Blog / Our America

OUR AMERICA: Greater America

November 28, 2016 - By Ulvija Tanović

Across our Facebook newsfeeds, we Balkanites like to accuse each other of a particular form of navel-gazing that verges on conspiracy theory. We often fall prey to seeing our relatively unimportant little region, down at the unfashionable end of Europe, as the belly button of the world. It’s a defence mechanism at heart. Because the world actually won’t give us the time of day, unless we’re spectacularly slaughtering each other; in times of relative, unspectacular peace, we try to infiltrate world affairs by posing as jaded know-it-alls, sages who’ve seen it all before. A sort of grand, historical “been there, done...

Our America: What The Orange Man Showed Us

November 22, 2016 - By Pedja Jurišić

“Relax,” I told my friends, one evening after Donald Trump emerged as the Republican nominee for the presidency. “Make popcorn, then sit back and enjoy the collapse of the Republican party.”

“How could we have been so wrong?” many of us have been asking ever since.

The simplest answer is that we thought Americans were better than all the vile, poisonous shallows embodied in Trump’s ludicrous figure. And that was true for even those of us who don’t regard the United States as particularly good—at home or abroad.

So what does that Tuesday...

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...