Long, long ago, in the days of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, there was a storybook neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, called Dominion Hills. It was a prosperous place – quiet, middle class, very respectable and lily white. The people who lived there all either worked for the one of the many federal government agencies, served in… Continue reading A Fable for Our Time
Category: Society and Trends
Silence of the Gats
The proposition that democracy is an imperfect form of government is nothing new. Plato wrote a book about his proposed alternative, where a class of philosopher kings would replace the rule of the people, and this year is the two-thousand four-hundredth anniversary of his writing it. Who would actually be good enough, wise enough, just… Continue reading Silence of the Gats
A Kennedy Off-Center Visit
As the Memorial Day weekend hails the start of summer in America (yes, the Rest of the World, I know summer actually begins in June in the Northern Hemisphere, but the last weekend in May is when we Yanks traditionally get our first beach sunburns and barbecue heartburns of the year) those of us not… Continue reading A Kennedy Off-Center Visit
Trigger-happy Cowgirl Shoots Self in Foot
During the late Upper Pleistocene Age, between thirty and forty thousand years ago, two predator species developed a synergistic relationship. The first was a now-extinct ancestor of the grey wolf, the other the ancestors of modern Homo Sapiens, a species who have yet to become extinct but are nevertheless diligently working on it. There were… Continue reading Trigger-happy Cowgirl Shoots Self in Foot
TikTok Approaches Zero Hour
I have been writing this Web log since 2006, and I suppose regular readers have long since deduced that the Washington DC suburb of Great Falls, Virginia, where I live, is a rather upscale neighborhood. And, I would hasten to add, I am hardly the wealthiest inhabitant of the cul de sac where my home… Continue reading TikTok Approaches Zero Hour