Stars and Stripes Forever
Recently Published
My party is smarter than your party. If you don’t agree with me, you must be stupid. That’s what we all want to believe. But is one party actually smarter on average than the other? One strong corollary to party…
Read More
In a remote island village, Gerold is known as a drunk, a jailbird, a man to avoid—but the narrator sees something else: a quiet strength and freedom forged through hardship and labor. As glimpses of his life unfold—ploughing fields at dawn, enduring prison without bitterness, living on the margins with dignity—the narrator is drawn to him but never quite bridges the distance. What remains is a portrait of a misunderstood man, and the lingering regret of a connection that never happened.
Read More
Despite Trump’s Bible-thumping, it’s obvious even to casual observers that he is not a particularly religious person. He touts the Bible, yet appears unfamiliar with scripture when asked directly. It’s well known that he has never regularly attended church, and…
Read More
Much of the Bible’s most enduring imagery casts God as a shepherd and believers as his flock. In its most generous reading, the metaphor suggests care, guidance, and protection. A good shepherd tends to his sheep so that they “shall…
Read More
It is hard to overstate the whiplash. Donald Trump campaigned as the candidate who would end “endless wars” in the Middle East, only to initiate a direct military confrontation with Iran. Along the way, he warned voters that Kamala Harris…
Read More
Donald Trump’s shifting stance on the Strait of Hormuz is a case study in governing by impulse. After escalating tensions that helped destabilize one of the world’s most critical chokepoints, Donald Trump now suggests that other countries should step in…
Read More
If you really want to understand the American psyche in 2025, you might start with a different dataset entirely: the top-selling items at a major retailer of “adult” products.
Read More
I look at it remotely and remember only the flare in the sky when the bombs exploded in Beirut, the checkpoints or the nights when we slept in the shelter and Monsieur Selim listened to Oum Kalsoum whispering on the radio in the most melancholic way, “Anta Omri”, ‘You’re my Life’, as the shelling happened outside.
Read More
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is built on a premise that refuses to die: that hordes of noncitizens are casting ballots and swinging U.S. elections. This claim has been investigated, litigated, and debunked to exhaustion. Yet here it…
Read More
The lifelong process of writing GOODS & EFFECTS by Al Schnupp
Read More