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

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

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

By Thomas AdcockCopyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Democracy has a way of smiting those who flout its tenets, especially those who seek its destruction. Thus is the famous fabulist and mobster of Mar-a-Lago finally “woke,” as it is said by the young, to what for him is an unpalatable new reality: The United States of America is not a nation of The Donald, by The Donald, and for The Donald.   I speak here, of course, of Donald John Trump, whose recently failed presidencyRead 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

By Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NORTH CHATHAM, New York — U.S.A. Finally, spring has eclipsed the long winter of our discontent. Normally at this time, our mood lightens with the sunshine of a warming season, with bright blue skies and sweet-smelling rain and greening trees. Normally. But even as the coronavirus plague is a fading fear, even as the Muttering Malodor of Mar-a-Lagois largely gone from center stage—Alas, I understate my contempt horribly—our days here are not wholly uplifting. In fact, we seesaw between hope andRead More

By Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Tyrants worthy of the name understand that truth does not matter; what matters is what is believed. Tyrants know that so long as the mighty force of stupidity lives, many will not respect the evidence of their own experience. Tyrants, being cynics worthy of the name, rely on these underpinnings of the human tragicomedy, as those with willing eyes have seen in the modern history of fascism—from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler back in the day,Read More

By Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2021 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America Had the events of three consecutive Wednesdays occurred elsewhere in the world, we Americans would voice serious doubts about a viable future for such a chaotic nation. Here in the United States, let us consider the highlights of last month’s Washington calendar: • January 6 — Inspired by two months of hate-soaked lies, several thousand of Donald Trump’s storm troopers mount a putsch at the Capitol building, two miles east along Pennsylvania Avenue from the WhiteRead More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York — U.S.A. On Christmas morning, something up the road from my creaky old weekend getaway house caught my heathen eye as I walked by: an invitation of a sort, posted outside the North Chatham United Methodist Church, a religious establishment for those amenable to the radical social agenda of a famous Nazarene carpenter—especially that part of the agenda about giving succor to The Stranger, so it seemed. For lo, there appeared a banner alongside the church entryway, declaring: “Immigrants & Refugees Welcome.”  The banner still wavesRead More

NEW YORK CITY, near America  Four years of ridiculing a malevolent Donald J. Trump—last month’s Election Day loser—has been therapeutic for those of us Americans appalled, pained, embarrassed, nauseated, and shamed by the demonstrably worst president in our country’s two hundred and forty-four years of national history.  Mockery has saved our sanity.  It is easy to laugh at Mr. Trump, yet deeply satisfying. Therein lies the solace of knowing that his presence in the world is a sour joke, at best. As his execrable tenure in Washington dwindles, let usRead More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York — U.S.A. October 24 was a Saturday of dramatically mixed weather here in upstate New York, as mixed and moody as months of speculation by political scientists and amateurs alike over the prospects for the survival of America as we know it. This day was our first in a week of early voting in the lead-up to November 3—Election Day throughout the United States. So, there was I on that cool grey misty morning, near the front of a sidewalk line-up outside my polling station inRead More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York – U.S.A. Red-faced and sweaty, Donald Trump was greatly worried on the night of September 29. His chances for reelection as president were slim and growing slimmer, thanks to a cascade of scandals. Yet there he was in the city of Cleveland for the first of three scheduled televised debates with his opponent, Joe Biden. Mr. Trump conducted himself accordingly: One commentator compared his behavior to that of an agitated, feces-flinging chimpanzee in the primates section of a zoo.  Viewers expected no less a performance from theRead 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

NORTH CHATHAM, New York – U.S.A. by Thomas Adcock The death of a great man or woman of near saintly stature brings forth a time of mourning for society’s loss and a related determination to shape and improve society’s future in the spirit of the deceased. So now is that time with the passing of John Robert Lewis, a personal hero of mine.  As with many others during his eighty years of life, I had the honor of meeting Mr. Lewis and shaking his hand, knowing I shook the hand ofRead 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

NEW YORK CITY, near America Fundamental to the citizens of Trumpistan is cultish deference to Dear Leader’s every vile tweet, every ludicrous lie, every malignant boast, every odious blast of oral flatulence from Dear Leader’s kewpie doll lips—the more racist the blast the better. In this time of global pandemic, in which the United States has surpassed the health and economic devastations of China and Italy, more and more Americans are homebound, voluntarily or by legal order. We flip on our television sets each day in search of governmental andRead 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

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