Steelsnowflake

A dark and troubling journey back to a time when white Americans gathered together to torture and murder black Americans.

A reflection on Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and the cultivation of attention as a moral discipline in this age of screens.

How America nearly destroyed its own national symbol, and then saved it.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume plants do have feelings.

Paul Kingsnorth thinks the modern West has become a kind of evil Machine, hostile to true human flourishing.

In 1802, Louis Delgrès led a doomed revolt in Guadeloupe against Napoleon’s bid to restore slavery, choosing death over chains and defiance over surrender.

The Haitian Revolution’s final two years were a spiral of atrocity, betrayal, and disease that destroyed Napoleon’s army and gave birth to the first independent nation founded by former slaves.

Byung-Chul Han sees Anomalisa as a dystopia of sameness.

A reflection on poetry, imagination, and the cultural cost of living online.

A poem by Paul Wilke

The Republic was dead long before Augustus rose to power.

The beginning of the end of the Roman Republic started with the best of intentions.

Huxley’s Brave New World warned of a dystopia where comfort and distraction erase depth, struggle, and meaning, echoing our world today.

D.H.

A personal update on the blog

A poem by Paul D.

For Mencken, the common man was more Homer Simpson or Peter Griffith than anything resembling the idea of a thoughtful and engaged citizen.

A poem by Paul Wilke

A look at Allan Savory's Holistic Planned Grazing.

Why did the Japanese resort to kamikaze tactics?

Simone Weil really wanted to go to war, to fight fascism, to be the main character, to die a martyr's death.