With Both Hands

Sign in Subscribe

Favorite Authors

The Long View: The Flame is Green

I've never tried to read anything by Lafferty, but I'm curious if he is anything like Tim Powers. From John's description, he sounds even crazier. When I started reading Tim Powers, I found it hard to appreciate everything he was trying to say. Last

The Long View 2002-04-23: The Really Angry People

John suspected that nationalist politics in Europe would grow because the EU has often been so feckless about representing the actual interests of Europeans. This seems to have been largely borne out. Right and center-right nationalist parties all seem to get tarred with the same brush in the press, but

The Long View: Holy Madness

The 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries were the ages of revolution: The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the collapse of the vice-royalties of Spain and Portugual in the Americas, the Springtime of Peoples, the Russian Revolution. There were so many revolutions in part because there were so many revolutionaries; failed

The Long View: Questions and Answers on 9/11

If I were on the ball, I would have posted this on 9/11. Part of the reason I foster John's memory is that he perceived the structure of events so acutely. He knew the worst outcome of 9/11 for the United States would be a universal

The Long View 2002-04-15: 2002 < 1914

I loved Star Trek: TNG growing up. Looking back, I can see John's point though. The series really was relentlessly PC, but in a sunnier, happier time when PC hadn't metastasized yet. John was also correct in noting that despite popular millennial theology to the contrary

The Long View 2002-04-11: Tobacco, Guns, and Slavery Reparations

This was John's specialty, and it shows. Twelve years later, these topics are still topical, although they have evolved in interesting ways. Tobacco has become quite the pariah following the capitulation of the tobacco companies, but it isn't done yet. Hipsters insist on smoking even though

The Long View: Earthly Powers

Some of John's central ideas about the Papacy are contained herein. The 18th and 19th centuries were a time of rampant nationalism in Europe, and the Pope was the head of the last institution that could effectively resist the nation-state. As the latter half of the nineteenth century