PATRICK LAWRENCE: ‘Vote Joy’ — a Delusion of Nostalgia
Those populating the vice president’s joy-and-vibes crowd can pretend to celebrate a state of elation while acquiescing to their candidate’s approval of mass murder. Many commentators have attempted to describe the astonishing devolution of Democratic Party politics into sheer marketing: Kamala…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: James Baldwin at 100
Things got lost in our remembrances. James Baldwin would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Aug. 2, had he lived so long. He didn’t: He died young. He was but 63 on Dec. 1, 1987, the day he slipped away at…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Netanyahu Goes for Broke
The Israeli prime minister has chosen this moment to mount a go-for-broke attempt to bring the U.S. into some kind of once-and-for-all conflict that would leave Israel supreme in the region. It is a matter of record that the Zionist…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Hunter Biden’s Charge of Lying Under Oath
The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end. This is the fifth in Consortium News’ series on the congressional investigation into President Joe Biden’s allegedly…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Afterlives of Lies
Last Friday, while President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and other Western leaders, along with the reporters who clerk for them, were in Normandy busily airbrushing out the Red Army’s heroism in defeating the Reich 80 years ago, something…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Ðiên Biên Phú at 70
How did the Vietnamese prevail at that world-historical moment? The answers shed light on the world we see outside our windows now. I had the most salutary email the other day, a reviving lift amid these, humanity’s darkest days, surely, in…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Could the Russians Seize Congress?
The Russians have been coming, off and on, for seven-plus decades. While these conjured imaginings may be laughable, the consequences of a culture of Cold War fear are far from funny. The Russians are coming — or coming back, better put. As…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Europe’s Identity Crisis
As European leaders continue to import a version of U.S. militarism, rearmament will cost the Continent its postwar social contract. It is many years now since the French, bless them, revolted as Disneyland Paris arose near the previously uninvaded village…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Authorized Atrocities
Israel’s lawlessness has a history that those in the West share with the apartheid state. It is remarked often enough, including in this space, that Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Defending Humanity
In the face of the dangerous U.S. determination to prolong its global primacy, a reform movement to reconstruct our long-abused global institutions merits serious attention. Anyone taking up the question of our shared humanity in the late summer of 2024 must begin…