by Christopher Bacas

As a child, I feared dogs. A neighbor kept his German Shepherds, Heidi and Sarge, in a large pen along the alley. The yard and house, his parents’, were the biggest for many blocks. On the alley side, the chain link fence stood 10 feet. The dogs would charge out of their houses silently and hurl their bodies at the fence snarling and barking. I was caught unaware at the fence a few times. My stomach curdled and legs buckled. My mother’s family are dog people. My grandparents cared for a series of large overfed dogs who cavorted in the swamps surrounding their Massachusetts home and otherwise slumped under the kitchen table waiting for my grandmother to put together meals of breakfast scraps bound with maple syrup or for treats from a cookie jar on her counter. My uncles had shambling dogs who would leap into rough water off Cape Cod to retrieve balls from seaweed choked waves. As their fur dried, they smelled of sour salt water and general funk. At the rented house, they showed a gentle deference to humans and lolled on the grass or carpet while my cousins and I ate and talked.

My wife brought her dog Tangles, a whippet mix, with her when we moved in together. Tangles’ jaws and teeth rattled for no apparent reason. Her bony head was easy to rub. I told her I would “cook her brain” with the friction generated as I stroked her skull. She lived sixteen sweet years as my wife’s constant companion and then two more after we spent a small fortune on tumor surgery. After Tangles passed, we fostered a few dogs, each different in size and personality. We got involved in a Brooklyn shelter run by a group of animal-loving, human-hating misanthropes. After my work setting up their facility, the animals they cared for suffered unspeakably and thousands of dollars disappeared in a haze of prescription drugs and acrimony. Luckily, we rescued and placed with family a small, quirky dog named Big Man. He is the one light of that weird, sad time. Read more »

by Joan Harvey

When the bobbling, babbling, unhinged conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, warned of a second Civil War starting on the 4th of July, most of us laughed, people marked themselves “Safe,” and we enjoyed the holiday. But one thing we’ve learned in these times is that both the Civil War and WWII are still underway. Not the second Civil War, but a continuation of the first. While both wars seemed to have had clear endings, in reality they continue, but until now mostly buried underground. How could we have been so oblivious? So complacent? I think of Freud and the unconscious, Jung and the shadow. Psycho-history.

Our country is mentally ill.

Politicians, it seems, think the answer is in being led by the nose by the Russian government. Oh, that and arming toddlers.

But America is changing. Across the West on the 4th of July this year fireworks displays were cancelled. Fire danger was too high. Every year is like this now. And every year, we too act mentally ill, behaving as if this year were aberrant. We get through fire season crossing our fingers, a fire season that extends for more months every year. Every year we hope a fire won’t burn too close to us, we hope it won’t force us out, we hope it won’t destroy our homes. Wiser politicians talk of turning to green energy to slow climate change, while the others push for more fossil fuel development. But no one addresses the fact that we’re past the tipping point. Even if we’re able to slow climate change, it’s still too late. Every year we burn. Then the floods come to finish the job. Read more »

by Shawn Crawford

For a Baptist, the Bible exists like gravity. Not believing in gravity will not change the outcome if you step off a building; not believing the Bible will not change the consequences if you ignore its precepts and commands. Both are laws of nature, fixed and unchanging.

To really understand what it means to be Baptist, you must understand the unique place the Bible holds in every facet of life. The central reality of existence is not God but rather the words he left behind to guide our decisions, our relationships, and our behavior. Baptists create a world that revolves around The Book to a degree that can easily be termed idolatry. In a religion that shuns all iconography, the Bible becomes the one object that can be revered. But not because it symbolizes the presence of God’s word among us: it is God’s Word, infallible and unchangeable. The Southern Baptist statement of beliefs, The Baptist Faith and Message, begins with the Bible, not God. It states in part, “[The Bible] has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.”

The close reading of scripture allowed you to extract the meaning God intended. That meaning could be discovered, not interpreted, and it could be agreed upon and then applied to how you lived your daily life: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path” (Psalm 119.105). The Book of Psalms is in the middle of the Bible, and can best be translated “praises” or “songs” from the Hebrew. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter of the Bible, clocking in at 176 verses. Writers of Psalms often used an acrostic method employing the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is a tour de force, with each of eight verses in a stanza opening with the same letter, moving through all twenty-two letters of the alphabet.

As you might have guessed, I spent a lot of time with the Bible. Read more »

by Samia Altaf

Six months before she died, Saleema, my 85-year-old mother, still in relatively good health – she did have breast cancer and Hepatitis-C, the one in remission, the other inactive – became obsessed with the quality of her grave.

“You will throw my corpse on a rubbish heap for all I know,” she said after a long and difficult phone conversation with her favorite son, “for you all do not care about my wishes.”

“We do care mom and I will not throw your corpse on a rubbish heap but put it, washed and dressed for the occasion, respectfully and lovingly, in a grave”.

“Ah! But what kind of a grave? And where? That is the question”.

“Unfortunately, I am not Shah Jehan. I have a normal grave in mind but you tell me the kind you want, and I shall follow your instructions.”

Little did I know how limited our choices were. Graveyards in Lahore, where Mom lived, and eventually died, are a disorganized mess with a terrible shortage of space. I Googled and found a list that included the Taxali Gate graveyard, the Mominpura graveyard, Miani Sahib, and Gora Qabristan. Read more »

by Joseph Shieber

Few topics have captured the attention of the internet literati more than the topic of Jordan B. Peterson. Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, parlayed a protest against Canada’s transgender anti-discrimination protections, such as Federal Bill C-16, into a hugely popular YouTube channel, Patreon site, and bestselling book.

However, after a recent Independent interview with Sam Harris included some of Harris’s strongly worded reservations about Peterson’s positions, perhaps it is finally time to begin to prepare for an internet without near-daily references to Peterson.

If you’re like me, you might think this time is already overdue. Believe me, I get it. It’s hard not to get frustrated at the thought that we haven’t already passed the point of Peak Peterson. That’s the stage when all of the think pieces, discussion notes, and book reviews will begin to taper off, and we can begin to wring our hands about the inexplicable popularity of the next (pseudo-) intellectual dazzler who holds out the promise of providing heft to the thought behind free speech concern trolls, incels, misogynists, or members of the alt-right.

Of course, that we’ve spent so much time doing this with Jordan Peterson is one aspect of his genius. His writing allows his defenders to deny that the darker reaches of his appeal actually speak to Peterson’s own ideas. He’s not a free speech concern troll, but a brave defender of untrammeled thought against government intrusion. He’s not a misogynist; he’s simply following the best science on evolutionary and personality psychology where it leads. He doesn’t support the alt-right, though he is incisive enough to understand its roots deep in our psyche.

In short, Peterson’s appeal is at least in part that his writing is tailor-made for these tribal times. Read more »

by Thomas R. Wells

At the heart of liberalism is the idea of personal sovereignty. There is some domain of thought and feeling that is essentially private, for which we are not answerable to others because it is no one else’s proper business.

Privacy is the metaright that guarantees this right to think our way to our own decisions in our life, whether that be how to follow our god, or what to make of our sexual inclinations, or how to grieve for someone we have lost. It prevents others demanding justifications for our every thought and feeling by veiling them from their view. It is the right to be mysterious to others.

More specifically, privacy is the right to choose how we are known and by whom. For example, we may confide the details of an embarrassing problem with a particular friend – but not just any friend and certainly not a stranger. We do so because of the mutually trusting, caring relationship we have with that person. They may still criticize us for our faults, but not like a stranger would, whose knowledge of us lacks that special relational context. A friend’s criticism could actually help us do better. And if it doesn’t, they will respect our confidence. They won’t turn around and ‘share’ it with all the people who might find it interesting.

Of course, the right to control how you are known is not unlimited. You can’t control exactly what people know about you and you certainly can’t control what they make of it. And like other rights, such as speech or property, it may be curtailed in particular cases to protect other rights held by other people. For example, a convicted fraudster should not have the right to hide that fact from prospective business partners. On the other hand, his neighbours don’t have such a need to know. And even his business partners don’t need to know his sexuality or religion. The fact that people are curious enough about such things that they will ask google, and that google can sell more advertising by telling them, is not enough to justify disrespecting people’s privacy.

These days lots of people are talking about the value of privacy and its limits in the internet age. But few note its political significance. Read more »

by Holly Case and Lexi Lerner

What follows is part of a collaborative project between a historian and a student of medicine called “The Temperature of Our Time.” In forming diagnoses, historians and doctors gather what Carlo Ginzburg has called “small insights”—clues drawn from “concrete experience”—to expose the invisible: a forensic assessment of condition, the origins of an idiopathic illness, the trajectory of an idea through time. Taking the temperature of our time means reading vital signs and symptoms around a fixed theme or metaphor—in this case, the circus.

***

In its most basic iteration, a circus is a ring or circle. The Circus Maximus in Ancient Rome was an oval-shaped track used for chariot races. Presbyterian minister Conrad Hyers writes that the modern circus has a “willingness to encompass and make use of the whole human spectrum”:

The costumed beauty rides on the lumbering beast or walks hand in hand with the ugly dwarf. The graceful trapeze artist soars high above the stumbling imitations of the clown in the ring below. Nothing and no one seem to stand outside this circumference, this circus.

***

From a 1930 program for Krone Circus in Vienna: a Roman-style chariot race, gladiator games, Eskimos and polar bears, a parade of twenty elephants, springing Arabs, “The Maharadja’s Grand Entrance,” an “Exotic procession,” the Chinese troupe of Wong Tschio Tsching, and Cossack riders. (“No smoking. No dogs allowed.”)

***

The circus often starts by breaking its own rules. Paul Bouissac, a semiotician at the circus, explains. A master juggler is poised to begin the opening act, but he is interrupted by a clown who appears among the audience–introducing himself, fumbling, stealing a child’s popcorn, all the while defying the warnings and threats of the Master of Ceremonies. “From the beginning,” writes Bouissac, “as a kind of foundational gesture, this clown has defined himself as a rule breaker.”

He has mocked good manners. He has transgressed even the circus code of which he is a part. But his tricks have made people happy. He has denounced the arbitrariness of authority. When the Master of Ceremonies wants to throw him out of the ring, the audience spontaneously boos…

Eventually, the clown is removed and the juggler can begin his act. “At the end,” Bouissac concludes, “the triumph of the juggling hero will be both physical and social.” But this satisfying resolution can only take place after the clown has created a problem. The juggler’s act is only triumphant within “the framing provided by the clown.” Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Carl Pierer

Starting from the formidable climatic challenges faced by cities on the Iranian plateau, Part I of this essay presented the ingenious Iranian invention of Qanats. Those underground aqueducts, which exploit gravitation to redirect an aquifer under a mountain to the surface, are remarkable feats of engineering. Covering distances of several kilometres, they permitted permanent settlements in landscapes otherwise hostile to agriculture. The previous part also argued that qanats have an impact on the settlements they supply with water in three ways. First of all, qanats allowed older settlements – predominantly located in river valleys – to support a larger population, since more land became available for agriculture through irrigation. At the same time, previously inhospitable places, where water cannot be accessed in other ways, could now be permanently settled. Secondly, villages and cities formed in accordance with the course of the water supply. This is particularly noticeable in settlements featuring a single qanat: they have a triangular shape at the top of which are orchards and gardens and further downhill the distribution channels fan out to allow a larger area to be irrigated. At the lower end, a grid of rectangular plots is located, which is designed in such a way that enough water is delivered in the time it takes to flow through the plot. Thirdly, the presence of qanats makes social stratification physically visible. Because qanats have a one directional flow, locating higher up on the canal means earlier access to – and therefore fresher – water. It is thus that richer households will locate further uphill, with the poorest inhabitants living just before the water reaches the fields for irrigation. Read more »

by Tamuira Reid

Fog fills a dead, gray street. As it begins to part, an opulent, borderline gaudy building glows from within. Like the Taj Mahal has plopped down on this small, sleepy town.

In the front window I can see *Leah, looking out. A large neon sign, Open For Business, clicks on next to her. She yawns and then disappears from my sight.

I met Leah through an outreach project last summer, a small non-profit that has since gone under. The goal was to help teenagers like Leah – kids who had fallen into the cracks of a town gone wrong – find jobs or apply to trade schools.

When I enter the pawnshop this morning, she is vacuuming. Then she is scrubbing a toilet. Then she is polishing a glass case full of pawned valuables; wristwatches, pocketknives, flasks. A few abandoned wedding rings.

I’m used to her flurry of movement by now, and sometimes it almost seems an act of defiance, a just wait until I’m ready to talk to you type of thing. After all, I am a writer and she is my subject and all the lines and spaces in-between are blurred. We don’t always know what to make of each other. We don’t always want to trust. Read more »

 by Evert Cilliers

So our pussy-grabbing porn-star-banging supplier-stiffing majority-vote-losing Mexican-Muslim-hating Charlottesville-excusing family-separating racist Liar-in-Chief goes to Europe and trash-talks our allies. 

But when he summits with Vlad the Journalist Killer (50 dead so far), Trump goes softer than a marshmallow on a stick over an open fire.

A weak bully.

Trump’s up-sucking to Putin was best summed up in the former CIA Director John Brennan’s tweet:

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

Where indeed? 

And Trump’s walk-backs were a joke. 

He says he meant to say “wouldn’t” instead of “would.” 

That must’ve been his sixth lie of the day (he averages around six a day in public; who knows how many lies he tells in private). 

And when he replied “no” to the question whether he thinks Russian election meddling is still happening, his press lady said he said “no” to answering any more questions, when he in fact answered many more questions, and said “no” to that question twice because the reporter asked him that question twice.

What are we to make of all this?

Here’s my simple three-point explainer of the whole post-surrender-treason-summit truth.
Read more »

by Dave Maier

Recently I’ve been reading a couple of books attacking postmodernism and/or leftist politics, which the authors – not surprisingly – tie together as closely as they can, albeit from rather different perspectives, for maximum polemical effect. Maybe we’ll get into the gory details some other time (haven’t got very far into them yet), but for now let’s just examine a few things that struck me about the very idea of polemical interpretations. 

For example: I can never figure out whether I’m supposed to be the audience, invited to join the authors in combating these worthless and dangerous ideas, or instead whether I am the target, such that these books intend to smash my own position(s) to conceptual smithereens. If I picture myself beside the author as he fires bolts at his target, I find myself alarmed at the way he’s swinging that crossbow around: watch where you’re aiming that thing! But maybe I myself am really the target – in which case I watch in puzzlement as the bolts sail harmlessly off to one side (was that really aimed at me?). If it were consistently one rather than the other, I would simply toss the book aside as incompetent; but when the two flip back and forth like the duck and the rabbit, it makes me wonder about polemics in general. How exactly are they supposed to work? Read more »

by Michael Liss

The other shoe dropped.  

Anthony Kennedy’s idiosyncratic role as a Justice of the United State Supreme Court will come to an end a mere week from now. A lot of things are going to change.

Let’s start with the politics. Kennedy’s leaving cinches the conservative revolution (or counter-revolution) for at least a generation. For the first time in living memory, a conservative Supreme Court will be in position to review and bless the acts of a like-minded Congress and President.

This will occur regardless of who is confirmed (Trump’s list is one to which moderates need not apply), but, unless a bolt of lightning strikes, it’s going to be Brett Kavanaugh. Yes, there will be plenty of Kabuki before he gets measured for a new robe, but Kavanaugh is the one who rings every bell for both Republicans and Trump. He’s a Federalist Society member, reliably conservative on all the big issues, not afraid to advance his interpretation of the law even when it conflicts with precedent, and has a past history of partisan politics. His nomination even offers a prize in the Cracker Jack box—the unique, magnificent straddle of having worked aggressively for Ken Starr, but now being deeply committed to the idea that sitting Presidents should be immune from prosecution. Read more »

by Akim Reinhardt

Spectator sports can reflect a society’s worst inclinations by promoting pure partisanship.

Pure partisanship is profoundly anti-intellectual. Pure partisanship can disable a person’s moral compass. Anyone who follows sports, even tangentially, witnesses this frequently. This team’s victory or that team’s loss have led to countless riots. Here in Baltimore a few years ago, I listened to fans make excuses for football player Ray Rice after footage surfaced of him knocking his fiancee unconscious. And just this past weekend, Milwaukee Brewers baseball fans gave star pitcher Josh Hader a standing ovation after it was revealed that he had published racist and homophobic tweets. My team, wrong or right.

In the world of spectator sports, unchecked partisanship reveals human beings’ self-limiting intellects and ugly moral shortcomings. But when pure partisanship runs amok in politics, the possible ramifications are truly dire. A my party (or candidate, or politician) wrong or right attitude facilitates political repression and the rise of totalitarianism. That is the threat facing the United States and several other democratic nations today.

It is a recent development. For most of the post-WWII period, American political partisanship was moderated by tremendous pressure to conform. While conformist pressures certainly present their own set of problems worthy of critique, we must acknowledge that they also helped preclude the type of hyper political partisanship we now see in the Age of Trump. Read more »