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

By Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NORTH CHATHAM, New York—U.S.A. Meet Michael James Lindell of Mankato, Minnesota—pillow factory magnate, blustery messenger of anti-vaccine lunacy, and mustachioed mouthpiece for the entire menu of Republican Party screwball theory. His qualifications for this work include years of experience as a crack addict and Las Vegas card sharp who will tell you, at the drop of a hat, how he trod the road to Damascus and found salvation in Jesus Christ and Donald Trump. Born again, so it is said by theRead More

NEW YORK CITY, near America On a recent evening news broadcast, television journalist Joy Reid opened her program with unsettling questions about contemporary life in these dis-United States of America—where gun massacres occur almost daily; where partisan debate has devolved to obstructive tribalism, with half the political duopoly shirking responsibility for governance; where lunatics and unembarrassed racists occupy high public office and prominent media platforms; where falsehoods are considered facts by millions, and bloody violence as patriotism. Where the coda to Donald Trump’s unnerving Republican Party regime of scandal, ineptitude,Read More

Ann Anders –Friedrich Ani –Bruno Arich-Gerz –Vladimir Alexeev –Thomas Adcock (in English) – Ann Anders: Malta – drei Jahre nach dem Mord Als ich vor drei Jahren schrieb, dass die Bombe, die Daphne Caruana Galizia am 16.Oktober 2017 zerfetzte, die Republik Malta verändert zurücklassen würde, war diese Behauptung ungeprüft. Hatte ich recht?Nein und ja. Nein, denn die Korruption auf Malta geht weiter. Von den kleinen „Iced Buns“ der Vetternwirtschaft, die Geldwäsche die Korruption der Regierungskreise – all das geht weiter. (Siehe auch meine Rückblicke 2018 und 2019.) So bekam derRead More

NEW YORK CITY, near America A decade ago, the opening fusillades of bigotry were fired at Barack Obama, first African American president of the United States, prompting a professor at Northwestern University in Illinois to issue prescient warning of the worst to come. In an essay for a Manhattan weekly newspaper, under the headline WHITE AMERICA HAS LOST ITS MIND, Steven Thrasher wrote in the now defunct Village Voice— “About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel. It had been a prettyRead More

Woke America Screams ‘Enough!’  Police savagery, racism, poverty, environmental destruction, fascism by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2020 — Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Thirty days that shook the world began on the first day of June when hundreds of thousands of outraged Americans—of all colors, creeds, and ages—overwhelmed the streets in cities and towns throughout the United States, all of us pumping the air with fists demanding justice for a dead African American man named George Floyd. We Americans touched off allied demonstrations of support in countries asRead More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2020 — Thomas Adcock NORTH CHATHAM, New York – U.S.A. In January of next year, the world will surely breathe a collective sigh of relief as Donald J. Trump exits the White House, voluntarily or else frog-marched out of the Oval Office under military escort upon refusing to accept his landslide defeat in November’s election. (In the interest of high drama, my preference would be for the latter.) Mr. Trump will then spend the rest of his time on Earth toiling at the sole occupationRead More

North Chatham, New York — U.S.A. Should you ask of us here in the hills of rural New York State, a region of apple orchards and dairy farms and green mountains and our hamlet of five hundred and three souls, my wife Kim and I are faring well enough since fleeing the big city three weeks ago. More than two hundred kilometers to the south lies New York City, population nine million—epicenter of the coronavirus global pandemic, and hometown of a dangerous buffoon in down in Washington whose name IRead More

North Chatham, New York — U.S.A. Last time in this space, we dealt with the theme of stupidity as complement to incompetence—both forces kill—and how the world’s leading example of this deadly synthesis comes in the person of Donald J. Trump, dedicated to ignoring science and empowered by a supine Republican Party and backstage oligarchs. Ever since, Mr. Trump’s ineptitude and ignorance, seeds of his anger and amorality, has metastasized in ways too numerous to mention—preventing any rational or coherent national strategy for dealing with America’s greatest medical crisis sinceRead More

NEW YORK CITY, near America Lawrence Peter Berra—sportsman and grand master of spoonerisms—warned us of epochal times like these: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” The late Mr. Berra (1925-2015) is affectionately known by generations of New York Yankees fans as “Yogi.” When he can bear to look down from where he resides in Baseball Heaven, I believe he is distressed by what he sees: an unholy number of us Americans’ failure to grasp the caution implied in his most famous lapsus linguae, beguiled as we habitually are by allRead More

By Thomas Adcock Copyright 2020-Thomas Adcock  NEW YORK CITY, near America As I write on this final day of January, it appears that Donald Trump will be found not guilty in his so-called impeachment trial in the upper chamber of the United States Congress. Despite the dishonest verdict—orchestrated by a once grand old American political party, now destined to live in infamy—I encourage a cheerful view: Donald Trump is toast. In this bleak moment, my outlook may be considered Pollyannaish. But as surely as the calendar moves forward to ElectionRead More

Thomas Adcock –Ann Anders –Friedrich Ani –Max Annas –Bruno Arich-Gerz –Matthias Arning – Thomas Adcock This year, I have but one nomination for the best in cultural offerings: “The Irishman”, a motion picture tour de force from Martin Scorsese, the American director/producer/screenwriter.  Over his stunningly productive sixty-year career, Mr. Scorsese has gifted the world with twenty-five narrative films, among them what are often cited by cinephiles as the greatest ever made, viz. “Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull”, and “Goodfellas”. Now comes his masterpiece. As a gangster epic, “The Irishman” is madeRead More

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – U.S.A. With respect to religion and/or spirituality, I am a devout believer in the God of Irony. As testament to my faith, behold the present-day, oddly coifed idol of Christian Evangelism and Pentecostalism—an American president who proudly prostitutes a code of decency given unto the world two millennia ago by a Nazarene carpenter of note. During an earlier once-upon-a-time—June of 1998, actually—some of the biggest machers of American Christendom assembled in Salt Lake City, Utah, to adopt a “Resolution on the Moral Character of Public Officials.”Read More

“When authoritarian figures can do no wrong, the problem is not so much with the leader but with the followers, who, like followers of religious cults, willingly drink the proverbial Kool-Aid regardless of how high their IQ may actually be. Seeing their unearned, privileged positions threatened by merit-based concepts such as equality, they embrace cult leaders who present themselves as the only solution to their downward-spiraling predicament, or as Trump proclaimed while mounting the Republican National Convention stage: ‘I am your voice. I alone can fix it.’” —Miguel A. DeRead More

[NOTE: Following are remarks delivered by Thomas Adcock – in an condensed version – to an audience of writers, editors, translators, filmmakers and television producers gathered in Köln in late September for KrimisMachen 4. They have been adapted for publication here.] KÖLN – Germany With each new decade of my life, I have heard this expression: “The world’s gone mad!” Until recently, I considered this an overstatement by friends and family—people I love and admire for caring about the good things of life: peace among nations, human fulfillment, art andRead More

„Ein Romancier muss die Wohlhabenden verstören“ Ein Interview von 1994 – als Begrüßung des Ehrengasts von KrimisMachen 4, vom 27. – 29. September 2019 in Köln CrimeMag-Lesern ist Thomas Adcock mit seinen zuverlässig jeden Monat gelieferten Essays zum Stand der Dinge in den USA wohl vertraut. Aber kennt man ihn auch noch als Autor von Kriminalromanen? Vier von ihnen sind – damals hoch beachtet zwischen 1989 und 1995 in Deutschland erschienen (auf Deutsch bei Spraybooks vorrätig). Das Interview von Thomas Wörtche aus dem Jahr 1994 macht geradezu mustergültig die Haltung des RomanciersRead More

First glimpse into a brand new novel Thomas Adcock, author of the Neil Hockaday novels is back in all the old glory The hero of Thomas Adcock’s „Painted Devils“ is a world-weary New Yorker by the name of Matty O’Neill, who describes „the markers of my previous lives“ as „U.S. Army war criminal, a red-headed boxer called Rusty O’Neill, a boozer, a policeman, a crime reporter [and] all too briefly, a husband.“ We follow Matty’s painful remembrances of growing up in an immigrant household full of resentments—and unspoken mysteries—against theRead More

In the Beginning, a Terrace in Manhattan                                                                                                                                                                 Running out of room for Mother Nature  Ah, the Country Life … No End to Savage AmusementViolent geese, vile squirrels, toads in love, etc. Copyright © 2019 • Thomas Adcock NORTH CHATHAM, New York—U.S.A. Once upon a time, my wife and I were content as full-time denizens of hustle-bustle Manhattan—brash heart of a loud city populated by hundreds of skyscrapers and nearly nine million squabbling strivers; where anyone not beating you over the head with a club has friendship potential. We lived—and still do, Monday throughRead More

RHINEBECK, New York—USA We are halfway through 2019 as members of the United States Congress are scurrying en masse back to home districts across the land, in accordance with one of their numerous recesses from important business we voters elected them to attend. Per the previous two years’ periodic recessionals, they abandoned Washington having done zilch about the most important business at hand: a one-man crime wave named Donald J. Trump. Upon his inauguration as president, in January 2017, the ridiculously coifed Mr. Trump set forth to consolidate power. InRead More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2019 • Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America In January 2016, in Montréal, the old man lay dying.  Perhaps he silently cursed having reached the age of ninety-nine rather than a full century well deserved. Surely he reflected on his long ago life in Berlin; in particular, Kristallnacht—the night of November 9 in 1938, when Hitler’s brown-shirts assaulted Jews in the streets, smashed the windows of Jewish-owned shops, burned synagogues to the ground. Perhaps he gave silent thanks to his having the wisdom andRead More

by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2019 • Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America In last November’s federal legislative elections, Democrats swept to party leadership in half the two-chamber Congress of the United States—the House of Representatives, affectionately known as “the people’s House.” At last! Power to the people! Voters turned out in historically high numbers to demonstrate their profound disgust with the cupidity, immorality, and criminality of Donald J. Trump and his enablers of the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil Republican Party. Heeding the message of upstart Democratic contenders, featuring a bumperRead More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York—U.S.A. William Barr, attorney general of the United States, did exactly what Donald J. Trump hired him to do: On the afternoon of March 24, in Washington, he granted absolution to his lord and master—Donald J. Trump, suspected of treason and obstruction of justice. This act of legal mercy occurred on a Sunday, when evangelical Christian Trumpisti throughout the land undoubtedly spent their Sabbath morning beseeching Jesus and the Holy Father to spare the Golden-Haired One from impeachment or imprisonment. As the world knows by now, aRead More

Please…Call us ‘People of Means’ New York to world’s richest man: Fuhgeddaboudit by Thomas Adcock –Copyright © 2019 • Thomas Adcock  NEW YORK CITY, near America A prosperous dolt named Howard Schultz scored his most notable life achievement in 1995 by inventing the Mocha Frappuccino, a briskly profitable confection peddled throughout his empire of Starbucks coffee houses. A quarter century later, now comes Mr. Schultz asking voters to believe that his caffeinated brainstorm, and the billions of dollars accrued, qualifies him to be president of the United States.   Bad timing, Mr.Read More

NEW YORK CITY, near America Picture the current American presidency as gangster-laden film noir, a tawdry movie with two leading rôles: a thuggish lawyer called “The Fixer,” employed by “The Don,” malevolent godfather of a crime syndicate. The stars: Michael D. Cohen as consigliere, Donald J. Trump as capo di tutti capi. So it was, in life off the screen, for ten sorry years. Then came the morning February 27, a cold and sunny Wednesday in Washington. One of the stars broke character on live television. During five hours ofRead More

Get Out! Curtains Closing on a Carnival of Crime Down Among the Dead Men Let Him Lie’  by Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Happy New Year to all you fighting men and women of The Resistance! Ever since the surreality of a bellicose Know-Nothing’s criminal ascension to the presidency, back in November 2016, you have acted in the grand spirit of the American Revolution of some two centuries ago—a nervy peasant uprising, begun in 1776, that ousted a crazy-cruel British tyrant. You own the triumphal moment at hand: OurRead More