Bobby – Page 4 – Bobby Lopez

Blog April 21, 2020April 21, 2020 by Bobby

Higher Ed’s been rotten a long time: see what I wrote about it in 2011.

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…

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Blog April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Bobby

Sadomasochism as Political Strategy: The Coronamatrix Strikes

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…

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Blog April 15, 2020April 15, 2020 by Bobby

Four paths to post-Corona doom

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…

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Blog April 11, 2020April 12, 2020 by Bobby

My translation of a recent Southwestern Baptist Press release

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.…

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Blog April 3, 2020April 3, 2020 by Bobby

The Ghosts of Pandemics Past: HIV and AIDS

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…

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Blog April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Bobby

Orwell breaks down leftist sexual dysfunction

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,…

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Blog April 1, 2020April 1, 2020 by Bobby

William Cullen Bryant explains why America is freaking out

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…

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Blog March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Bobby

Viral Opportunism in the SBC

Think of southern belle Scarlett O’Hara crying out with glee, “we’ll plant more cotton; cotton oughtta go sky high next year!” She says this upon hearing the news that a bloody civil war has ended and her confederacy has been crushed. Gone with the Wind is quickly sinking into the murk of untouchable cinematic history…

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Blog March 29, 2020March 29, 2020 by Bobby

Did Troy collapse because of a quarantine, not a siege? Coronavirus food for thought.

The March 26 headline on Newsweek stated that the US military would not reveal data about how many COVID-19 cases have occurred among the troops. This brought to mind a few plagues that shaped history in the past, simply as a point of reference. The Trojan War Thanks to nineteenth-century archaeological discoveries in Turkey we…

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Blog March 29, 2020March 29, 2020 by Bobby

Libertarians in the House of Usher

In Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story about the fall of the House of Usher, a mysterious narrator goes to visit his old friend Roderick who lives in a once-glamorous, now decaying mansion. Roderick has a strange psychological ailment where he’s hypersensitive to virtually any stimuli like noise, light, or smell. Our narrator — let’s call…

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