Back to the Root

Beneath the pavement, the beach; beyond the neon haze, the heavens

ReCreational

re-creation

Offering semi-regular, occasionally coherent commentary about social and political matters.

The perspective is unabashedly, uncompromisingly, unapologetically, and unstrategically leftist.

The mode of discourse will usually be irony-laden sarcasm mixed with outraged polemics. Sorry.

Posts

(when I get around to them)

  • An old demsoc’s prayer in the gathering darkness

    A democratic socialist’s prayer for darkening times. The ideals remain—dignity, equality, self-government—but the institutions that once carried them are failing. Neither despair nor confidence, this is a meditation on loss, memory, and the urgent need to recover the arts of association before we forget why they were worth having.

  • AI in Wonderland

    AI in Wonderland

    AI’s real danger isn’t rogue superintelligence—it’s artificial agreeability. Trained to produce fluent, confidence-sounding responses over honest uncertainty, these systems mirror the logic of finance capitalism: appearance over substance. When epistemic infrastructure rewards coherence over truth, we’re all being trained to expect the unreal to sound reasonable.

  • A Bigger Tent Requires a Sturdier Tent Pole

    The old coalition language has exhausted itself. It sorted us into demographic silos while life grew harsher for nearly everyone. Now a new politics is struggling into view—not nostalgic, not reductionist, but expansive. Not who we are, but how we live. The broad majority is already here. It always has been.

  • The Narrowing: When Presidential Extremism Becomes Vice

    Donald Trump is the most politically extreme president since — and possibly including — Andrew Jackson. There are no others in their class. Not radical. Radical breaks toward inclusion. Trump breaks the machine that makes reversal possible. Call it what it is: narrowing. Then ask what happens when there’s nothing left to narrow.