John Trumbull’s “Surrender of General Burgoyne” depicts the end of the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, the turning point of the American Revolution, in which New England and Hudson Valley militia, under the command of Gen. Horatio Gates, defeated the British, led by Gen. John Burgoyne. Saratoga paved the way for French assistance while demonstrating that you can’t win a war against a people you don’t understand. (The star of the day was brilliant field commander Benedict Arnold., who galvanized the Americans. Three years later, he would be America’s greatest traitor.)

The forever war in the graveyard of modern empires

July 16, 2021

The Americans have left Afghanistan and though President Joe Biden and the public are happy, many of us have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, at 20 years it was the United States’ longest war, and no one wants to fight a forever war. On the other hand, there is a sense of a mission unfulfilled, or perhaps one extended beyond its original purpose and thus unfulfilled.

Baby Donald in Europe

July 13, 2018

Well, that went well.

President Donald J. Trumpet’s meeting with NATO allies was akin to the belligerent uncle who insists on reminding you at the holiday dinner that you still haven’t repaid the money he loaned you to buy the house – with interest.

Donnie Two Scoops came out with guns blazing, bullying the allies to ante up more for defense and dumping on Germany for, well, everything …

Alan Turing, gay sex and the real ‘Imitation Game’

November 11, 2014

Thanks to Marshall Fine, critic-in-residence at The Picture House in Pelham, I had the opportunity recently to preview “The Imitation Game,” which has “Oscar nods” written all over it, deservedly so. It’s a superbly crafted film about a story that resonates in our own time, acted with the kind of understated emotion that is the hallmark of British performance by a cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch (“Sherlock”) and Keira Knightley.

The film, which opens Nov. 28, tells the story of Alan Turing, the mathematician who cracked Germany’s Enigma Code during World War II by creating a machine that was the forerunner of the computer, saving millions of lives in the process (although that, we shall see, was complicated).

Turing was a man ahead of his time in many ways. Today he’d be a gay Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Instead he was a closeted social misfit – taunted mercilessly at prep school in the savage way that belongs exclusively to children and later prosecuted when his homosexuality was uncovered after the war. Forced to choose chemical castration in lieu of a prison sentence, he committed suicide in 1954 at age 41 – one of 49,000 men prosecuted for homosexual acts in England between 1885 and 1967. In 2013, Turing was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II – which still implies he did something wrong to begin with. ...