Ghosts That Still Haunt Us

Young peasant women were supposed to be content with prostituting themselves, quite literally, to inheritors of landed wealth. Women who were free to decide for themselves about their sexual life became, as the Right saw matters, politically perverted supporters of the Republic. Thus “redemption” for them meant rape before murder, a double assertion of power.

— Timothy Snyder

The Two Americas

I am coming to the conclusion that the United States is dividing into two groups of people: those who wish to live in a modern western democracy and those who wish to live in a 1950s Hollywood western film.

Out of Nature

For the whole of the recorded history of our species – and quite likely much longer than that – humans have looked to the plant kingdom for relief from their pains, illnesses, and injuries, insight into their metaphysical conundrums, and inspiration for their reveries. Leaving the latter two of these categories aside for the present(…)