God, Covid and The Former Guy

by David Benjamin “Four more years, because God is the one who is in control of this.” — Kim Carter, anti-democracy protester Jacksonville, October 2020 God is bored. I caught up with Him at a speakeasy on a dark street in South Purgatory. The dive was crawling with venial sinners. The bartender was smoking a…

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What they don’t want us to learn

by David Benjamin “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” — Monograph by Juan Ramon Jimenez, in Fahrenheit 451 MADISON, Wis. — The Manichean moms of America are up in arms again, raging at teachers to stop teaching stuff they’re not teaching. Like “socialism?” But let’s get around to that later. I…

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It’s midnight (again) in America

by David Benjamin “A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.” — Matthew 5:14 (King James) MADISON, Wis. — America’s foremost gasbag once magnanimously declared that “I love the poorly educated.” In this belch, he more or less consigned the “highly educated” or just plain “educated” to his camp of enemies —…

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“… an indecent or vulgar manner…”

by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — You can get killed for what you wear — a red uniform in Concord in 1775, a yarmulke in Nuremberg in 1939, a hijab in Gaza in 2021. Luckily, if you’re in high school in America in 2021 — or 1961, or 1921 — the worst penance that your…

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