During this quarantine, I happened upon several biographies of Lenin that piqued my interest. Most books about him go on for too long, but some biographers held my attention. The numerology of his life interests me in part because he was born in 1870, and I was born in 1971. Hence he was the same…
Continue readingTo understand our present dilemma, study the life of Lenin
The origins of the United Statesuniversity system. The most depressing thing about being a professor is being part of the United States professoriate. I love teaching, scholarship, ideas, and service. But the professoriate is, unfortunately, an integral cog in the machine that is the American academy. And the American academy is literally a feudal, caste-based…
Continue readingHigher Ed’s been rotten a long time: see what I wrote about it in 2011.
When Fifty Shades of Grey became a hit some years ago, I promised myself never to read the books or see the movie adaptations. I have kept that promise to myself. Having come out of abusive experiences when I was a boy, and having seen parts of the gay world that involved a nauseating overemphasis…
Continue readingSadomasochism as Political Strategy: The Coronamatrix Strikes
By now it’s a little cliché to post images of painter Thomas Cole’s five-part series on the rise and fall of empires. But as the news in America reaches crescendo after crescendo of panic, tragedy, and chaos, this British-born, American painter’s work is more relevant than ever. In the early nineteenth century Cole painted a…
Those of you who follow Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, led by the man pictured below (Adam Greenway) may have become aware of certain controversial occurrences on the Fort Worth campus. Events there are complex, but I have been fortunate enough to study many languages, so my translation skills may help you make sense of things.…
Continue readingMy translation of a recent Southwestern Baptist Press release
Even though we are not in the Christmas season, Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas Carol could not be more timely. The novella recounts the comedy of Ebenezer Scrooge, a grouchy miser who undergoes a torment on one Christmas Eve in London, visited by the ghost of a former business partner and then three ghosts who reveal…
The coronavirus quarantine is the scariest political event of my lifetime. It feels dystopian. So what better way to spend my time than by rereading one of the biggest dystopian classics of all time, 1984? Yes, I pulled my dusty copy of George Orwell’s classic from my shelves. I hadn’t touched the book since 1986,…
Continue readingOrwell breaks down leftist sexual dysfunction
In his classic poem “Thanatopsis,” William Cullen Bryant ponders death. The title means “the gaze of death” in Greek. A long tradition in poetry and art holds up the genre of thanatopsis, reflecting on what it means to die. To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A…
Continue readingWilliam Cullen Bryant explains why America is freaking out
