essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay
I have posted episode 7 of The Burning Archive Podcast – the ordinary virtues of governing well. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple and other platforms. In this episode I discuss a possible…
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…
In early 2017 I wrote a series of posts – or let us call them essays – on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. I wrote it still aiming…
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…
Today I am reposting this piece from July 2019, following the 2019 Australian election. It is newly relevant today as the American republic wrestles with how to save its crumbling…
2020 has proven a testing year for the culture and capacity of governments around the world. Many governments have failed. Governments far away and close to home have failed. The…
I have been following the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic since January, especially through the remarkable podcast Warroom: Pandemic hosted by Steven K. Bannon. The world is now living in…
The third impeachment of an American President in my living memory is now drawing to a close: Nixon in 1973-74, Clinton in 1998-99, and Trump in 2019-20. Nixon used government…
As described in the previous post, Free speech for public servants and Osip Mandelstam, I am reposting here an extended set of posts that I originally posted in three parts…
During the week the High Court of Australia passed judgement on a case in which a public servant was sacked for an anonymous tweet, critical of government but made in…
Today I am posting the last (for now) of my reposts from earlier, retired blogs. This post comes from 2010 and is a reflection on Vaclav Havel’s thought, then still…
I am continuing my blogging retrospective today by reposting a small think-piece from The Happy Pessimist blog. If I have done my digital erasure correctly, you will not find any…
