Donald Trump, by Gage Skidmore
MAGA Patriots, in the House
by Ilana Mercer
Why repeat hackneyed phrases about annus horribilis 2020? Recall the opening paragraph of “A Tale of Two Cities,” by Charles Dickens. Interspersed in that epical introduction are countervailing, sweetness-and-light words. Excise these—and you get 2020:
“… it was the worst of times…it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch…of incredulity, it was…the season of darkness… it was the winter of despair. … we had nothing before us.”
MAGA men and women are just that: the best of Jah people in the worst of times. They converged on D.C., Jan. 6, to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote. They, who have “nothing before them,” had come to demand that something be done by those who had “brought [them] forth into this wilderness,” yet sit “by the fleshpots [on the Potomac] and [eat] bread to the full” (to paraphrase Exodus 16:3.) Continue reading
Mendicant Order
Doré, Inferno, credit Wikipedia
Mendicant Order
by Bill Hartley
There is a large restaurant in Leeds city centre and at the side of the building is a fire escape. The doors to the fire escape are blocked and given the prominent location it might be assumed that this would attract the attention of the Fire Service. After all there are penalties for blocking fire escapes.
In fact the Fire Service is aware of the situation but chooses to do nothing. The blockage consists of a tent; one of those igloo type designs commonly seen at Everest base camp. It is occupied periodically by a ‘homeless person’. A police officer who patrols the district is acquainted with this middle aged male and says he has been offered accommodation but prefers life on the streets. The officer would like to remove the tent but is forbidden from doing so because it is occupied and its removal would contravene local policy. In fact, there are various agencies in Leeds who prefer to play pass the parcel, even to the extent of ignoring a breach in fire regulations.
The sight of people begging on the streets, particularly in our larger cities, is common these days. Begging is of course illegal but it goes on and how it is dealt with varies from place to place. There is a tendency to hang the label of ‘homeless’ on those seen begging. As we shall see there are many beggars who take advantage of this. Like the man blocking the fire escape homelessness may be hard to define and officialdom finds it convenient to roll all street people into the same bundle to become a problem which is being ‘managed’. Continue reading →
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