In Federalist Paper #30, Alexander Hamilton argues that the new American government must possess unrestrained power to impose taxes to support all the basic functions of that government – particularly the power to raise and supply an army or militia. He mentions building fleets and paying debts, but most of his examples deal with the […]
Scholars have recently presented critical analyses of the popularity of zombies, vampires and witches to help explain the social and psychological implications of the undead in contemporary popular culture. Zombies are quick and easy metaphors that can be used for many purposes, representing any number of different themes. The proliferation of zombies in films, video […]
Historians have argued that New Journalism “degenerated” into Yellow Journalism because the lofty, idealistic goals of New Journalism were quickly subsumed into sensationalistic pabulum as newspapers tried to out-do each other for advertising revenue. With so much competition between the newspapers, stories were over-dramatized and altered to correspond to ideas that publishers and editors thought […]
One of the milestones in cinematic history was the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903). It was directed and shot by Edwin S. Porter, a former associate of Thomas Edison. The movie is only about 10 minutes long, with 14 scenes. It was the most popular and commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon […]
The USA was one of the world’s greatest mass social experiments; the only country to come into existence as a fully-fledged democracy, “By the People, for the People.” America was the land of the free, home of the brave; a beacon of hope for the rest of the world, blah, blah, blah… Sadly, America isn’t […]
The US century of American economic and political hegemony is collapsing right before our very eyes. Like so many of history’s past empires, petty idiocies and hubris appear to be accelerating this inevitable decline. The real winner in all this chaos is China. Xi Jinping only has to follow Napoleon’s famous advice: “Never interfere with […]
It’s a pattern historians have seen many times before: It starts with the quiet dismantling of oversight and the abolition of regulations, and it ends with institutions that serve only those in power. The US used to have strong institutions and a vigorous vocal opposition; but seeing these government watchdogs being laid off and summarily […]
No doubt 2025 will be another banner year of record profits for the US weapons makers and multinational oil companies. Even though US troops aren’t currently engaged [officially] anywhere, the war machine still raked in trillions of dollars in profits supplying military operations in Israel and Ukraine. Apparently there is no power in heaven or […]
Former president Jimmy Carter recently died at the ripe old age of 100. Proof that only the good DON’T die young… He was the last truly good man to be President of the United States. Carter was only denied a second term due to the treasonous intrigues and machinations of a virtual parallel government run […]
The USA was birthed as a genocidal White male Christian society. It remains so today. That is the DNA of this nation. It was never a true democracy, and the USA has struggled to embrace women’s equality or civil rights. That’s the root of what MAGA is all about: a desire to return to the […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 