Posts by David Benjamin
National Schadenfreude Week
by David Benjamin “Are we sure? Can we trust that? A man who so frequently and flamboyantly plays the victim, and who has been prophylactically compiling ways to explain away or dispute a projected election loss to Joe Biden, is now being forced off the campaign trail, which will be a monster of an excuse.”…
Read MorePandemic notes 4.0: The Murray Hamilton effect
by David Benjamin “Life on earth is an endless chain of parasitism which would soon lead to the complete annihilation of all living things unless the incorruptible workers of the vegetable kingdom constantly renewed the supply of suitable nitrogen and carbon compounds which other living things can filch… In the last analysis, man may be defined…
Read MoreThe greatest spy hunt in history
by David Benjamin “[The Mueller investigation is] the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” ― Donald John Trump MADISON, Wis. — The most thrilling, dramatic and earthshaking revelation of the Trump era in America is still almost entirely secret and might well remain uncovered beyond many of our lifetimes. It has…
Read MoreEverybody wants to be the underdog
by David Benjamin “All through grade school, I had seen the tall, the strong, the swift, the comely, the bright and affluent among my peers reap notice, bask in praise and collect loving cups while the rest of us gleaned consolation from the crumbs at their feet. We lived by the motto, “Nice try.” Without…
Read MoreOh? Really?
by David Benjamin “Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.” ― Pat Conroy “You talking to me, teach?” —…
Read MoreAn executive encyclical
by David Benjamin (ISSUED FROM THE OVAL OFFICE AND SIGNED ON 4 SEPTEMBER 2020) By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution, the laws of the United States of America and the universal consensus that I alone can fix the horror left behind by the Kenyan usurper, and to protect the Nation…
Read MoreThrough a glass, darkly
by David Benjamin “All this time I watched my woman/ Drownin’ in a pool of tears,/ And I’ve seen a lot of good folks die/ That had a lot of bills to pay…” — “Take This Job and Shove It” (lyrics, David Allan Coe) MADISON, Wis. — For at least 1,500 days I’ve been trying…
Read MoreNeither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of soul…
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — As I consider a Postal Service targeted for vivisection by a paranoid narcissist and run by a fatcat hitman with a dirty scalpel, I scroll through my lifelong romance — with stamps and parcel post, love letters and amiable, unflappable mailcarriers. My first mailman was twenty minutes late every…
Read MoreElection Day! New! Improved! (Members only)
by David Benjamin OVAL OFFICE — (A group of aides around POTUS, all quaking in their wingtips. The papers they hold in their trembling hands make a gentle rustling sound, like dead leaves in a wasteland.) AIDE #1: “Your Eminence, there’s bad news.” POTUS: “Bad news? I hate bad news. Who the hell are you?…
Read MoreA walk through Hell
by David Benjamin My mother-in-law is hibakusha, an A-bomb survivor. On the morning of August 6, 1945, she took the last train out of the center of Hiroshima, an area known forever after as Ground Zero. She was a schoolgirl required to work in a munitions plant on the edge of the city. It was…
Read More