Bush’s War of Art

This essay originally appeared in riotmaterial.com I was on the phone with my father and I can’t remember exactly how we got to the part of the conversation we were destined to get to—the part of the conversation everyone was destined to get to—as we watched the unfathomable unfold on that morning of September 11, […]

Coastal Elite Elegy

Originally for Los Angeles Review of Books, November 30, 2016    Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. -Alfred North Whitehead OF THE MANY forensic narratives that have been stitched together to try and shape the potentially-nightmarish November 8 election results into some kind of cloth of understanding, one in particular […]

Is Trump manipulating fears to mobilise the masses?

May 2, 2016 / Huck 55 – The Freaked Out Issue Image: © Anthony Gerace Fear and loathing in the United States WATCHING THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL primaries play out is like walking down a long hallway lined wall-to-wall with fun-house mirrors. What we see is ugly, twisted and distorted – but in the case of our […]

The Red Scare and Average Joes

Originally published in the LA Weekly WITH PRECIOUS LITTLE TO DISTINGUISH HIMSELF from the Bush years, except possibly more intransigence than even W. when it comes to moving off failed domestic and foreign policies, John McCain is losing the battle of reason in this election — which says that the Bush era has been a […]

Florida, Florida, Florida: Where Hillary Supporters Turn to Palin and Working-Class Men Love Joe Biden

THE GREATER TAMPA – St. Petersburg area is a weird neck of the woods, a place where porn empires, strip clubs, regional banking, drug money, upscale resorts, seedy beach towns, Spanish-moss-adorned oak trees and wispy sea oats all struggle for footing in an ever-shifting landscape of development and erosion. Decaying old money and jittery Nuevo […]

The Tortoise and the Tank Face Off at Fort Irwin

Originally published in the LA Weekly SAND IN THE BOX The worst sandstorm in John Wagstaffe’s memory is at full howl. We’re deep inside Iraq, somewhere between the towns of Medina Jabal and Medina Wasl, on a day when the threat of violence is as thick as the squalls of sand. But there’s something about […]

Leaving Home

Originally published in the LA Weekly COUNT ME AMONG THOSE WHO WOKE UP on November 3 and thought: secession! My turn toward the idea that California should secede from the Union was based on some bedrock logic that my father used to admonish me with as he suspiciously eyed my derelict teenage friends: You can […]