“How can I make my relationships and my life work?” Hint: It isn’t anything you’ll learn about male or female orgasms online. The Alpha Males on Wall Street and running Silicon Valley have nothing to teach you. The Alpha Females at your local Women’s Studies program have nothing for you either… A happy life is about… …choosing to not be a male or female “Alpha” jerk and put people first, not career, position or income. Be “powerful” if you must…... Read more
Trump is a symptom. We’re losing our souls. Silicon Valley billionaires think they will live forever by downloading their consciousness to computers. Evangelicals are waiting for Jesus. What all agree on is that our true redeemer these days is Ayn Rand and the cult of money, power and greed. Selfishness and anti-human behavior is the norm. A passenger is mugged on United; a fraud is elected “president”; the rich get richer everyone else loses leg room so to speak, and... Read more
Normalizing abuse, violence and tyranny in America to protect corporate greed is now our way of life. Left and Right unite! Let’s destroy United Airlines and send a message to our overlords: enough! We are becoming a class-ridden society. Citizens face violence and the threat of the law for exercising their ordinary rights–such as wanting to actually fly when they pay for a ticket. Put it this way: Here is something that members of Black Lives Matter and Fox News... Read more
Trump is a man so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead. Will he fake terror? Will he go to war to distract us? The unthinkable is now thinkable. That itself is stomach-turning. From Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein, Trump has expressed his admiration for a rogues’ gallery of foreign dictators and autocrats. And we know that other “strongman” leaders he admires have gone to war just for the... Read more
Trump’s election was just one more nail in the coffin of what was — according to humanistic idealists such as Winston Churchill — supposed to be a secular age of reason and enlightenment. Instead of reason shaping our politics in 2017, we find ourselves at the mercy of white European nationalists, white supremacists, American white Christo-fascists and Islamo-fascists who may all hate each other but are united in one relentless activity: their global attack on reason per se. Barbarians are... Read more
Hi Frank, While I was in therapy recovering from the literal brain damage I experienced due to evangelical fundamentalism plus incest, my therapist advised me not to read others’ stories/work because she wanted me to keep my memories uncontaminated from others’. SO I just finished your Calvin Becker trilogy (Portofino, Zermatt and Saving Grandma) because I kept the same policy while writing my memoir series. Your trilogy hit me hard because it was so accurate! I could feel the oppression and control... Read more
Once during a brief visit home while I was on a particularly travel-filled and arduous university lecture tour in 2014, my granddaughter Lucy (then 5) asked me plaintively, “Ba, but why are you traveling so much?” “To sell my latest book,” I said. “I earn my living as a writer.” She thought about this for a few moments and then stated emphatically, “Ba, you should write less!” It seems to me that Lucy had already gotten one thing right: she... Read more
When President W Bush sent my Marine son to war three times (2003-2004) I thought Bush was a fool, but not a dishonorable person. I wrote this in the Washington Post: Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been... Read more
Put it this way: How does one talk someone mired in irrational beliefs into accepting fact-based reality? More to the point these days, how does one change a Trump voter’s mind and get her or him to reject Trump’s multiplying lies and vote for a Democrat next time? How do you reason someone out of a position that they themselves did not reason into? The answer is—you can’t. But you can pry enough Trump voters out of the Republican... Read more
I had never thought about ancestry much until Trump was elected. His fanning the flames of hate for the “other” reminded me that my family goes “way back” in America. Far from that being a matter of pride being a white American is one of shame. I was thinking about this as I made a video talking about Trump while standing in a small military graveyard. I was also thinking about my family beginning with my son John who served... Read more
Why I Still Talk to Jesus -- In Spite of Everything
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