There are few ways to adequately describe the withdrawal of Western (principally American) forces and citizens from Afghanistan. Perhaps the best way to do so is to point out what the Afghan Government was in the months and days leading up to their present situation. Impeccably corrupt, almost anti-tactical in a sense, laughably disorganized, and completely and resolutely, almost proudly, unprepared. Surely no government actually wants to collapse, but you may not get that impression looking at the shambolic performance of the group under Ashraf Ghani.
You might too, like me, be impressed with the breathtaking speed at which the…
I’ve reviled the puzzle piece image since I fully understood what it meant-who it was associated with, what they stood for, and what their end goal was. I still do to this day. I’ve never viewed myself as someone needing “a cure” for my autism or anything close to it. After all, why would a 20-year-old History and Political Science double major who has a perfect GPA and who’s on track to graduate from university a year early and just got into his university’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter need to be cured of autism? Sounds like I’ve risen above whatever…
It is said that there are few inevitabilities in this life: death and taxes, chiefly among them. Yet at least recently, there seems to be a third, Conservative MPs choosing to completely ignore the catastrophic consequences, and the very real possibility, of a No Deal exit from the European Union at the end of the Transition Period on January 1, 2021. After all, it is partly on the support of those supporting No Deal on principle that the Government stands today. …
The Minneapolis skyline, courtesy of Google Images from Pinterest.
Some seventy-two hours ago, I don’t think many of us were aware of the life of George Floyd. Even today, I don’t think many of us are, at least not what he was beyond yet another African-American man who has found himself brutally murdered by a police officer in a major American city.
It’s a harrowing reality for many reasons. First, because it shows that for all of our claims to be beyond bigotry, it proves what I, and many others, have been saying for years now, we’ve gone backward on bigotry in the last five years. We’ve said consistently…
This morning, we remember the single most incredible event in human history. I am not referring to the first instance of human flight, of the creation of the telegram, or of any other technological advancement; in the grand scheme of time, those events will be remembered as but points on what will hopefully be a long timeline. Instead, we welcome in a risen Savior. The light of the world in which we live, a man sent to die for the iniquities of all mankind. He now returns triumphant with the harrowing of hell behind him.
For my unreligious readers, I’m…
One of the most overused terms of the last four years and change is “civility”. Cries of unhappiness with a candidate which manifest themselves in very public movements to make a candidate “earn” one’s support have their roots in the charge of being uncivil, as do charges of misconduct so egregious that large parts of the formerly flourishing intelligentsia of a movement decide that said movement is no longer their own because the movement continues to accept that misconduct. “Civility” is an overused term not because it’s something that isn’t sorely lacking in the present day, it’s an overused term…
The utter trainwreck that was the year 2019 in British politics, especially for those of us of the persuasion that the United Kingdom ought not to leave the European Union, can best be summed up in a feeling: melancholy.
We are melancholy for many reasons: never before in history, surveilling the wider landscape of the world, have liberal ideals appeared not only so in retreat, but in utter flight from the twin horrors of socialism and the far right; never before in the history of the United Kingdom has a movement that had so much momentum proven the efficacy and…
