My friend sent me this meme offering a crazy juxtaposition. Before I tweeted it, I wanted to confirm that I was not being a purveyor of fake news. Did Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends really say that? And is that a real Dr. Seuss cartoon? Here is what I found. First off, yes, Kilmeade […]
nationalism
The Fascist Snowflake: Thoughts on the Bannon/Frum Debate
Yesterday, I watched the online stream for the Munk Debate on the Rise of Populism. The debate featured Steve Bannon in battle with David Frum. Bannon, as we all know, popularized Brietbart, an alt-right news website, and was a key architect in Donald Trump gaining the presidency. He also achieved fame on SNL as the […]
A Wolf in Sheepdog’s Clothing? A review of American Sniper
American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle (played by a substantially beefed-up Bradley Cooper), at 160 recorded kills, the deadliest sniper in the long military history of the United States. I’m not up on sniper score cards, but that certainly sounds like a lot of blood and brains. Through four tours of duty in […]
Canadian war criminals?
Since we’ve spent some time discussing the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I thought it might be good to balance things out a bit by discussing some Canadian blindspots (in case you didn’t know, I’m Canadian). Personally I find nationalism of any stripe quite noxious, especially when it leads folks to criticize the atrocities of […]
Patriotism properly defined
I have enjoyed my discussion with Paul Manata. My critique of the name of a sports franchise that happens to be in Cleveland Ohio has unleashed from Paul a torrent of labels like race-baiting and liberal, all driven by his own projections of my psychological state and political inclinations (projections about which he was refreshingly […]
The get your own house in order (nationalist edition) objection
Good ole’ Paul Manata offered several criticisms of my critique of the Cleveland Indians name and logo. I thought they are noteworthy for two reasons. First, they are bad arguments. I mean bad not in the way Michael Jackson thought he was bad dressed up in leather and buckles and dancing in a parkade. Rather, […]
