New York Six years have passed since the Wall Street tycoon, bon vivant, and presidential chum Jeffrey Epstein died by his own hand (so it’s said) while awaiting trial on federal charges of child rape and trafficking. Yet as I write today, the quest for details into l’affaire Epstein are elusive. Details that would surely lead to righteous prosecutions of a certain circle of obscenely rich and powerful men—men who will do most anything to keep the world from knowing the disgusting things they did and to whom, and ofRead More

NORTH CHATHAM, New York September marked nine months since a convicted felon, habitual deadbeat, and adjudicated sexual assailant was inaugurated as forty-seventh president of the United States. It has been a bumpy ride, to say the least; a short yet chaotic span of time that feels more like nine years. It is near impossible to keep pace with the barrage of Donald J. Trump’s desperate distractions to camouflage his lengthening list of despicable deeds: viz. damnation of political opponents as “leftwing lunatics” and “scum”; an oafish speech given during theRead More

EDGARTOWN, Massachusetts Even here on Martha’s Vineyard, the balmy island retreat for east coast cosmopolitans, it is difficult to get through an otherwise pleasant day without news of the latest vile, repulsive, revolting, obnoxious, abhorrent, racist, disgraceful, or flat-out stupid act by the president of the United States—an incontinent boor with a ridiculous yellow hairdo stomping and clomping his way across the world stage. With its beaches and charming villages and excellent seafood restaurants, the Vineyard offers seaside refuge from urban cacophony. But it does not nor cannot assure respiteRead More

New York In the time of an earlier mass resistance to injustice and immorality, we tenderfoot social activists began calling out truncheon-happy policemen for exactly what they were: “pigs,” meaning no offense to honest porkers. —A bit of rude history before moving on to the piggery of today: With the blessings of a jeering Mayor Richard J. Daley (1902-1976), a phalanx of Chicago police officers chose the city’s 1968 Democratic Party national convention as an arena for vicious assaults on opponents of the war in Vietnam; the bone-crushing mayhem wasRead More

New York On a winter’s morning four years hence, citizens of the United States and the world beyond shall know a date that will live in boldface ecstasy: Saturday, 20 January 2029. For at high noon on that blessed day, the fascistic Washington regime goes poof! as we Americans inaugurate a new president—a man or woman certain to restore national decency by merely showing up. In the weeks leading up to Inauguration ‘29, the Flatulent Führer, as he is known by those trapped in his vapor trail, will take timeRead More

New York Had she not proudly held high her protest sign—punctuated with a profanity she could not recall ever using in sixty-eight years of life—I might not have noticed the small, quiet woman in the boisterous crowd. Her voice was soft; her silver hair was tucked beneath the hood of a red parka worn against the cool drizzle of early spring; the top of her head barely reached my shoulders. It was Saturday afternoon in midtown Manhattan. She fell into step beside me as we marched slowly down Fifth Avenue,Read More

New York As I write, the month of March stumbles toward April, bleeding all the way. Soon we shall mark seventy-one consecutive days of fascist chaos that commenced on January 20 with the second presidential inauguration of a criminal farce by the name Donald J. Trump. With spring in sight after winter’s final act, I am mindful of sobering lines from “The Wasteland,” the epic poem by American-born British essayist and poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)— April is the cruellist month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land… What are theRead More

New York Sleight of hand, the magician’s trick of distraction and fascination is the basic operating procedure of a nascent dictatorship in Washington led by a one-time reality TV performer and convicted felon with sweaty dreams of becoming a man the world has never seen before: the ruling monarch of America. The would-be king is not intelligent, but he is single-minded. And sufficiently cunning to take his cues from a competent magician’s patter whilst misdirecting his audience. As when, classically, the sleight of hand artist places a vigorously shuffled deckRead More

New York Dateline: Berlin, 1933—On a bitter cold morning in late January, the convicted criminal who incited a deadly insurrection was officially sworn to office as his country’s head of state. In his inaugural address, he pledged to restore national honor. Flash forward ninety-two years: Dateline: Washington, 2025—On a bitter cold morning in late January, the convicted criminal who incited a deadly insurrection was officially sworn to office as his country’s head of state. In his inaugural address, he pledged to restore national honor. Each fervent pledge—“Machen Sie Deutschland wiederRead More

New York Apologies, dear readers. Last month’s contribution to this space was an optimistic prediction on the outcome of November’s presidential election here in the United that went horribly wrong. The improbable victory of Donald J. Trump in 2024 was even more improbable than his winning a first four-year term back in 2016. Along with virtually every other journalist, I thought too highly of my countrymen this second time around. Having lost their senses, a tick more than half the American electorate returned Mr. Trump to the White House, whichRead More

VICTOR, Idaho  From deep in the heart of what the chattering calls “Trump Country,” otherwise known as the Mountain West state of Idaho, I write on the eve of America’s momentous presidential election. Thousands of miles from the place I call home—New York City—relentless forecasts of Election Day outcome are broadcast on network television news programs hosted by well-coiffed commentators and insufferably confident pollsters. “Thumb suckers,” is what old newspapermen such as myself call their jabberings. At this point, they sound like buzzy flies in a butcher shop at summertime.Read More

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana It is the fateful afternoon of September 15, a Sunday. I am sitting in a hotel lobby in this storied city, where the Mississippi River flows gently into the Gulf of Mexico; the “Big Easy,” it’s called. I am enjoying a café au lait as I read an interesting article about a poet from Boston named Amy Silberman who died here back in 1994 when bullets rained down from the sky… … until I am interrupted by an alarm on my smartphone telling me of semi-disturbing news:Read More

New York City America’s predominant criminal and aspiring autocrat is fast losing his grip, mentally and politically. The incipient collapse of Donald J. Trump and his second attempt to win reëlection brings joy, or at least relief, to a land sick and tired of his fascist following and flatulent presence. The Mar-a-Lago man grows and lazier and crazier by the day as he indulges his obsessions—misogyny and mendacity, persecution and retribution. His only solace is the golf course. It is there, in manicured fairways he navigates aboard a motorized cartRead More

New York Two men with no desire to shake hands entered a broadcast studio in Atlanta one night in late June as player-combatants in a political drama routinely misnomered as debate. In reality, what the viewing audience beheld that night was a television art form as preposterous as professional wrestling. This time, sadly preposterous. As commentator Audie Cornish of CNN Television dubbed the event, “The Infirm versus the Unstable.” At screen right that night stood Joseph Robinette Biden, the Infirm: a slim and balding family man six feet in heightRead More

NEW YORK CITY The victory of May 30 was sweet, and we deserve to savor it. With the whole world watching, a jury of twelve everyday New Yorkers delivered a unanimous verdict in the criminal trial of a former president—a trial of historic measure that awakens my country from eight years of despairing fear; a trial that sets us free from cynicism, for however brief a time; a trial whose outcome allows us, once again, to know pride in being American. Late in the afternoon of May 30, Donald JohnRead More

New York A well-meaning lie told every day in this abominable Age of Trump is the old whopper, “No one is above the law.” Here in the United States—home to Wall Street swindlers, bible-thumping perverts, and crypto-currency hustlers—such perjury comforts the masses. But for those who recognize fables, the whopper du jure distracts from what we yearn to hear: the sound of an iron door clanging shut behind the Mar-a-Lago crime boss after he’s been frog-marched down the concrete corridor of a penitentiary and shoved into a windowless cell furnishedRead More

New York Late January saw the opening acts in a calliope of crime and calumny that will entertain, irk and frighten the world as the United States lurches into the final months of this year’s presidential election campaign season. A pair of preliminary contests has now determined the people’s choice—people of the Republican Party that is—to oppose President Joe Biden on Election Day come November 5.   The man of the hour: • A bloviating, orange-complexioned, professed billionaire with poufy yellow hair, freshly ordered by a federal court to payRead More

An Clarice Lispector von Friedrich Ani In der letzten Nachtdes Jahres nüchternlesen bis nachMitternacht und weit,so weit darüberhinaus, bis zurallerletzten Zeile, derallerersten des nächstenBuches, nächstenJahres. Regnenwird’s, die allzugroßen Wunden trocknenniemals. Die Schöne aber,Hand in Hand mitdem Biest, lacht dem seitjeher verlogenenNeujahrstag ins schiefeGesicht, und ihrLachen, trunken vonLeben, mundet unsLesende, Liebendewie Himbeertorte, wieam KrankenlagerHimbeertorte Von Friedrich Ani erscheinen in 2024: am 7. Februar der Gedichtband »Stift« und am 11. März der Kriminalroman »Lichtjahre im Dunkel« (beides bei Suhrkamp). Außerdem ein neuer (bereits der dritte) Hörspiel-Dreiteiler mit den Figuren Fariza Nasri undRead More

Jackboot Dreams Plotting a Dark American FutureFinding a way out of no wayby Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana—U.S.A.  Somewhere beyond this jazzy gumbo of a multi-cultural southern city—most likely in the northern mountain state of Idaho—lives a strange and über-wealthy man who advertises himself as “fated to become a warlord” in the cause of Donald J. Trump and his criminal cult of tattooed street brawlers, mouth-breathing yahoos and perfidious plutocrats who together have subsumed half the governing duopoly of America, i.e. the reprehensible RepublicanRead More

Escape from Madness Spouting Curses, Waving Signs ‘Something in me died’ by Thomas Adcock Copyright © 2023 – Thomas Adcock NEW YORK CITY, near America October 7 leaves us with yet another milepost along the highway of human depravity. Yet another foul deposit for the cesspool of tribalism; yet more billions enroute to the munitions industry coffers; yet more crime without consequence; yet more thunderous certitude sung by the usual chorus of fools and fomenters with opposing claims to The Truth, the Whole Truth, and nothing but The Truth. YetRead More

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