The website of John C. Snider
[A review of writer/director Adam McKay’s new sci-fi farce, now streaming on Netflix.] We may very well be in the last days of the American Republic. America has been dysfunctional and divided before (see: the Civil War; the Civil Rights Movement), but our current era of partisan rancor seems unprecedented. The internet promised to bring …
I would have thought by now that we’d realize that mass shootings (even in schools!) aren’t a flaw in our system; at this point, given what we know, they’re an intentional feature. We know from study after study, from one statistical analysis to another, that we have excess fatalities because of the number of guns …
“The very existence of the Second Amendment is designed purposefully to empower the people to be able to resist the force of tyranny used against them to step over their natural rights given to them by God. That is why the Second Amendment exists. That is very specifically why the Second Amendment exists.” – Congressman …
The news out of Afghanistan is shocking, to be sure–but mostly because of the speed of the Taliban reconquest. I don’t know anyone who didn’t think that if the US and our allies exited Afghanistan that the Taliban (or ilk) wouldn’t be in charge eventually. But now it looks like the Taliban will have established …
Today is the NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER. Let us pray that American Christians come to realize that: * The NDP is a propaganda and publicity stunt organized by politicians and activists to manipulate the faithful into equating (conservative)(Protestant)(Christian) religion with patriotism, and to send a signal that non-religious Americans are second-class citizens. It is, to …
The House has voted to impeach Trump. Again. There was a lot of talk by Republicans about the unprecedented and precipitous way in which the House pursued this second impeachment. However, I would point out that the circumstances were unprecedented. Never before in our history has a sitting president sicced an armed mob on Congress …
In the aftermath of the Civil War only one person (the commandant of the infamous Andersonville prison camp) was ever held directly accountable for war crimes. Robert E. Lee lost his swank plantation at Arlington and the right to vote. Jefferson Davis was imprisoned by the Army under harsh conditions for two years before being …
I’m often taken aback at how readily my fellow citizens resort to sadism when discussing our justice system, fantasizing about how miserable a future prisoner will be, expressing no compassion over botched lethal injections, even excitedly daydreaming about the prospect of male-on-male prison rape. We should be striving for a system where punishment is rarely …
Trump has this peculiar habit of declaring “nobody knew” about things that everyone manifestly knew, or “everybody knows” about things for which there is considerable controversy, confusion, or skepticism. An example of the former is Trump’s exasperation that “nobody knew” solving healthcare was complicated. An example of the latter is his recent deadpan that “everybody …
Please, can we stop whining about the Electoral College? Aside from the fact that it’s not going away… had the popular vote gone for Trump and the Electoral College for Clinton, 99% of Democrats would be crowing about the wisdom of the Founders in saving us from the Marmalade Charlatan. Time to stop whining and …