Sanity Sunday - Weekly Highlights and Nomadic Playlist 1

by Nomad

The Week in Review

Last week, the world witnessed a happy ending when 12 Thai boys and their coach were successfully rescued after being trapped in the Tham Luang cave complex.
The boys, aged between 11 to 16, spent over two weeks in the cave after the passageways unexpectedly flooded. As Navy SEALS and teams of international experts raced against time, people around the world were riveted by the rescue.
By10 pm Tuesday local time, all thirteen had been led out of the cave.

In less heart-warming news, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, as his replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. If confirmed, he is expected to tilt the court to the right for the foreseeable future.

Notes on Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" in the Age of Trump

by Nomad

Published in 2004, novelist Philip Roth's last book what-if alternative history has definitely come back to haunt us. 

The events in "The Plot Against America" takes place between June 1940 and October 1942 in a world that took a different course.

The middle-class Roth family from New Jersey- a re-imagining of the author's real family- live in an America where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has lost his bid for a third term. His unlikely Republican challenger? The aviator and all-American hero, Charles Lindbergh.

Some readers back in 2004 might be forgiven for thinking that this event was extremely far-fetched. Who back then would have ever believed that a celebrity without any political experience whatsoever could win a presidential election?

In actual history, Lindbergh was an isolationist and the leading voice of the America First Committee — an isolationist group of some 800,000 members. The organization believed that England was attempting to drag the US into another European war.

Good News Round Up- July 2018

by Nomad

The theme for this month's good news round-up is compassion. In a time of growing intolerance and the mentality of "might makes right," it might seem like the idea of compassion has gone extinct. It's not so hard to find evidence to the contrary.

Toddlers in Court: The Cruel Absurdity of Trump's Child Separation Policy

by Nomad

According to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C., children as young as three have been ordered to appear in court (without legal representation) for their own deportation proceedings.

You might be surprised to learn that requiring unaccompanied minors to go through deportation alone is not a new practice. However under Trump's zero-tolerance policy, More children - and some much younger- are now being ordered to appear before a judge.

Thomas Paine and the Despotic Danger of the Unaccountable Presidency

by Nomad

A Nation Turning Its Back on Its Own Glory

The last years of Thomas Paine, one of America's first and most outspoken intellectuals, were bitter ones. The American political activist and philosopher had left in the spring of 1787, bound for France.
A strong supporter for the anti-royalist side, he was caught up in the lethal throes of the revolution there. Charged with crimes against the state, Paine was arrested in December 1793 and was imprisoned for a year in Luxembourg Prison (formerly a palace.)
His survival was, by his own account, based solely on sheer luck.