Richard FarrNov 27, 2019Coup d’état, ou L’état c’est moi?Donnie! Bibi! Evo! Irony alert. They’re all corrupt and they are all prepared to cling to power through lies and force even when their...
Richard FarrNov 16, 2019Oh, and lock him up too.Criminals, criminals, everywhere And none that stopped to think Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Crime of the Ancient Panderer A friend, out...
Richard FarrNov 6, 2019A total lack of common senseA spokesperson for survivors of the Grenfell tragedy have apologized for saying that Jacob Rees-Mogg “showed a total lack of common...
Richard FarrNov 4, 2019Macboris: a fragment from a lost play about power and nihilismDiscovered recently among the manuscripts of that great English dramatist Willie A. Peakshamers: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
Richard FarrAug 13, 2019No Reasonable AmericanThe latest mass shootings by home-grown American terrorists come during a massive corruption scandal at the organization popularly known...
Richard FarrJun 3, 2019Trump v Mueller in Plato’s footnotesTwo pictures tell a thousand words. In his recent public appearance, Robert Mueller thought he’d been clear, or as clear as the peculiar...
Richard FarrJun 2, 2019Nasty journalismWhat with global warming to worry about, and Syria, and the Sixth Extinction, we really shouldn’t be spending any of our attention on...
Richard FarrMay 29, 2019Understanding the ConAbsurd and repulsive though he is, the vandal Boris Johnson (Pants-on-Fire, Con), who has perhaps done his country more harm than any...
Richard FarrMar 1, 2019Those who would be kingAuthoritarianism is on the rise … measurably. Nobel prize-winning economist Angus Deaton has said that one of the most fundamental...
Richard FarrNov 27, 2018Lynching the language tooNo surprise that the President has rushed to the aid of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, whose campaign in Mississippi has been threatened by a...
Richard FarrOct 15, 2018Fascism for beginners“Oh what fun it all is! Look at the joy on their little faces!” There’s so much being written about threats to democracy that it’s hard...
Richard FarrOct 11, 2018Pry social media from your own trembling hands?Should you place a hood over the evil Facebook, blast Twitter out of its tree, and rip up all your Instagrams? You really should,...
Richard FarrOct 8, 2018Authoritarianism and its antidoteAfter so many headlines about the men who want to turn the world into kindling and warm their hands over the flames (in just this...
Richard FarrAug 24, 2018Speaking as a human being; on identity (politics) and intersectionality.Excellent Op-Ed in the New York Times from a couple of weeks ago by (my once-upon-a-time teacher) Kwame Anthony Appiah, applying his...
Richard FarrAug 23, 2018Vichy RepublicansI repeat this excellent and precisely chosen adjective from a piece by Frank Rich: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/trump-imp...
Richard FarrAug 16, 2018On TyrannyHere are seven favorite quotations from historian Timothy Snyder’s superb short book of the same name: When the men with guns who have...
Richard FarrJul 31, 2018Patriotism, racism, and profitable posturing at the NFLStanding in the crowd at sports events recently, I find the continued singing of the national anthem more and more surreal. “Land of the...
Richard FarrJul 8, 2018Putting the con in conservativeThe theme is a growing one – at long last: a crucial fact about American politics, without which little else can be understood, is that...
Richard FarrJun 29, 2018David Brooks and the illusions of ConservatismI’ve thought it for decades, and conservative columnist David Brooks has finally admitted it – sort of: most of the people referred to in...
Richard FarrJun 22, 2018Charles Krauthammer and honestyWe are not supposed to speak ill of the dead – apparently, indeed, we are supposed to go on and on about how marvelous the dead were. And...