Hurricane Milton seen from the International Space Station. Photograph by NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Commander Matthew Dominick.
As “A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes” by Eric Jay Dolin demonstrates, hurricanes in the United States have always been about two kinds of storms — meteorological and political.
Read MoreT.H. Matteson's "Examination of a Witch" (1853, oil on canvas) was inspired by the Salem Witch Trials. Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum.
Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance blame the alleged second assassination attempt on Trump’s life on the Democrats “hateful” rhetoric. But the Democrats aren’t the ones who called Mexican immigrants “rapists,” instituted a Muslim travel ban, put babies on the border in cages, referred to women as “dogs,” “nasty” and “four out of 10” and disdained American P.O.W.s as “losers.”
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has said Trump possesses “the most hateful mind in presidential history.” This after Trump tweeted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” all because she endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president after the debate in which Trump went on a tangent about pet-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.
Read MoreThe lotus represents karma in that it holds its seeds as it flowers. Photograph by Nevit Dilmen.
Violence is never the answer, but it is often the question. The attempt on former President Donald J. Trump’s life is nothing to celebrate as the taking of a life in anything but self-defense is morally and legally wrong.
But after almost 10 years of vitriol on the campaign trail and in office, he has come to his encounter with karma.
Read MoreThe Manhattan Criminal Courthouse where the hush-money election interference trial took place. Photograph by Ajay Suresh.
What’s the old saying about a person representing himself having a fool for a client? Now that the “trial of the century” is over, former President Donald J. Trump has been convicted on 34 counts related to election interference and the postmortem is in full swing, about the only thing that hasn’t been discussed is how Trump’s narcissistic approach to life — deny, deny deny; attack, attack, attack — cost him any chance of a hung jury or even victory.
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Read MoreJulius 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).
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.
Read MoreKarl von Piloty’s “The Murder of Caesar” (1865, oil on canvas).Courtesy Landesmuseum Hannover. Both Dante and Shakespeare, who understood political instability, would tip the scales in favor of Caesar’s character against his assassins as would Shaw and the 1963 film “Cleopatra.” In reality, Caesar pitted the mob against the so-called elites and destroyed those he deemed “other,” paying the ultimate price.
The tagline of the PBS series “Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator,” is “Nearly five centuries of ancient Roman democracy were overthrown in 16 years by one man.”
Will we even get to 250 on July 4, 2026? Here’s how Time magazine summarized two interviews with former President Donald J. Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants for a cover story.
Read MoreScales of justice: In “The Egyptian Book of the Dead” (1275 B.C., papyrus), the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of truth. Woe to any heart that does not balance with the feather. Courtesy British Museum.
In the civil fraud case brought by the state of New York — as opposed to the criminal fraud case that began Monday, April 22, in Lower Manhattan — former President Donald J. Trump complained that he was denied a trial by jury, even though his lawyers failed to ask for a jury trial.
Now Trump has his jury — seven men and five women of various races, ethnicities and professional backgrounds — and he, of course, is still not happy. It’s understandable. He’s forced to sit quietly — well perhaps not so quietly outside the courtroom and on Truth Social — listening to people say unpleasant things about him when he could be out on the campaign trail saying unpleasant things about others. (It’s the saying of unpleasant things in violation of his latest gag order that could net Trump fines or worse.) Life is not fair, he thinks. But then, how fare is it to jurors and the hush-money trial jurors in particular?
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