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Julius Kronberg’s “Hypatia” (1889), oil on canvas. The particularly brutal murder of this fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher and mathematician shocked even the Roman Empire. It’s recounted in Islam Issa’s new book “Alexandria: The City That Changed the World” (Pegasus Books, $35, 476 pages).

Humanity's continuing mean season

May 18, 2024

When I was thinking about what my next blog post should be, there was no lack of ideas. Should it be about the student protests, which, however sincere, lack historical perspective, or dog-, goat- and horse-shooting Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota or the Republicans’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at former President Donald J. Trump’s trial in New York or the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza? Or how about Speaker-vacating Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene going after Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s eyelashes verbally, which led to Crockett’s sly rebuke “about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body”?

Then I had an unsettling personal experience that made me realize that what all these events and people have in common is further proof that despite the upward arc of civilization, we live in cruel world.

President Joe Biden, seen here at left with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 18, is pressing Netanyahu for a three-day pause to secure the release of hostages. *Courtesy the White House.*

Are Biden and Israel losing the war of words -- and images?

November 8, 2023

All life is narrative. Control the narrative, and you control public perception and opinion.

At the moment, Israel and President Joe Biden seem to be losing the narrative thread. I say “seem,” because I haven’t interviewed everyone in the world on this, of course. But based on what’s making news, former President Donald J. Trump and the Palestinians seem to be winning the battle for hearts and minds, in large part because the battle is being waged not primarily with words but with images.

“Achilles in the Court of King Lycomedes“ (marble, 240). Musée du Louvre. The Greeks’ greatest warrior and a king in his own right, Achilles is the main character and antihero of Homer’s “The Iliad.” His rage at his humiliation by Agamemnon, the Greek high king and commander, during a quarrel over women as war prizes sets in motion the catastrophic events of Homer’s “The Iliad,” about a critical moment in the Trojan War.

The once and future war: Israel and 'The Iliad'

October 15, 2023

Do we believe in coincidence or predestination? Is everything happenstance or is it a case that there are no accidents (Freud) and that “God does not play dice with the universe” (Einstein)?

Is that universe sending us a message by releasing a new translation of Homer’s “The Iliad” by University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson just as Hamas savagely attacked Israel and Israel responded with a ferocious declaration of war? It would seem so, for the ancient Greek epic has much to tell us about issues that speak to our time, not the least of which are overweening male pride and rage, power as a zero sum game and stupefyingly bad leadership.

American Vice President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United States Embassy, then in Tel Aviv, in March 2016. In congratulating Biden on being elected president, Netanyahu reminded him of their warm relationship. Ne… — American Vice President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United States Embassy, then in Tel Aviv, in March 2016. In congratulating Biden on being elected president, Netanyahu reminded him of their warm relationship. Netanyahu had been one of President Donald J. Trump’s biggest boosters, but in the words of French President Emmanuel Macron when he first met Trump: “Nobody is forever.”

Trumpian 'Sunset' as democracy's star rises

November 8, 2020

“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” a business manager told me yesterday. I couldn’t but concur. I , too, was happy, proud and content to be an American — something I haven’t been for four long, dark years.

In their victory speeches, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris struct the right notes about unity and hope. President Donald J. Trump’s “American carnage’ may have been fine for some when they were making oodles of money. But when everyone’s actually in American carnage, as we are with the coronavirus, systemic racism, a crashed economy and climate change denial, people want change. They want a leader who can create a vision for going forward together, communicate that vision and execute it. And that’s what Biden laid out Saturday night, while Harris in suffragist white gave women of color in particular a symbol of belief fulfilled.

How Green(land) was his valley

August 18, 2019

Imagine you are Greenland. You are a semiautonomous nation, part of Denmark, doing your Greenland thing with your clusters of colorful houses and glaciers and hot springs when suddenly you find yourself in the midst of a geopolitical controversy courtesy of President Donald J. Trump, who, in the words of one waggish poster on The Hill, is now up to the Louisiana Purchase in the manual on how to be el presidente.

Perhaps the president was thinking of Thomas Jefferson’s 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, which doubled the United States, or the Alaska purchase of 1867 or President Harry Truman’s overture to buy Greenland for $100 million in gold in 1946 — yeah, I’m sure he was thinking of all of this — when he floated the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark.

Negotiating with the stars

May 16, 2018

One of the more endearing but also infuriating things about Americans is their belief that anyone can do anything if he just works hard enough, fast enough. This is the “Dancing With the Stars” philosophy of life that says you, too, can be a ballroom dancer if you have three weeks of intense training and, possibly, Maksim Chmerkovsky as a partner.

This would be amusing if it weren’t sometimes so deadly. Now we have a president who lacks the talent, temperament, training and technique for the job and it shows in the country pulling unilaterally out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving its embassy to Jerusalem with violent consequences and now facing a North Korean pullout from the planned summit due to American-South Korean military maneuvers. …

The myth of the strongman

March 4, 2018

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Russia’s Vladimir Putin. China’s Xi Jinping. And, of course, our own Donald J. Trump.

The world is in the grips of the strongman – tough, reactionary and taking no prisoners. Part of this is a response to the terrible, fascinating transition in which we find ourselves – a backlash to the global, multicultural, digital age to which so-called “feminine” energies (communications skills, sensitivity, a sense of service) are better suited. Part of this is the envy, rage and resentment, particularly in this country, of white, blue-collar males, who lacked the courage, intelligence, industry and imagination to confront their greedy employers and, failing that, reinvent themselves when manufacturing jobs began to dry up in the 1970s. ...