Announcing my podcast, The Burning Archive
Dear readers – you may now become dear listeners. Yes, I have started a podcast – The Burning Archive podcast. You can listen at Spotify, and all the other podcast…
Category: history
The post-democratic society is here
The post-democratic society has arrived. We need to turn away from the old priests and performers who are muttering grand concepts of democracy as a prelude to another circus performance in the decaying coliseum. We need to find our own new way in the feral cities of our distressed republics.
A multi-polar world
Originally posted just over three years ago as a reflection on 2017, a difficult year, this post seems more germane than ever. A multipolar-world (Originally posted December 2017) I was…
Donne’s sermons and the blogging tradition
Today, 31 March, is the feast day for John Donne in the Anglican and Lutheran denominations and commemorates the metaphysical poet and reluctant priest’s death in 1631. In honour of…
America’s Coming Century of Humiliation… begins
A tragic sense of history does not limit the depth of the fall of the mighty and flawed, nor does it pretend that prevailing orders degrade in a slow, controlled…
The plague year
One year ago posted the post below on the likely effects of the coronavirus on our lives, our health and our governments. Like most people I think I over-estimated the…
The impeachment curse
The final forced impeachment of Donald Trump has ended in the result that should never happen in a show trial. The sacrificial victim of the authorities’ spite was acquitted. Jonathan…
America’s fate: civil war, fragmentation or collapse?
Today after the distressing events and death in the Capitol building of Washington DC that interrupted the process of confirming electoral college votes, I am reposting this piece from five…
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
Today, I am reposting this response to William Dalrymple’s magnificent The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857. I wonder if, over the next 5 to 10 years,…
A solution to political decay: the ordinary virtues of governing well
I am reposting this reflection on the response to political decay in the midst of the constitutional crisis under way in America, which reveals dramatically the rot in America’s institutions…
America’s Hispanic Past and its Hispanic Future Proves it is not Exceptional
“even well-educated, amiable, open-minded people in the United States do not realize that their country has a Hispanic past as well as a Hispanic future.” Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Our America: A…
The Coming Renaissance of the Second Culture
Terrible events occur in history that devastate the cities that our minds build. The Barbarians sack Rome, and other-named disasters have similarly brought ruin to all past civilisations across time…
