Category Archives: Columns

Cape Trump enablers bear responsibility

What a thing: the president himself, turned instigator-in-chief, siccing a mob on the nation’s capitol. Running real time on TV. As coup d’etats go it was pretty pathetic and ragtag. more notable for the inadequacy of the police who allowed it than for what it was. Reporters and the besieged lawmakers of both parties called […]

January 12, 2021 – 3:37 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Cross-country road trip a source of comfort in a divided nation

In the Deming, New Mexico, La Quinta motel on I -10 the friendly young woman behind the main desk was named Paris. When my wife asked her whether she had ever been to Paris, she replied that actually, she had. “And it smelled like pee.” Try to figure out the politics of that. In early […]

January 8, 2021 – 8:07 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

How do Trump supporters read the traditional Christmas stories?

During the holiday season in a typical presidential election year we are, those of both parties, getting used to the idea of a new presidency, of being, if grudgingly, united in the acceptance of the person we’ve democratically elected to head the country for the next four years. This year,of course, it’s the opposite. The […]

December 24, 2020 – 3:24 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Common ground and the self-evident truths of democracy

“We are not enemies, we are Americans.” In president-elect Biden’s passionate plea for healing he suggests that simply being Americans should be the common ground on which we can all come together. But given the circumstances, we Americans being so harshly divided on so many things, perhaps we could get a little less vague. In […]

December 17, 2020 – 3:34 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The ironies of an Outer Cape Thanksgiving

Let us give thanks that in this difficult year of 2020, 400 years after European arrival on this peninsula, more of us than ever before, or so it seems, are inclined to be thoughtful about the ironies of that arrival and this very contradictory holiday. Which is the real Thanksgiving story: stalwart Europeans celebrating their […]

November 27, 2020 – 12:37 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

ELECTION REVEALS THE SORT OF COUNTRY WE ARE

Four and a half million votes is a substantial margin of victory. And yet it is also true to say that if over half the country is feeling great relief, roughly half the country not so much. If it had been a landslide it would have been easier to believe that the last four years […]

November 12, 2020 – 5:36 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

MAGA versus voting the way forward

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and MAGA—MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN– has been a powerful weapon for Trump and his forces. But of course it doesn’t hold up under more than two seconds’ scrutiny. Just when was that great America we want to go back to? That great period energized, for some anyway, by the pursuit […]

October 29, 2020 – 2:30 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Expanding the Euro-centric “We”

“We” is changing. No, the grammar of that isn’t incorrect. What I mean is that the content of that pronoun –as in “we the people”– is changing. And this election is very much about that change. Columbus Day is still on the calendar. Most of us seem OK about the gift of an extra day […]

October 17, 2020 – 1:28 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

State still pushing dangerous Wellfleet Rail Trail extension

There’s good news and there’s bad news about the state’s controversial plan for Wellfleet’s bike path. The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), has for several years been trying to sell the town on the idea of extending the Rail Trail, which since the 1980s has ended at Lecount Hollow Road in South Wellfleet, to […]

September 28, 2020 – 2:00 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Comments (0)

The election season of voting dangerously

You could almost thank Donald Trump for lessons about democracy. It’s almost as if he set out four years ago to expose our complacency and naivete and teach us about the vulnerability of our system to the impulses of one man of a certain sort. But that it would come to this, that only two […]

September 11, 2020 – 1:12 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)