Biography

August 18, 1969 · Ohio, USA

[on Eugène Ionesco's play "Rhinoceros" and fascism] Ionesco's aim was to help us see just how bizarre propaganda actually is, but how normal it seems to those who yield to it. By using the absurd image of the rhinoceros, Ionesco was trying to shock people into noticing the strangeness of what was actually happening. The Rhinoceri are roaming through our neurological savannahs. ... And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism. [from: "On Tyranny"]

[on Donald Trump's presidency, 2019] Rather than having the boring system we take for granted, where you have laws based on facts, instead you have a personality who makes up his own reality. At first that reality is just confusing and seems to gum up the works, but after a while the leader starts to draw people into that reality by making them defend it or making them prove it. This is what is happening here.

The pursuit of objectivity does not mean treating every event as a coin flip, a fifty-fifty chance between two different public statements. Objectivity demands thinking about all the objects -- physical objects, physical placement of people -- that must be in the story, as well as all of the settings -- contemporary and historical -- that a reader would need in order to come away from the story with greater understanding.