ZETEO

Donald Trump the Fascist?

December 14, 2015 by fritztucker

Seemingly every statement regarding Donald Trump in recent weeks either explicitly or implicitly compares him to Hitler. It’s almost as though both social and mainstream media are trying to pay homage to Godwin’s Law, which humorously and tautologically states that any online discussion will eventually compare the subject to Nazi Germany. These comparisons highlight both the capacity and limitation of the American imagination. For these comparisons to have any meaning, however, historical facts must be addressed. It is true that Hitler was a uniquely effective rhetorician. Perhaps Trump is too. […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, ethics, History, immigration, India, law, literature, Narendra Modi, politics, race

Dogs, Memory, Home, Devastation

December 13, 2015 by Ed Mooney

Jason Wirth’s Commiserating with Devastated Things is a wonderful book tracing themes in the novels of Milan Kundera—not to mention the resonances of these themes with Virgil, Cervantes, and Hermann Broch (among others). I’ve learned about St. Francis joyously embracing a leper, about Holy Fools in Russian Orthodoxy and in Dostoevsky (in the person of Prince Myshkin). And I’ve learned about the systematic slaughter of dogs by the Soviets as they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to install civil terror. Kundera […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: cruelty, Czechoslovakia, dogs, fiction, Milan Kundera, Russia

Porn, then Poetry

December 11, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Of course, [pornography and poetry] probably benefit [from the Internet] for different reasons: pornography because people really want it a lot but are embarrassed to go get it in person; poetry because people don’t want it that much, so it helps if they can get it for free without ever even leaving their desk chairs. This excerpt was taken from an article that appeared in the AGNI blog titled “Wherever, However: Poetry Pornography and the Internet,” written by David Ebenbach. Ebenbach has […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: poetry, pornography, reading, writing

Nones Crossfit Spirituality

December 11, 2015 by Walter Cummins

Seeking Spirituality in a Secular World An article in the New York Times about people who enjoyed a religious experience in a gym led me to think about the range of human quests for some sort of spiritual connection, and beyond that what such a spiritual connection might mean. The Times article, “When Some Turn to Church, Others Go to CrossFit” by Mark Oppenheimer, reports on Harvard Divinity School researchers’ attempts to define religiosity in contemporary America. Their project, […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: André Comte-Sponville, atheism, Christianity, God, Hortus deliciarum, religion, Wittgenstein

Massacres, Slow Violence, Solidarity

December 6, 2015 by Ed Mooney

The massacres in Paris or Beirut, the stabbings and instant “justice-by-cop” in Israel, unabated slaughter in Syria or Yemen, or the crystal clear framing here in Zeteo of centuries of suffering attributable to brutal class warfare — if faced unblinkingly, all this can induce paralysis. Then we learn, within days, that three are murdered in Colorado Springs, and fourteen in San Bernadino. Slow-burning or explosive, the catastrophes seem to go on and on. Sad to say, if there’s a tropism […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, class warfare, crime, Marx, massacres, philosophy, solidarity

People console one another outside the emergency room entrance to Loma Linda Medical Center after two shootouts in San Bernardino. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Guns, Death, Terrorism, the United States

December 3, 2015 by Walter Cummins

Details are still emerging about the San Bernardino shootings, but evidence mounts that this was terrorism. Public reaction appears to be much more disturbed and fearful than it was a few days earlier when a lone domestic gunman shot people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood office. The extent of the San Bernardino reaction is understandable because it reveals once more a network of organized forces hostile to Americans, impersonally seeking victims in a variety of public settings. The […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: death, guns, Planned Parenthood, San Bernardino, statistics, terrorism, United States of America

Class Warfare Poverty Death

December 1, 2015 by William Eaton

Out of the hundred million people living in Soviet Russia, we should be able get 90 million behind us. The others, there’s no talking with them, they have to be annihilated. — Bolshevik leader Grigory Zinoviev, September 1918 Results. Approximately 245 000 deaths in the United States in [the year] 2000 were attributable to low education, 176 000 to racial segregation, 162 000 to low social support, 133 000 to individual-level poverty, 119 000 to income inequality, and 39 000 to area-level poverty. — Sandro […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Bolsheviks, capitalism, death, disease, exploitation, hunger, immigration, minimum wage, poverty, Russia, Soviet Union

Truth, Madeline, and the Trill of Doom

November 29, 2015 by Ed Mooney

In “Madeline, Imperfection, Love, and Loss” (Zeteo, 11.25.2015), Joy Yeager reminds us of that priceless book for children and adults called, simply, Madeline. It’s the story, as she reminds us, “of a little girl, an orphan, who lives in an old house in Paris, with eleven other girls.” A nun, Miss Clavel, is in charge. For many, the book is unforgettable, full of enchanting illustrations and about many essentials: love and loss, wandering in Paris, a little community of […]

Categories: Ed Mooney • Tags: death, literature, love, music, philosophy

Madeline, Imperfection, Love, and Loss

November 25, 2015 by William Eaton

In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread and brushed their teeth and went to bed. Opening lines of Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans So begins Madeline, the classic work of Ludwig Bemelmans. For the unfamiliar, Madeline is the story of a little girl, an orphan, who lives in an old house in Paris, with eleven other girls. Miss Clavel, […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: children's books, illustration

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