Trump Rages to Snuff Out Democracy’s Candle, Will We Rage Against the Dying of Its Light?
Allow me to stipulate that I do not wish to die. In fact, had anyone consulted me about the construction of the universe, I would have made my views on…
Rebecca Gordon
King Donald Or Facing the Rise of Fascism Like Fools for Freedom
This past weekend my partner and I got together with a group of friends. We’ve been meeting every six weeks or so since 1982. Originally, this group of lesbians convened…
Finding Hope In the Negative Spaces of the Trump Era
The expression “punch-drunk,” Google informs me, means “stupefied by or as if by a series of heavy blows to the head.” Google’s Oxford Language entry then offers a not-terribly-illuminating example of the term’s use: “I…
Election Aftermath:Staring Down Misogyny
“I never realized before that men hate us so much.” That was the lesson drawn by one of my fellow organizers in Reno, Nevada, the morning after the 2024 general…
A Personal Meditation on Growing Old In a Catastrophic Age
The Washington Post headline reads: “A big problem for young workers: 70- and 80-year-olds who won’t retire.” For the first time in history, reports Aden Barton, five generations are competing in the same workforce. His…
Cassandra Redux
A few days ago, my partner and I went in search of packing tape. Our sojourn on an idyllic (if tick-infested) Cape Cod island was ending and it was time…
Birding in Gaza
He’s a funny little chap: a sharp dresser with a sleek grey jacket, a white waistcoat, red shorts, and a small grey crest for a hat. With his shiny black…
Banning What Matters: Public Libraries Under MAGA Threat
When my mother died in 2000, I inherited all her books. Sadly, after several moves and downsizings over the decades, her collection had shrunk. Still, it remains considerable and impressive…
Nowhere to Run – Where Will the World Find Refuge in 2024?
Back in 1968, my father announced that, if Richard Nixon were elected president that November, he was going to move us all to Canada. I’m not sure who “us all”…
Is It Time (Once Again) for Nonviolent Rebellion?
When I was in my early twenties, I seriously considered murdering someone. He had given my best friend genital herpes, which many health practitioners then believed was the agent responsible…
Trump’s Schedule F (for “Failed State”)
Sometimes the right wing in this country seems like a riddle wrapped in an enigma encased in a conundrum. Do they want to strengthen the government in line with the…
Stumbling Towards Old Age And Looking for Someone to Lean On
For twelve years starting in 1982, my partner and I in San Francisco joined with two friends in Seattle to produce Lesbian Contradiction: A Journal of Irreverent Feminism, or LesCon for short. We started…
Henry A. Kissinger, Still a War Criminal
Henry Alfred Kissinger turned 100 on May 27th of this year. Once a teenage refugee from Nazi Germany, for many decades an adviser to presidents, and an avatar of American realpolitik,…
Outlaw Superpower
The United States Refuses to Play by the World’s Rules- Here Are Three Ways In 1963, the summer I turned 11, my mother had a gig evaluating Peace Corps programs…
Yes, We Have Home-Grown Fascists
One day when I was about six, I was walking with my dad in New York City. We noticed that someone had stuck little folded squares of paper under the…
Don’t Try to Find a Home in Washington, D.C. Or Pretty Much Anywhere Else If You’re a Renter
In 1937, the American folklorist Alan Lomax invited Louisiana folksinger Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Lead Belly) to record some of his songs for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Lead Belly…
Rain and Heat, Fire and Snow – Life in a Destabilized California
It was January 1983 and raining in San Francisco. The summer before, I’d moved here from Portland, Oregon, a city known for its perpetual gray drizzles and, on the 60-odd…
What Does It Mean that Women Now Dominate Higher Education?
In the last week of her life, my mother extracted a promise from me. “Make sure,” she said, “that Orion goes to college.” I swore that I would, although I…
A World of Killer Robots?
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Fight to Contain Them Here’s a scenario to consider: a military force has purchased a million cheap, disposable flying drones each the size of a…
Seeing the Future, When No One Believes You
For decades, I kept a poster on my wall that I’d saved from the year I turned 16. In its upper left-hand corner was a black-and-white photo of a white…
The Fires This Time
In San Francisco, we’re finally starting to put away our masks. With 74% of the city’s residents over 12 fully vaccinated, for the first time in more than a year we’re enjoying…
Social Security Versus National Security – Whose Entitlement Really Makes Us Safer?
These days my conversations with friends about the new administration go something like this: “Biden’s doing better than I thought he would.” “Yeah. Vaccinations, infrastructure, acknowledging racism in policing. A…
Rethinking Employment in the Biden-Harris Era
A year ago, just a few weeks before San Francisco locked itself down for the pandemic, I fell deeply in love with a 50-year-old. The object of my desire was…
100 Seconds to Midnight?
If you live in California, you’re likely to be consumed on occasion by thoughts of fire. That’s not surprising, given that, in last year alone, actual fires consumed over four and a…
The Rubble of Empire
How can you tell when your empire is crumbling? Some signs are actually visible from my own front window here in San Francisco. Directly across the street, I can see…
It’s Almost Twenty Years Since 9/11 – Can We Finally Stop Marching to Disaster?
It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless,…
Our Work Is Just Beginning
In the chaos of this moment, it seems likely that Joe Biden will just squeeze into the presidency and that he'll certainly win the popular vote, Donald Trump's Mussolini-like behavior and election…
Campaigning on Planet A
“Look, folks, the air quality is in the red zone today. The EPA says that means people with lung or heart issues should avoid prolonged activity outdoors.” That was J.R.…
Why Does Essential Work Pay So Little… And Cost So Much?
In two weeks, my partner and I were supposed to leave San Francisco for Reno, Nevada, where we’d be spending the next three months focused on the 2020 presidential election.…
The Sudden Descent of the United States
You know that feeling when you trip on the street and instantly sense that you’re about to crash hard and there’s no way to prevent it? As gravity has its…
On Being Addicted to Trump and His Press Conferences
My partner and I have been fighting about politics since we met in 1965. I was 13. She was 18 and my summer camp counselor. (It was another 14 years…
The Future May Be Female But the Pandemic Is Patriarchal
Before I found myself “sheltering in place,” this article was to be about women’s actions around the world to mark March 8th, International Women’s Day. From Pakistan to Chile, women in their millions…
“The Right to Do Whatever I Want as President”
On February 5th, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In other words, Trump’s pre-election boast that he “could stand in the…
One Cheer for the Deep State
This seems like a strange moment to be writing about “the deep state” with the country entering a new phase of open and obvious aboveground chaos and instability. Just as…
Extorting Ukraine is Bad Enough- But Trump Has Done Much Worse
Recently a friend who follows the news a bit less obsessively than I do said, “I thought George W. Bush was bad, but it seems like Donald Trump is even…
How the U.S. Created the Central American Immigration Crisis
It’s hard to believe that more than four years have passed since the police shot Amílcar Pérez-López a few blocks from my house in San Francisco’s Mission District. He was an…
I Had an Abortion and Now I’m Not Ashamed
The Personal Is Still Political - And It’s Planetary, Too I have never said this publicly before, but in December 1974 I had an abortion. I was 22 years old,…
Clemency for the Lowly – Free Passes for the Mighty
Memorial Day has come and gone and President Trump did not issue his pardons after all. There was substantial evidence that he was planning to use the yearly moment honoring the country’s…
Of Autocrats and Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa | Rebecca Gordon
“Al-Shebab,” said my student Jerry early in the fall 2010 semester. “We’re calling our small group al-Shebab. It means ‘The Youth.’” From his name alone, I wouldn’t have guessed his…
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo Defy the International Criminal Court
Events just fly by in the ever-accelerating rush of Trump Time, so it’s easy enough to miss important ones in the chaos. Paul Manafort is sentenced twice and indicted a third time!…
Where Will the National Guard Be Sent in 2019?
The Uses of a Well-Regulated Militia by an Unregulated President A young friend is seriously considering joining her state’s National Guard. She’s a world-class athlete, but also a working-class…
When All the World’s a War… And All the Men and Women Merely Soldiers
Since September 11, 2001, the United States has been fighting a “war on terror.” Real soldiers have been deployed to distant lands; real cluster bombs and white phosphorus have…
The Forgotten War In Yemen
The long national nightmare that was the 2016 presidential election is finally over. Now, we’re facing a worse terror: the reality of a Trump presidency. Donald Trump has already promised…
What Does It Mean When War Hawks Say, “Never Trump”?
It’s not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort of thing has been happening more and more frequently. The most recent…
The Trojan Drone: An Illegal Military Strategy Disguised As Technological Advance
Think of it as the Trojan Drone, the ultimate techno-weapon of American warfare in these years, a single remotely operated plane sent to take out a single key figure. It's…
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