Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter I’m old enough to remember when the Watergate hearings aired in May of 1973. The Senate had established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to uncover unlawful activities—including the Watergate break-in—during the 1972 presidential campaign. Of course, thanks to the incredible investigative reporting at the Washington Post, …
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Category:Michael DiMilo
The Ugliest Americans
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter The novel The Ugly American, by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, was an absolute sensation when it came out in 1958. The book was a series of vignettes detailing the general contempt with which American diplomats and citizens treated indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia. The term “ugly American” originally …
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The Last Straw
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoffrey Carter It happened again. Despite the thoughts and prayers, the demonstrations, the pleas, and the warning signs, it happened again. On May 24th, nineteen fourth graders were shot down like dogs at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, by an eighteen-year-old armed with semi-automatic weapons that he had purchased …
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Full Measure
Artwork by Michael DiMilo (Originally posted on May 31, 2019) By Geoff Carter Ah, Memorial Day: the harbinger of summer, the first family picnic, and the grill master’s opening day. Memorial Day also happens to be the holiday recognizing and honoring those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our nation and Constitution. It is …
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Get off My Lawn!
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Once upon a time, Wisconsin used to a state known for its practicality, progressive politics, and good economic sense. It boasted one of the nation’s best public-school systems, one of the finest state university systems, and was known for its shrewd management of its abundant woodlands and waterways. …
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The Lost Generations
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Traditional wisdom used to have it that every generation should be better off than that of their parents. On the surface, that idea seems to make perfect sense. Historically, advances in technology, medicine, communication, and transportation have translated into healthier and more prosperous lifestyles for subsequent generations. This …
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UnMother’s Day
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter We celebrated Mother’s Day just this past Sunday. As described in Heather Cox Richardson’s piece (Letters From An American: May 7, 2022), Mothers’ Day was originally intended as a day for war-weary American mothers to voice their disapproval of the politicians that had sent their sons off to …
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Solitude
Art by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter I was thinking about my grandma the other day, about how she used to leave her TV on all the time, whether she was in the room or not. When I was in college, I had a standing invitation to come to her house for dinner. I’d arrive …
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The Good Fight
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter As awful and unfortunate as the last two years have been—a time that included the Covid epidemic and its economic fallout, the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent January 6th insurrection, and the George Floyd murder and BLM activism—the war in Ukraine is beyond horrible. In some ways, the …
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A Dog Eat Dog World
FLC001, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Film Review of The Power of the Dog By Geoff Carter Chronicling the inner world of fictional characters is part and parcel of literature. Since the days of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and the modernistic stylings of Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce, novelists have sought to explain the foibles of …
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You Can’t Go Home Again
Kenneth BranaghGiorgia Meschini, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Film Review of Belfast By Geoff Carter As a medium, narrative film is a palimpsest that draws the best from other art forms; like literature, it can convey the impression of a time and place through dialogue, characterization, and setting. Like two-dimensional art, it can frame an …
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Peace Corps 2.0
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter As the world watched horrified—once again—one sovereign nation invaded another without provocation, slaughtering thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands of innocent civilians, as we stood by helplessly, unable to stop the bloodshed without getting enmeshed in the carnage ourselves. No one—except maybe Russia—wants World War III. Civilized nations …
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