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Our America: Again?

November 22, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

You’ve all heard the line. “You can’t go home again,” they say. In my ear, though, just behind my left shoulder, I still hear that Gatsby whisper, Of course you can!

And, no, I haven’t forgotten how the novel ends, nor am I unaware that at least one of its characters would have rejoiced at the coming of Trump. And yet, while rubbernecking at the train wreck, I have also been meditating this past week or so on the fate of the good old Lansing boys I grew up with—wondering what’s left of them. So, hey there Hockaday, and McVaugh, and you too Sleepy Joe. Or Service, for that matter, or Heglin, or Popoff. Hard to think of any of those guys without smiling. Marazita I know...

Our America: Egypt

November 22, 2016 - By Max Page

This post is not meant to be optimistic.  It feels almost dirty to be optimistic at this moment.

I came of age politically when Ronald Reagan was elected. I was depressed for weeks.  And I was right to be — what he launched was thirty years of neoliberal economics and social meanness that we have only begun to unravel.  I grew up in that shadow.  And now, having just turned 50, I feel that I’ll spend the rest of my life working with allies to undo the damage of what is about to occur.

Another layer of awful is that this was and is a populist moment.  The populism of Bernie Sanders was angry at the right culprits, welcoming of all who...

Our America: My America

November 22, 2016 - By A. Minerva

You may say that America, perhaps, is not mine. I have a right to be here, for now. But it’s not mine. I get to pay taxes without representation, because I am a scholar, not a citizen. Will I still be welcome here a year from now? Will I still be able to get a job during these next four years? As a woman, will I still be able to make decisions about my own body? Will my friends of color ever feel safe here?

Five days after the latest elections, I am still in shock, haunted by the uncanny feeling that “I have lived through this already.”

I was born in Italy and I grew up in the shameful era of Berlusconi: “The Knight.” I was fifteen when...

Our America: Are We Really Surprised?

November 21, 2016 - By Doug Anderson

I was: I had bought the rhetoric that said Hillary Clinton would win, that she would have all the electoral votes in addition to the popular vote, that we could not possibly elect someone who grabbed women’s vaginas without their permission and was appealing to racists and homophobes at every turn. Women could not possibly vote for him and women were half the country. But in retrospect I was sleeping.

In all the years since Bill Clinton, the Republicans, who are unified around the single goal of dismantling the New Deal and taking all the money, have been winning at the local level all...

Our America: What Kind of World?

November 18, 2016 - By Eduardo Halfon

I flew back to Nebraska from Germany on the morning after the elections, with the final result slowly and painfully becoming evident, overwhelmed by a feeling I'd never felt before. A feeling similar to gloom, or dread, or even complete despair. I've felt all of these before, of course, but always about myself, never in general, never so profound. I think what made it even worse for me was the fact that my son had been born in Nebraska exactly five weeks earlier.

I had come to fatherhood late, and as with everything else important in my life, by accident. I...