The Fortnightly Rant

Two men named Thomas, born a century and a half apart, had the vision to see what this country might some day become. Thomas Morton overthrew the leaders of a group of settlers sent by Ferdinando Gorges to found the short-lived Merrymount, in what is now Quincy. Morton called himself “Mine Host,” and declared himself the equal of all the former indentured servants in the group. As long as they were able, they cohabited peacefully with the area’s indigenous people. Settlers and natives all celebrated May Day of 1627 together by dancing around a May Pole topped with a set of antlers. Such fun could …

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Birds are singing, buds are swelling, days are getting longer. Spring is here, and it is welcome—even to godless heathens who see this change as just another predictable result of the laws of celestial mechanics. For Christians, of course, this is Easter time, when the ineffable mysteries of their faith are in full bloom. We can only presume, then, that it must have been a shock for that subset of Christians who have chosen to yoke their religious beliefs to their political proclivities when the President observed Easter by posting on Truth (sic) Social, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living …

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What a difference a fortnight can make. As this one began we had to decide: should we start working on the next newspaper, or just write a will? Admittedly, when it comes to assessing threat levels in various situations, our worst-case scenarios may be particularly vivid. That can happen when your prefrontal cortex matures under circumstances in which continued existence is clearly a matter of chance. We would argue, though, that our sense of looming dread was hardly without foundation. Thousands of Marines were already in the Gulf. More were on their way. The 82nd Airborne got orders to join them. What the future might …

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The only thing we can say with certainty, fourteen months into what ought to be called the Dunning-Kruger administration,* is that nobody knows what the hell is going on. We, its subjects, formerly known as “we the people,” certainly do not. Granted, there do seem to be two broad schools of thought about what’s going on, but their positions are diametrically opposed. If one school is right, then the other must be wrong. According to the conventional view of our tripartite form of self-government, an undefined “fourth estate” ought to be acting like a beacon, cutting through the fog, helping us to understand current events. …

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His critics claim that our Commander-in-Chief has never done anything, ever, for anyone but himself. Now he has made liars out of all of them. It is no secret that he has long coveted—one might even say that he has lusted after—a Nobel Peace Prize. The chances of that were never good, except in his dreams. After last weekend, though, his only shot will be through an invasion of Norway. Why did he make such a sacrifice? We may never know, thanks to our Commander’s expertise in the fine art of Strategic Ambiguity. Indeed, our Great Leader’s ability to keep adversaries off balance through obfuscation …

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For more than a decade now, the dominant feature of human existence has become a thickening fog of uncertainty. Some of this is the inevitable result of technological “progress.” We have all had times when labor-saving devices have prevented us from getting anything done. That was bad enough in the physical realm. Now that reality has largely been digitized, we can no longer be sure that we know what we think we know. And that’s just the nuts and bolts of the problem. Just as technology has been advancing at an accelerating pace, so has the use of brazen falsehood. Elders among us can recall …

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