Writing to Inspire Thinking

The Other TDS: Trump Delusion Syndrome and the Politics of Believing Anyway For most of the decade, “TDS” has been a weapon pointed in one direction. Trump Derangement Syndrome, the diagnosis goes, is what afflicts anyone who criticizes the man—proof that the critic, not the president, is the one who has lost touch with reality. It is clever rhetoric because it converts disagreement itself into…

Walk into any room in this country and ask people where the United States ranks in the world, and you’ll hear the same reflex: number one. Best schools. Best hospitals. Longest lives. Smartest kids. Strongest military. Richest economy. Most God-fearing nation on the planet. It is a comforting story. A few pieces of it are true. The rest, by the most current international data, is wrong on every…

A Story in Three Generations 956 C.E.  —  Broad Meadow, Mercia Joseph stood ankle-deep in frost-stubbled grass when they brought the boy through. Two men of the reeve’s household had him by the elbows, and the boy was crying without sound, the kind of crying that meant he had been at it long enough to lose the noise of it. “Stole bread,” one of the men said. “From the abbey kitchen.” Joseph…

Author’s Note: The issue around the use of private prisons for criminal justice purposes is fraught with moral and constitutional problems. Add in corporate profitability, and one has a volatile recipe for corruption and political influence peddling. If one then considers the issues of inmate health care, recidivism prevention, and proportionality, it is a path to disaster. I’ve broken this into…

(And now, a momentary detour from writing about the state of the world, and enjoy the diversion of humor. Imagine you meet a curious alien who asks you to explain the phenomenon of human reproduction...) Dr. Marjorie Henshaw had trained for sixteen years to be humanity’s First Contact ambassador. She had memorized the periodic table in three languages. She had prepared a speech about peace so…

The nations we fear have too much to lose. The ones we should fear have nothing. For decades, American foreign policy has treated Iran and North Korea as the supreme nuclear and biological threats—the rogue states most likely to unleash catastrophic weapons against the West. Politicians invoke their names to justify sanctions, military budgets, and geopolitical maneuvering. The fear is…

SCENARIO TWO: CRIMSON GATE Clear Attribution. Inbound Threat. The intercept. Scenario Brief September 2029. The Iranian regime is in its eighteenth month of a slow-motion collapse. Sanctions have crushed the rial. The Supreme Leader died of a stroke in March. His successor, hardline cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi-Kermani, was installed by an IRGC-dominated Assembly of Experts after a…

What if Iran does develop nuclear weapons? Even without ICBM capability, there are alternative delivery methods. The complexities involving the appropriate response to such circumstances are fluid and dynamic. They are not simple decisions, or at least they should not be. I’ve researched the process that might happen under such conditions and drawn out two possible situations. One where the…

There was a time when ignorance was considered a flaw, a temporary condition to be corrected with curiosity, education, or experience. Today, it has hardened into something else entirely: a conscious choice, a stubborn posture, a commitment to “willful” ignorance in the face of truth. We are no longer merely uninformed. We are, in many cases, willfully ignorant, choosing not to know, not to…

By Joe Broadmeadow If Jesus walked among us, would he bless the bombs before they fell or weep over the children beneath them?Joe Broadmeadow If Jesus walked among us, would he be dressed in a suit or in rags? If Jesus walked among us, would he ignore the downtrodden or be among them? If Jesus walked among us, would he stand at the gates of the wealthy, hat in hand, or would he overturn their…

The room had the unmistakable energy of men who had all, at one point, been the most powerful person on Earth—and were now deeply annoyed at what had been done with the job since. Washington stood slightly apart at first, hands clasped behind his back, as if still deciding whether this counted as a proper assembly or a mutiny. Eisenhower stood at the head of the table like NATO itself had…

At the Gates of Hell Trump arrives, adjusting his tie, straightening his MAGA hat, and tossing a Trump biscuit to the Cerberus. The Devil stands at the entrance, arms crossed. DEVIL: One bone? There are three heads. TRUMP: Let ‘em fight for it, no government handouts. DEVIL: Unless it was your dog or your kid’s dog, that would be different, right? TRUMP (shrugging): Tremendous place. Really…

Vietnam, March 1968 The boy with the AK was eighteen, and his name was Tran Van Hieu. He had been fighting for three years in the jungle and the tunnels. The boy with the M16 was nineteen, and his name was Daniel Walsh. He has 46 days left in his 13-month, 15-day tour in-country before he can go back to the world. Neither of them knew the other’s name. Neither of them ever would, not for…