Author: Phil Smoke

The Great Plains of North America are a very dry place. Horses and riders leaving one source of water must make straight for the next, and make good time, or risk dying of thirst. During the decades of mounted warfare on the plains between different tribes and against encroaching anglos this harsh environment served as…

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Americans have been in the streets protesting. But it seems like most Americans who aren’t protesting, along with many who are, see little hope of success. I agree in ways I’ll explain. But still I see this as probably our last best off-ramp before true fascist carnage….

For a few months it looked like America might take a sharp turn for the better, electing Bernie Sanders as president, funding healthcare and education by reining in billionaires and corporations, and moving away from the nightmare of Trump as well as the nightmares that preceded and caused him. I’m bummed that didn’t happen. Later…

The election is now 38 days away. And while Joe Biden will almost surely win the popular vote, the worry has been that Trump could again lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College, or that if Biden wins but only narrowly then Trump might illegitimately cling to power. It’s now clear we weren’t…

In trying to persuade someone I think there’s a time to argue narrower points and a time to talk about the big picture. Here I went big picture. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to engage with me so far. And if you’re willing to go a bit further I think we’d benefit from…

Here are some highlights from conversations that followed from this post and addressed free college, dependence, entitlement, taxes, conspiracies, and QAnon: I think the place to focus is on rights and entitlement. I would agree with you, or maybe go even further, in saying that the world owes us nothing. In a cosmic sense I…

I want to consider the strong support that Donald Trump enjoys among Evangelical Christians. And I think that in order to address it productively we’ll need to set aside two common approaches to religion. One is the approach of total deference, which takes people’s religious beliefs and feelings as a given, beyond any question or…

For the consideration of folks who don’t yet support the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, or the reforms those protests are calling for, here’s a letter I wrote to a few relatives on the left, right, and center. Fellow lefties, please note that here I’m trying to be persuasive to folks who…

So I’ve got a book manuscript, and the shortest description I’d managed to write was 650 words. But authors get pushed to develop their “elevator pitch.” Or, even worse, their one-sentence pitch. I struggled with this because how can you represent an entire book in a single sentence? Let alone my crazy ambitious book that…

I’d given up on Bernie’s chances after the last debate, when Biden somehow held it together and looked decent to plenty of observers. But given all that’s happened since then, with Biden disappearing for a week and then looking even shakier once he reappeared, and with coronavirus cases and deaths skyrocketing across the country, as…