Should one who has made violent threats against the American government be allowed to participate in that government as a representative of the people? How about one who is delusional? Or catastrophically incompetent? For any reasonable person, these are not difficult questions. Indeed, they’re so straightforward that one to whom…

Much of the difficulty in analyzing the social systems of the postmodern era results from their placement within a particular semiotic framework. This framework creates the appearance of roles and structures which are taken as a priori true, and this appearance often conceals the social systems’ actual operations. Typological distinctions…

As of this writing, the United States of America has not made an official declaration of war against the Russian Federation in response to its invasion of Ukraine. This is to say that the nominal state — that agency possessing the name identifying it as such — has not taken…

This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm, Spotify, and other platforms I’ve been working my way through the complete works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato of Athens and recently came to the famous middle-period dialogue, the Phaedo. Written in Athens sometime during the 4th century BCE…

The inveterate ghost made little headway at the party. Solemn and forlorn as can be what amounts to little more than a wisp of smoke, he promulgated a narrative concerning his own murder. A few among the guests were sympathetic; most coughed discreetly into their hands and turned away. Later…

We sat together in the ruins among pools of pinkish grey water and played board games into the night. Amidst the detonations, some chemical had been expelled into the streets, mixing with the rainwater and settling into bomb craters and the various concavities inherent to concrete laid over uneven ground…

Photo by Jose M. on Unsplash This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm and other platforms, and as a video on YouTube. I want to open the show today by talking about someone for whom I have a great deal of respect. I’m not going to name…

This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm and other platforms, and as a video on YouTube. Last week, I opened an essay with a description of the murder of George Floyd by the police officer Derek Chauvin by way of introducing the ongoing political unrest in the…

This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm and other platforms. On the evening of Monday, May 25th of this year, George Floyd, a 46-year old black man, purchased a pack of cigarettes from a convenience store in Minneapolis. Believing that Floyd had paid with a counterfeit bill…