal favorite, will be celebrated with the usual backyard barbecues and picnics in the parks and softball games and razzle-dazzle fireworks and streets full of joyful parades with marching bands andRead More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York—U.S.A. A powerful clique of black-robed jurists given lifetime appointments to the United States Supreme Court—that august institution reputed by fools to be an impartial branch of the federal government—has brought America to the cusp of adopting a principal tenet in the misogynist creed of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan: Abortion is an abomination to God and therefore must be outlawed. …But wait, there’s more! The same clique looks beyond attacking the feminine half of the country to giving the greenlight to all Americans old enough for booze and seriousRead More

NEW YORK CITY, near America An unholy gaggle of my journalistic confrères in corporate media sing daily from the hymnal of conventional wisdom of how the wily Donald J. Trump is bound to survive the perils facing him at this moment, of how his devoted flock remains a mighty rock of support, of how he shall rise yet again from the ashes of self-destruction. I beg to disagree. My fellow Americans are a forgiving lot of suckers for devilish entertainments such as The Donald provides. Among his anti-heroic charms, Mr.Read More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America As we absorb media accounts of Moscow’s ongoing crimes against humanity, targeted on neighboring Ukraine, this much has grown clear: Truth is the first casualty of war, the Russian military slaughters children, the ruble is rubble, and Vladimir Putin is a dead man walking. Once more the shortest of all war stories: He lied, they died. They are the usual victims: ordinary people, Ukrainians fleeing for their lives as Russia’s hypersonic missiles slam into their homes,Read More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York Most nights in America nowadays—more properly nowadaze—the so-called political analysts employed by television news networks lament the self-immolation of a formerly presentable Republican Party. Founded in 1854 as a vehicle for abolishing the evil of slavery, the party evolved over the next two centuries as a coalition of family farmers, dutiful church folk, Main Street bourgeoisie, and Wall Street conservatives. One could disagree with Republicans philosophically, but respect that they came to their views based on honest reasoning and lived experience. In recent years, however, theRead More

America Gone Mad The Crime of Defeating Truth Amusing ourselves to death by Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2022 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Here in New York—and in Moscow, among KGB and GRU operatives collecting gossip about foreign visitors that could be useful in the cause of kompromat—everyone knew what he was, years before the rest of the world caught on to the con man: Fake tycoon, unapologetic deadbeat, credibly accused rapist, tabloid buffoon, eleven-time supplicant in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, pathological liar, adjudicated fraudster, white supremacist, badly tailoredRead More

NEW YORK CITY, near America FOREWARD: I am aware of numerous horrors haunting the headlines here. Among these: destructive weather patterns courtesy of the climate crisis, year three of the The Plague, cruelty shown to immigrants and refugees, fascism creeping ever closer, the aftermath of last January’s treasonous insurrection in Washington, the extant specter of Donald Trump. But the stuff of my bedtime terrors of late is America’s reverence for guns, and our seeming toleration of schoolhouse massacre after massacre after massacre, ad infinitum. Thus shall I write of nightmares.Read More

Friedrich Ani Flux Am Montag gab ich dem Donnerstag jede MengeZeit zum Aufbruch.Am Dienstag gab ich dem Donnerstag doppeltZeit zum Aufbruch.Am Mittwoch gab ich dem DonnerstagZeit zum Aufbruch.Heute wollte ich den Donnerstagzur Rede stellen.Ich habe mich vertan, heuteist schon Sonntag. Übermorgen werde ich gestern dem Donnerstag jede Menge Zeit zum Aufbruch gegeben haben.Jede Menge.Jede Menge. Das Biest nebenan (für Herbert Achternbusch) Vor elend langer Zeit im Gasthausgleich beim Rathaussaß ein Künstler vor der Wand, trankund hörte den Getränken zu, wie sie raunten, er möge voller Nachsicht sein und nicht bloß voll, er hörte weg, drei, vier StricheRead More

EAST GREENWICH, Rhode Island—U.S.A. The statistics are dryly listed, the prose cautiously academic. Nevertheless, a study of worldwide trends in despotism released last month is as alarming as a house afire—for Americans who read the report, or care about its findings. Which explains a dearth of concern among Washington’s ruling class over the study’s bottom-line conclusion: For the very first time, the United States of America joins a list of “backsliding democracies” compiled annually by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. According to the Stockholm-based institute, the U.S.Read More

Crackpots, Cretins & Crooks The New American Élite ‘Principiis obsta’ … ‘Finem respice’ by Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Mine is not the only country where huge chunks of the population are irreversibly obtuse. But in the bleakest hours of life in the United States, on days when the proudly witless say and do things more witless than usual, it seems that way, causing me to ask: How on Earth must the rest of the world regard America as anything more than aRead More

Bang!….Whimper….sigh American Rage Machine Kaput Build Back Brighter? by Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Dare I disagree with the esteemed Robert Kagan, Ph.D.—alumnus of Harvard and Yale universities, senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the lofty Brookings Institution, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century? Whoa! An Ivy League think tanker versus little old me? Credentialed pessimism versus my own fitful pursuit of the positive? In a September 23 essay for the Washington Post, Mr.Read More

NEW YORK CITY, near America Nine months ago, Donald J. Trump incited a fascist insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington, citadel of the world’s oldest continuing democracy. Over these months, we began the awful process of absorbing what has happened to us: the physical, psychic, and political horrors launched against the United States by Mr. Trump and his mob. Mr. Trump is a free man, for the moment, and will be for some time to go before that blessed day when history books not yet written release us fromRead More