After ruminating over the national conventions these past two weeks, I want to comment on the Republicans first. I am disturbed by their peddling of a fantasy that we are living in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The opening day of their convention was themed “Make America Safe Again”, despite the fact that violent crime has been declining …
In a confused approach toward the homeless, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller’s recent articles capture some of our collective cultural ambivalence. On the one hand, Steller has tried to wake people up about our society’s neglect of the homeless. Last November, he wrote of his unease when voting for a proposition that would raise …
OCCUPIED TUCSON CITIZEN There is a humility that is missing from our political discourse. Consider the reality of our fundamental ignorance. We fit a more or less incomplete sequence of past events into our understanding of and (mostly) assumptions about reality and possibility. We are overwhelmed with information. Our time and attention are limited, and …
OCCUPIED TUCSON CITIZEN One part nerdy, one part torture porn, Zero Dark Thirty is a cold, amoral view of torture interposed with the more mundane and methodical practices of intelligence gathering, analyzing, and debating. Kathryn Bigelow (director) and Mark Boal (producer) are talented film-makers and manage to sustain a vision and an emotional tension from …
OCCUPIED TUCSON CITIZEN Tune in to the mainstream conservative media (on talk radio, or the #1 cable news network FOX) and we hear all this bluster and anger over Obama’s recent decision to stop deporting those persons who who entered the country illegally* (i.e. without documentation) at age 16 or younger, are no older than …