PolitiSage Enters Its 2nd Year with Premium Content, Interviews and Podcasts
Coming Soon: Mike Johnson decides he's Moses. More on Deism and Religion in Early America, Donald Trump's crashing mental health. Books, stars (the sky kind), culture, climate, and vanishing rights.
Dear PolitiSages,
First … Our deepest thanks that you visit us, read our posts and add you own comments.
As we head for our 1st anniversary on February 2nd, we’d like to ask that those of you who can upgrade to paid subscriptions if you haven’t already.
We want to keep free lots of content, but we want our writers to be paid, too—and there’s much more we want to add: interviews, podcasts, and some serious deep dives.
Meanwhile, in celebration of our first year, in which Rupert Chapman and I generated almost 150 articles, here are some resource posts—and some fun ones, too—that we hope you’ll enjoy and hope you’ll stick around. This is an important year, and we will provide you the very best information we can. Also please check out the substack pages of
Robert Reich
Joyce Vance
Robert J. Rei
Stephen Beschloss
Adam Kinzinger
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Jay Juo
Thom Hartmann
Alexander Vindman
The Big Picture (George Takei)
Heather Cox Richardson
And now from PolitiSage’s first year:
The Roots of Trumpism: The Birth of a Crisis Cult and Rural Conservatism
Our brilliant Rupert Chapman III published this article last year. Many have since joined us a PolitiSage and haven’t seen it — and since this week we’re being treated to a wildly viral MAGA film telling us that Trump is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, I think we need to see this again. Read it and weep, but …
Fairy Chimneys, Istanbul's Cats, and Turkey's 108-year-old Grand Dame
They were millions of years in the making, and they have come down to us as an enchanted and otherworldly landscape. They look like shapes fashioned of pixie dust. They are the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia. Back in Istanbul, the city is home to more than a million beloved cats--and a very spectacular old woman, Dr. Muazzez İlmiye İtil Çığ, archaeologist, now 109.
In the Beginning: Christianity, Deism, and the Founding Fathers
Currently, Christian religious conservatives in the United States are fond of saying that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. It was not. There were those who wanted it to be, but they lost--to Deism--because most of the Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by Deism, and the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are full of Deist, not Christian, concepts and language. We need to remember that.
PolitiSage Eye Candy: Galactic Fender Benders
When galaxies collide, individual stars most often don’t crash into each other, repelled by mutual gravitation. Instead, they generate massive amounts of gas that spin and coalesce and eventually ignite as new stars—billions upon billions of new stars.
Heart of Darkness. Trump isn't just Dark Triad. He's Dark *Tetrad*.
Trump has all four qualities of the most dangerous tyrants in history: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. This puts him in the company of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Franco, and Leopold II, as well as Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, Nicolas Ceausescu, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Idi Amin, and Ismail Enver Pasha. He must NOT regain the White House.
The 5,000-Year War in the Middle East
Rupert L. Chapman III, Ph.D. a retired archaeologist and British Museum curator of Levantine Antiquities, traces a 5,000-year history of warfare in what is arguably the most war-torn stretch of land in the world. What's going on now has its present-time causes, but there's something else going on here.
2 Minutes 26 Seconds of Heaven: Thursday Appointment
An extraordinary, exquisitely beautiful experience in just two and a half minutes. Pure love. Don't miss this!
Fascism, Part I: The European Radical Right and the Birth of Fascism
Radical sects, ancient and modern, conservative and liberal have “prefigured the intolerant, illiberal, messianic mind-set of some fascists.” The collision of these radical forces in the mid- to late-eighteen century gave us Italian and Spanish fascism and German Nazism--and the question for quintessentially male authoritarian control continues in the dark vision of Donald Trump.
No, you don't get to read what you want. Got that?
To the left is a photograph—one of many—of a widespread, coordinated national event in Nazi Germany, arguably the largest nationwide book burning in history. As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum writes: Beginning on May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried…
Sunday Morning Music: The Rach 4 Train Trip (s)
Incredible fun as Daniil Trifunov boards a train without a ticket and finds a gorgeous piano within its empty interior. A Fazioli no less. And begins to play the Rachmaninoff 4th Piano Concerto, the concerto least often played, the one with the hidden brilliance. Nobody plays it as well as Trifunov. This is delightful as there is no dialogue, just music. Trifunov's a fine mime!
Fascism, Part 2: Laurence Britt's 14 Identifying Characteristics of Fascism
With the ascent to power in recent weeks of Mike Johnson as house speaker, what began with the Evangelical fronting of Donald Trump—and reached nadir with the appointment of the unqualified Amy Coney Barrett and the predatory Brett Kavanaugh to join the corrupt Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito on the Supreme Court—already dim skies filled with sooty clouds that blocked the sun.
Fascism, Part 3: The Spanish Civil War
17-year-old Marina Ginesta stands on a rooftop in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. Her photograph became a quintessential icon of the deaths and torture of millions in Franco's quest, which he said was ordained by God, to create a country in his own image. His grip on history was absolute -- until now. Spain’s memory is returning. It’s a hard, hard road.
Sunday Morning: 4 Minutes of Peace and Beauty
“Gabriel’s Oboe” was written by Ennio Morricone as part of the score for The Mission, which was nominated for an Oscar and is listed as the 33rd greatest film score ever composed. Enjoy. It’s really beautiful. Played here by the incomparable 2cellos.
There’s much, much more at the PolitiSage substack page! Join us there … And please share us with your friends.
My Politisage coffee mug is my now my new morning caffeine delivery device; and I love it!