"Much to his credit, Aaron James pointed this out..."

Almost everyone now knows that Donald Trump is an asshole. Much to his credit, Aaron James pointed this out in Assholes: A Theory (Anchor Books 2012) well before Trump took center stage in American politics. In his new book, James sets out to develop this idea in greater detail. According to the back cover, the book does not ask whether Trump is an asshole. This much is assumed. Instead, it raises the further question: What sort of asshole is Trump? As such, the book is presented as a contribution to what the author calls “assholeology”.

Readers will quickly learn that the book covers much more than this. Only the introduction and the first chapter are, properly speaking, exercises in assholeology. Even the first chapter, “The Ass-Clown and Asshole”, is more about offering a general theory of Trump’s person than a strict examination of his assholery, and the final three chapters not only ask whether having an asshole like Trump for president is a “sound proposition”, they also point to the larger problem of what James calls “asshole political capitalism”.

James begins the work by recapping the definition of the asshole he developed in his first book. On this view, the asshole has three essential features: First, he – James notes that assholes are mostly men – “allows himself special advantages in social relationships in a systematic way”; second, he is “motivated by an entrenched (and mistaken) sense of entitlement”; and third, he is “immunized against the complaints of other people”. 

Although James presents these as three separate yet equal features of the asshole, the entrenched sense of entitlement seems to be the causal mechanism behind the asshole’s systematic privileging of himself as well as his immunity to the criticisms of others. So understood, an asshole might simply be someone with an entrenched sense of entitlement.

James claims that Trump is – like Ted Cruz – an asshole in this sense, but “being an assclown is Trump’s distinctive style of assholery”. According to James, the assclown “is someone who seeks an audience’s attention and enjoyment while being slow to understand how it views him”. Much like a man who chases women to flatter his own ego, Trump chases the electorate “to affirm his worth by being seen as powerful, the center of attention”. To win the affections of this lover, Trump must become a showman. Like a clown, he seeks to entertain, but like an ass, Trump fails to understand that he is the clown. For these reasons, James classifies Trump as an assclown.

Although there are good reasons for thinking that Trump is an asshole so defined, two aspects of James’ analysis seem to conflict with this generally agreed upon premise. First, despite the common term “ass”, assclowns and assholes appear to be distinct and mutually exclusive types. Whereas the asshole’s immunity to criticism implies that he has little concern for the opinion of others, the assclown seeks the affection of others and so seems to lack the asshole’s innate sense that he is something special. 

Second, James eventually backpedals on his promise – implicit in the title – to offer “a theory of Donald Trump”. Because Trump is so many things – showman, bullshitter, racist, sexist, civically oblivious, authoritarian, demagogue – James concludes that there is no “real” Trump. But if there is no “real” Trump, Trump cannot really be an asshole. In contrast, the various aspects of Trump’s person that James identifies seem to be explained by a single fact: he really is an asshole!

Chapter two, “A Force for Good?”, raises the question of whether an asshole like Trump is really good for our democracy, and James presents the interesting thesis that many value Trump as an über-asshole capable of managing all the other assholes – like Ted Cruz and Chris Christie – that inhabit the political sphere. Nevertheless, James proceeds to claim in chapter three, “The Strongman”, that an asshole president “will only further unravel the soft fabric of cooperation upon which our experiment is premised”, and he devotes the final chapter, “Saving the Marriage”, to exploring ways that we might rescue our democracy from the proliferation of assholes.

There is much in James’ work that will interest the philosophically inclined reader, and he should be applauded for bringing philosophical theories to bear directly on contemporary issues. However, readers may question some of the specific moves James makes along the way. For instance, he often appeals to Hobbes and Rousseau to unpack a number of his ideas but in ways that do not always fit his argument. 

On the one hand, James claims that the aforementioned “strategy of asshole management” can be traced back to Hobbes. However, there seems to be an important difference between a proto-fascist über-asshole and Hobbes’ absolute sovereign: whereas the former rises to power by crushing opposition and promising benefits to a certain in-group of supporters at the expense of others, the latter is largely established through a consensual and mutual transfer of rights for the benefit of all.

On the other hand, James’ claim that the asshole suffers from an inflamed sense of Rousseau’s amour-propre seems to be misguided. Whereas amour-propre instils in us a burning desire to appear well and be regarded as superior in the eyes of others, the asshole, again, is not particularly concerned with how others regard him. This is because he recognizes himself as superior and treats others accordingly. If anyone suffers from amour-propre in James’ analysis, it seems to be the non-asshole who resents the way in which the asshole refuses to recognize him or her as a person worthy of equal respect.

In the end, there is much to be said for a central thesis that runs throughout the final chapters of James’ work: the ethos of capitalism breeds a culture of assholes that, in turn, threatens the moral and social fabric essential to a healthy democracy and a well-functioning economy. Nevertheless, Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump is a work written quickly for a popular audience in response to current events, and so the aforementioned thesis deserves more serious reflection than this book provides. 

Although James covers some of this ground in his first book and I encourage interested readers to consult it, the history of philosophy may have more to say about the asshole than James’ writings thus far suggest. Critical treatments of asshole-like psychologies by Plato – the tyrant of Republic IX – and Aristotle – improper self-love in the Nicomachean Ethics – as well as arguably more positive assessments by Hume – “Greatness of Mind” in A Treatise of Human Nature – and Nietzsche – the “nobles” of the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality – immediately come to mind, and we would do well to turn to these resources in thinking about assholes more generally and the ever-increasing threat that one particular asshole poses to our democracy.

The rise of the American asshole is a serious issue, and we should not only thank James for drawing our attention to it but also hope that his most recent work stimulates further conversation among both philosophers and the broader public alike.

Matthew Meyer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Scranton. He is the author of the recently published Reading Niezsche Through The Ancients (de Gruyter).

 

How Shall We Live This Life?

 

Suppose we answer the most important question of existence in the affirmative. There is then only one question remaining: How shall we live this life?

Despite all the technologies of thought and feeling we have invented to divine an answer — philosophy and poetry, scripture and self-help — life stares mutely back at us, immense and indifferent, having abled us with opposable thumbs and handicapped us with a consciousness capable of self-reference that renders us dissatisfied with the banality of mere survival. Beneath the overstory of one hundred trillion synapses, the overthinking animal keeps losing its way in the wilderness of want.

Not so the other animals. “They do not sweat and whine about their condition,” Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass (which is philosophy and poetry and scripture and self-help in one), “they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.”

A century and a half after Whitman, Annie Dillard looks to another animal for a model of how to live these human lives. Having let a muskrat be her teacher in unselfconsciousness, she recounts her lens-clearing encounter with a weasel in an essay originally published in her 1982 packet of revelations Teaching a Stone to Talk, later included in The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New (public library) — one of my all-time favorite books.

-Maria Popova

from Annie Dillard's Book:

I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.

Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the highway, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Hollins Pond is also called Murray’s Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle’s nonchalance.

Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.

This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There’s a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks — in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.

So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond’s shoreline up into high grassy fields. Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.

The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around — and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.

Weasel! I’d never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard’s; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs’ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window…

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So…

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular — shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands? — but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive.

The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein…

Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience — even of silence — by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

-The Marginalian

 

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

 

…In the brief chapter that follows the suggestion to “think up your own way of speaking”, Snyder, a professor of history at Yale, dwells on the insights of Victor Klemperer, the great Jewish philologist who studied the ways that the Nazis commandeered language before they commandeered everything else. Klemperer noted how Hitler’s language explicitly undermined all and any opposition. “‘The people’ always meant some people and not others… encounters were always ‘struggles’ and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was ‘defamation’ of the leader.”

Snyder does not name America’s 45th president in the course of this book, but the nascent administration is never far from his thoughts. Throughout his march to power, Trump used a narrowing of language in an identical way to that which Klemperer described, and has emphasized his populist project by the subordination of word to image.

This is a presidency being shaped by the techniques and tone of television and Twitter and YouTube, rather than the progression of rational argument through sentence and paragraph. Trump’s admission that he never reads a book all the way through is symptomatic of his rhetorical style. He offers a “highly constrained [language] to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the past, present and future”,

Snyder argues. In the president’s frame of reference events are only ever bad or sad or mad. With his Dr Seuss vocabulary, he can present the world as a place of simplistic oppositions, stripped of nuance.

Snyder’s beautifully weighted book is the perfect clear-eyed antidote to that deliberate philistinism (“I love the poorly educated”, as Trump chillingly observed). Always measured in their observation, these 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten.

Snyder is ideally placed to distil those urgent lessons. His landmark 2010 book, Bloodlands, examined the lasting effects of the totalitarian regimes of the Third Reich and of Stalin’s Russia on the places in which they clashed most devastatingly: Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states. When he suggests “do not obey in advance” or “be calm when the unthinkable arrives” or “be wary of paramilitaries” or “make eye contact and small talk”, he deftly brings to bear all that he knows about the trajectory of tyranny and the mechanisms of resistance.

Bloodlands won Snyder the Hannah Arendt prize for political thought, and this book makes Arendt’s analysis of fascism a touchstone. Snyder reminds you, for example, that the definition of totalitarianism that Arendt offered was not the creation of an all-powerful state, but “the erasure of the difference between public and private life”. We are free, Snyder notes, “only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us and how they come to know it”.

The manner in which western populations have broadly accepted the fact of surveillance, and willingly surrendered their identities to social media, has already gone a long way to removing that dividing line between public and private. Snyder counsels extreme caution in rubbing out that distinction further. He calls for a “corporeal politics”, voting with paper ballots that can be counted and recounted; face-to-face interaction rather than email, marching not online petitioning: “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on a screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.”

In a time when authority seeks to destroy the legitimacy of facts he invokes at various points Václav Havel’s philosophy of “living in truth”, of keeping a sacred space for what you can prove to be true and for truth-tellers. Self-deception becomes first a seductive habit and then a state of mind. That progression is how tyrannies spread.

To prove this point, Snyder offers reminders, if reminders are needed, of just how quickly wave after wave of unacceptable behavior became normalized on the Trump campaign trail. How, for example, we got used to the fact that “a protester would first be greeted with boos, then with frenetic cries of ‘USA’ and then be forced to leave the rally” not by federal police but by the candidate’s private security detail. “Isn’t this more fun than a regular boring rally?” Trump asked, pushing the idea of political violence. “To me, it’s fun.”

It is salutary to be reminded that the eastern European media, and journalists from Ukraine, called the election much more accurately than the Washington press corps. They had seen this behavior up close before, and they knew where it led.

There will no doubt be those who dismiss as hysterical the parallels that Snyder draws between the path to power of the Trump administration and that of the Third Reich. He himself expresses sincere hope that the lessons in resistance he offers will either not all be needed, or that they will collectively have the desired effect of check and balance.

He gives his fellow Americans the following warning, however: “We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the last century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience…” You will read no more relevant field guide to that wisdom than this book.

Book Review by Tim Adams

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder is published by Bodley Head (£8.99). To order a copy for £7.64 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

 

 

Five Key Revelations from Bob Woodward’s New Book

 

Bob Woodward’s “War,” set to be released next week, is the author and Washington Post associate editor’s fourth book since Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016.

The new book opens the aperture to reveal how a years-long political contest between Trump and President Joe Biden — and now Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee — has unfolded against the backdrop of cascading global crisis, from the coronavirus pandemic, to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed proxies in the Middle East. At the book’s end, Woodward concludes that Biden, mistakes notwithstanding, has exhibited “steady and purposeful leadership,” while Trump has displayed recklessness and self-interest making him, in Woodward’s estimation, “unfit to lead the country.”

That determination is based on a series of key revelations. Below are some of the book’s main findings. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign issued a statement attacking the book and saying, “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true.”

1. Trump sent American-made coronavirus tests to Putin

When Trump was president in 2020, he sent coveted tests for the disease to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a crippling shortage in the United States and around the world.

As the book explains, Putin was petrified of contracting the deadly illness. He accepted the supplies but cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had shared them, concerned for the political fallout that the U.S. president would suffer.

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.

Woodward reports that Trump’s reply was: “I don’t care. Fine.”

“War” also suggests that Trump and Putin may have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021. On one occasion, this year, Trump sent an unnamed aide away from his office at his Mar-a-Lago Club so he could conduct a private phone call with Putin, according to the book.

A campaign official, Jason Miller, was evasive when Woodward asked him about the contact, eventually offering, “I have not heard that they’re talking, so I’d push back on that.”

2. Biden’s profanity-laced outbursts about Putin and Netanyahu

“War” portrays Biden as a careful and deliberate commander in chief, but combustible in private about intractable foreign leaders — especially Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden called Putin the “epitome of evil” and remarked to his advisers, about his Russian counterpart, “That f---ing Putin.”

The intelligence community believed racial animus — namely the idea that Ukrainians were a lesser people than the Russians — was a significant factor in Putin’s designs on Ukraine, as “War” explains. The book quotes Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, saying of Putin, “He is one of the most racist leaders that we have.”

Biden’s anger toward Netanyahu boiled over in the spring of 2024, Woodward reports, as Biden concluded that the Israeli prime minister’s interest was not actually in defeating Hamas but in protecting himself. “That son of a b----, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f---ing guy!” Biden reportedly told advisers.

3. Harris’s two-track approach with Netanyahu

Harris delivered high-profile remarks after a July face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu, shortly after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. She seemed to separate herself from Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza by speaking forcefully about the costs of the military campaign and pledging to “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering.

Her public tone surprised, and infuriated, Netanyahu because it marked a contrast with her more amicable approach during the private conversation the two had shared, Woodward reports. The book quotes the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael Herzog, saying: “She wants to be tough in public. But she wasn’t as tough privately.”

The episode is one of several in the book about Harris, who appears as a loyal No. 2 to Biden but hardly influential in major foreign policy decisions.

4. Frantic de-escalation in the face of possible Russian nuclear use

Woodward details some of the stunning intelligence capabilities that allowed Washington to foresee Russian plans for an all-out war against Ukraine in early 2022, including a human source inside the Kremlin.

This insight, however, got the Biden administration only so far as it sought to foreclose Russia’s nuclear option. In the fall of 2022, that option seemed like a live one, as U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Putin was seriously weighing use of a tactical nuclear weapon — at one point, assessing the likelihood at 50 percent.

An especially frantic quest to bring Moscow back from the brink came in October of that year, when Russia appeared to be laying the groundwork for escalation by accusing Ukraine of preparing to detonate a dirty bomb. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flatly denied Russia’s accusations in a phone call with the Kremlin’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, instructed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team to summon the International Atomic Energy Agency to absolve themselves immediately. And Biden called out Russia’s apparent scheme publicly while privately leaning on Chinese President Xi Jinping to emphasize to Putin the dire consequences of nuclear use.

5. The pervasive influence of the Saudi crown prince

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known by his initials MBS, is not a major figure in the book but looms large at critical junctures, with key assessments of him delivered by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Mohammed, currently the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, matters greatly as the de facto ruler of the Arab world’s wealthiest country. He cultivated close ties to Trump, who made Riyadh his first foreign stop as president. So, too, he has been crucial to matters of significant interest to Biden, especially oil supplies and the prospects of normalized relations with Israel.

Woodward summarized Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s perception of the crown prince this way: “MBS was nothing more than a spoiled child.”

One of the Saudi royal’s important interlocutors has been Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.). The Republican senator kept Biden’s aides apprised of Mohammed’s perspective on the possible normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, according to Woodward, and also kept the gulf leader in communication with Trump. During a March visit to Saudi Arabia recounted in the book, Graham proposes to the crown prince that they call the Republican presidential candidate. Mohammed proceeds to conduct the conversation over speakerphone.

On an earlier trip, Graham had asked the crown prince to contact Sullivan, so the senator could inform them both about a discussion with Netanyahu.

“Hey, I’m here with Lindsey,” the Saudi royal reportedly announced to Sullivan over the phone.

 -Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post

The Introduction from Thom Hartmann's New Book: "The Hidden History of the American Dream: The Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future"

 

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Introduction: We failed to stop them

Back in the 1980s a lot of us worked like hell to try to stop the Reagan Revolution. We failed. Which is why the next few years may be our last chance to save American democracy, our environment, and what’s left of the American Dream.

When my Boomer generation was the same average age as the Millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth.[i] Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta.

Our own locally owned business, a home of our own, and the knowledge that our kids would have more opportunities than we did: that was, in fact, one common way of defining the “American dream.” It was normal then.

My dad (born 1928), who worked in a tool-and-die shop, was able to buy a house, a new car every two years, and take a two-week vacation every year because the middle class in America before Reagan had a pretty damn good life. He retired in the 1990s with a full pension that let him and my mom travel the world. He was living the American Dream.

Millennials today, by contrast, are roughly the same number of people as Boomers were in 1990 but hold only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and, if they’re the same age I was in 1990, they’re most likely struggling to own a home, are deeply in debt, and find it nearly impossible to start a small business.[ii]

Yes, you read that right. Boomers in their 30s owned 21.3 of the nation’s wealth; Millennials in their 30s today own 4.6% of the nation’s wealth.

And the story for Zoomers — those born in the late ‘90s and early oughts — is pretty much the same. As a Bank of America research report noted:

“Like the financial crisis in 2008 to 2009 for millennials, Covid will challenge and impede Gen Z's career and earning potential.”[iii]

Similarly, a Stanford University study that looked at Zoomers shows the consequence of Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic:

“[C]ollege graduates who start their working lives during a recession earn less for at least 10 to 15 years than those who graduate during periods of prosperity.”[iv]

What happened?  In a word, Republicans.

We Boomers remember well the Reagan Revolution of 1981, which laid the foundation for billionaires and giant corporations to impoverish the X, Millennial, and Zoomer generations.

First, GOP fat-cats came for our wages.

Those first two decades of the Reagan Revolution saw the first major attack on workers’ wages since Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the National Labor Relations Act, which gave union members legal protection from physical and economic violence, way back in 1935.

In 1990, the end of the first decade when millennials were coming into the world, Republicans were still just getting started: 56% of workers who applied for union representation got their union.[v]

That wasn’t as good as during my dad’s generation — 80% of workers got a union when they petitioned for one in the 1940s — but it was still a far cry from what Millennials and Zoomers are facing today as giant trillion-dollar corporations employ the billion-dollar union-busting industry (that didn’t exist in 1980) to keep them from having democracy in the workplace.[vi]

In large part this is because “right to work for less” laws — that allow employers to gut their unions — began spreading in a big way in the 1980s and 1990s after several employer-friendly 5-4 decisions by Republicans on the Supreme Court. The notorious Taft-Hartley law that gave states the legal ability to destroy union rights was passed with Republican votes over President Harry Truman’s veto in 1947, but the anti-union National Right To Work Committee wasn’t formed until 1995.

In every single case, anti-worker right-to-work-for-less laws have been passed in states controlled by Republicans at the time of passage; Democrats fought these anti-worker laws from the beginning and continue to do so.

Nonetheless, employers have big bucks and can buy a lot of elections, judges, and politicians: what started as a trickle in the 1950s has turned into a flood since Reagan’s presidency.  Today right-to-work-for-less states include Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.[vii]

Then they came for your right to an education. 

Before Reagan became governor of California, the entire University of California system was free. Reagan did away with that as governor, and then, as president, began the methodical process of eliminating federal and state support for tuition, saying he didn’t want to “sponsor the intellectual curiosity” of “brats” who “protest my policies.”[viii]

I went to college — briefly — in the late 1960s and the only person I knew who had college debt was a friend working on his graduate degree at MSU. I paid my tuition working part-time jobs as a dishwasher at Bob’s Big Boy on Trowbridge Road in East Lansing and changing tires and pumping gas at the Esso station across the street.

My mom paid her own way through 4 years of MSU in the 1940s with the money she made as a summer lifeguard up in her hometown of Charlevoix, Michigan. My dad, like most men of his generation, was paid a monthly stipend to go to college by the GI Bill.[ix]

Now, Republicans have not only changed the bankruptcy laws so that you are no longer “cleared“ after seven years like it was when I was coming up, but you can’t even discharge student loans in bankruptcy. This was arguably one of the largest gifts the GOP ever gave the banking industry’s billionaires.

After that, they went after entrepreneurs and local businesses.

I dropped out of college in part because the small business Louise and I had started in 1969 — an electronics repair shop across the street from MSU — had grown to five employees and I was making as much money as my dad.

Back then pretty much every business in East Lansing was locally owned, from the restaurants and hotels to the furniture and clothing stores and appliance shops. The only chain store I remember was the Sears that anchored the local mall; almost all of the rest of the stores in that mall were locally owned.

But then, in 1983, President Reagan ordered the federal government to stop enforcing the anti-trust laws that had been on the books for almost 100 years; the resulting “merger mania” consumed the American economy, with “M&A Artists” (Mergers & Acquisitions) and speculative banksters, like the one Michael Douglas played in Wall Street, were ascendant.

Buying up small businesses and crushing them together into giant conglomerates, shedding “excess employees” and employing “economies of scale” were the main ways to make money, instead of serving customers and local communities. The bean counters took over.

Now their absolute market dominance and greed are driving inflation, as the normal competitive pressures that keep such behavior in check are dead. Which is why they can enthusiastically squash new, upstart businesses — from tech to retail to consumer goods — like bugs.

Thus, the chances of people today being able to successfully start a business like we did are tiny compared to what they were before the Reagan Revolution, when tens of millions of Americans owned small enterprises that they would often hand down from generation to generation.

Then they started squeezing American workers for cash when they got sick or injured.

Medical debt is another burden that came out of the Reagan Revolution that destroys millions of American families a year: for half-a-million families every year it’s so severe they have to give up their homes and possessions to declare bankruptcy.

America is the only country in the world that experiences medical bankruptcies like this.

When Louise and I started that electronics shop (as teenagers!), we were able to provide all of our employees with full medical insurance because, at that time, both insurance companies and hospitals were required by law (in Michigan and most other states) to be non-profits.

Drug companies weren’t monopolistic monoliths — it was an incredibly competitive industry — and pharmaceutical prices were reasonable, too. The country wouldn’t have tolerated asses like “Pharma Bro” back in the 1960s and 1970s and insulin, which only costs pennies to make, was dirt cheap.

But the neoliberal Reagan Revolution did away with all that, encouraging states to change their laws to bring “free market principles” to healthcare, ending nonprofit requirements for hospitals and insurance companies. There was, after all, big money to be made, and when somebody is sick and you hold the cure, you have the ultimate power to extract every last penny they have. 

As The New York Times noted in an article titled Medical Mystery: Something Happened to U.S. Health Spending After 1980:

“America was in the realm of other countries in per-capita health spending through about 1980. Then it diverged.[x]

“It’s the same story with health spending as a fraction of gross domestic product. Likewise, life expectancy. In 1980, the U.S. was right in the middle of the pack of peer nations in life expectancy at birth. But by the mid-2000s, we were at the bottom of the pack.”

Not only did the parasites get rich, but our nation’s life expectancy actually went down, relative to other wealthy nations.

Now, as the Kaiser Family Foundation reports:

“We find that 23 million people (nearly 1 in 10 adults) owe significant medical debt. The SIPP survey suggests people in the United States owe at least $195 billion in medical debt.”[xi]

And if the GOP didn’t nail millennials and Zoomers on any of the above, they figured out how to go after their need for a roof over their heads.

In the 1990s, as part of Newt Gingrich’s notorious “Contract With America,” Congress “deregulated” the financial industry to the point that it’s become a giant blood-sucking leech attached to your backs.

Thus, Millennials and Zoomers are struggling with housing costs today, and for good reason. Trillion-dollar hedge funds and investment groups are purchasing as many as half (in some towns more) of the available-for-sale housing, so they can turn them into rentals and then, when they’ve cornered the market, jack up the prices.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income.[xii]  Today, the Fed says, the median house sells for $374,900 while the median American income is $35,805 — a ratio of more than ten-to-one between housing costs and annual income.[xiii] [xiv]

Louise and I bought our first home in our mid-twenties, as did many of our friends.  Banks were locally owned and worked with you; finding fixer-uppers was easy.

No more.

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.”[xv]

It’s a fancy way of saying that big banks and hedge funds are now worth trillions while you and your community are destitute.

And forget about getting a loan to start a small business in this big-bank environment of today.

When Louise and I started our first business, we did it with a $3000 loan from a small local Michigan bank.  Back then bankers were part of the local community and eager to do what they could to help the community grow and prosper, including lending a 19-year-old money to start a business.

Nowadays they just want to extract every penny they can from you so their CEO can buy another megayacht.

And then Republicans came for our wealth, in a huge way.

Finally, perhaps the most important of the reasons Millennials and Zoomers are so badly screwed these days are the various changes in our tax code that began in the 1980s.

Reagan dropped the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 27%, and cut corporate tax rates from 52% to functionally nothing.

America’s richest millennial, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, now owns fully 2 percent or 1/50th of ALL the wealth of ALL millennials in the country.[xvi]

The average billionaire pays an income tax rate of under 3%, and the majority of our nation’s largest corporations not only pay nothing in annual income taxes, but most have so gamed the system that they get money back.

And where does that money come from?  It’s taken out of the taxes the government collected from you and me.

This 42-year-long process, with Reagan’s original massive tax cuts amplified by trillions more in tax cuts for the morbidly rich from the Republican George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, has produced a $50 trillion transfer of real wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent.

You read that right: they’ve taken $50 friggin trillion dollars out of our pockets over the past 42 years and stashed it in their money bins.[xvii] 

When Reagan was elected there were only eight billionaires in America; now they’re appearing like popcorn, while all around us homelessness continues to spread, as Reaganomics destroys the lives of millions of Americans — particularly Millennials and Zoomers.[xviii]

That is why Americans, and particularly Millennials and Zoomers, have been had by the GOP.

And now that Republicans have handed all that money over to the top 1% — and five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in their 2010 Citizens United decision that billionaires and corporations owning politicians isn’t corruption or bribery but “free speech” — it’s getting harder and harder to do anything about it.

Every time any sort of reform — even modest, reasonable reforms — come before Congress, a united block of Republicans in the Senate haul in another billion dollars in campaign contributions and Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his friends kill it with the filibuster.

And don’t get me started on climate change, which Republicans, right across-the-board, continue to deny, in deference to the fossil fuel industry and its billionaires who fund their elections. The GOP has put money and power above the fate and future of our and our children’s planet.

They even tried to end our 240-year experiment in democratic self-governance, and are now actively embracing neofascist autocracy, openly trying to emulate the rightwing strongman governments that have taken over Russia and Hungary.

Like the far-right did in Russia and Hungary, Republicans have succeeded in overturning the right to abortion in the states they control and are openly embracing homophobia and misogyny.

And did I mention over 400 million guns drenching our country in blood, and Republican Senator John Cornyn recently saying that Republicans are unified across-the-board to prevent any further action to stop gun violence in America?

And now, Republicans are trying to indoctrinate our children in their white supremacy and racism by forcing teachers to push a false narrative about American history — all while they try to rig our elections by purging millions of minority, Millennial, and Zoomer voters from the rolls with the 2018 blessing of five Republicans on a corrupted Supreme Court.

The good news, however, is that, increasingly, older and younger generations are working together to throw Republicans out of office and elect progressive Democrats who understand these issues and know how to do something about it. 

From 80-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders to 25-year-old progressive Democrat Maxwell Frost of Florida who won a House seat in 2022, progressives are growing in political power at the same time America is waking up from the fog of BS Republicans have been crop-dusting over us since 1981.

All is not lost; change is in the air. And Millennials and Zoomers are leading the way.

---

[i] https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/08/11/millennials-are-the-largest-workforce-and-the-least-wealthy-why-politics/

[ii] ibid

[iii] https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-class-2020-graduates-future-career-recession-2020-5

[iv] https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recession-graduates-long-lasting-effects-unlucky-draw

[v] https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/publications/private-sector-unions-corporate-legal-erosion/

[vi] ibid

[vii] https://www.nrtw.org/right-to-work-states/

[viii] https://hartmannreport.com/p/forgiving-student-debt-isnt-giving

[ix] ibid

[x] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/upshot/medical-mystery-health-spending-1980.html

[xi] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/

[xii] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/why-housing-appreciation-is-killing-housing/

[xiii] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

[xiv]  https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[xv] https://www.bis.org/publ/work468.pdf

[xvi] https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/08/11/millennials-are-the-largest-workforce-and-the-least-wealthy-why-politics/

[xvii] https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/

[xviii] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/video-the-other-millennials

 

"We must undertake constitutional and electoral reforms in America" -Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

 

1.      Uphold the right to vote: pass a constitutional amendment establishing a right to vote for all citizens, which would provide a solid basis to litigate voting restrictions.

2.      Establish automatic registration in which all citizens are registered to vote when they turn eighteen.

3.      Expand early voting and easy mail-in voting options for citizens of all states.

4.      Make Election Day on a Sunday or a national holiday so that work responsibilities do not discourage Americans from voting.

5.      Restore voting rights without additional fines or fees to all ex-felons who have served their time.

6.      Restore national-level voting rights and protections. In the spirit of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, parts of which the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

7.      Replace the current system of partisan electoral administration with one in which the state and local electoral administration is in the hands of professional, nonpartisan officials.

8.      Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote. No other presidential democracy permits the loser of the popular vote to win the presidency.

9.      Reform the Senate so that the number of senators elected per state is more proportional to the population of each state.

10.  Replace “first-past-the-post” electoral rules and single-member districts for the House of Representatives and state legislatures with a form of proportional representation in which voters elect multiple representatives from larger electoral districts and parties win seats in proportion to the share of the vote they win.

11.  Eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

12.  Update the Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the House of Representatives at 435, and return to the original design of a House that expands in line with population growth.

13.  Abolish the Senate filibuster, a reform that requires neither statutory nor constitutional change, thereby eliminating the ability of partisan minorities to repeatedly and permanently thwart legislative majorities. In no other established democracy is such a minority veto routinely employed.

14.  Establish term limits for Supreme Court justices to regularize the Supreme Court appointment process so that every president  has the same number of appointments per term.

15.  Make it easier to amend the Constitution by eliminating the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify any proposed amendment.

These reforms would have a simple yet powerful effect: they would allow majorities  to win power and govern. Not only would these proposed reforms help stave off minority rule, but they would also eliminate constitutional protectionism, unleashing the competitive dynamics of democracy.

 

Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die: The Tyranny of the Minority. New York: Crown Publishing Group. 2023: 230-37.

Hum If You Can't Sing (a Book of Poems) by Glen Brown

 

“In poems that are often meditative, humorous, philosophical, speculative, Glen Brown’s Hum If You Can’t Sing revisits all sorts of narratives—mythic allegories, fairy tales, news stories that boggle the mind, family histories—all in the service of blurring the edges between what is strange and surreal and what is domestically habitual. Here are poems that show us Snow White as a harassed housewife, or Sleeping Beauty surrounded by modern day condos and a Prince who is existentially troubled by his circumstance. But here are poems as well that acknowledge how our diurnal lives can be fraught with tempestuous and epical emotions, how family migrations can have a legendary cast to them, how boys playing stickball on city streets may remind us of more Olympian competitions. In this fine melding of the extraordinary with an everydayness, the improbable with the commonplace, the poems show us how our lives can seem more expansive and astonishing, how they might attain, finally, a level of wonder.”  

—Gregory Djanikian      

“Hum If You Can't Sing is so verbally playful and so invitingly aware of its clear occasions for poetry that it reminds us of how a delight in language so often rhymes with a delight in life. And as the title suggests, all of us, no matter what our aptitude for singing, can join in Glen Brown's delightful chorus.” 

—Michael Collier     

“Through his playful wit and deft use of language and line breaks, Glen Brown’s exquisite collection of poetry breathes new life into some familiar tales. With a poetic sleight of hand his work offers a singular insight into human nature and into the beautiful nature of language itself.”  

—Jen Christensen

It's available on Amazon: ISBN: 978-1-7372855-9-5 (paperback)

https://www.amazon.com/Hum-If-You-Cant-Sing-ebook/dp/B0BWPHHSNQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3W0S87ENDECOU&keywords=hum+if+you+can%27t+sing+by+glen+brown&qid=1677338555&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1

It's also available at Barnes & Noble: ISBN: 978-1-7372855-8-8 (hardcover)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hum-if-you-cant-sing-glen-brown/1143131918?ean=9781737285588&fbclid=IwAR3q455crK0yTn7CTBMqGiZms08OcS-YFMxFYiRI2l3uvFN6AadxyEi7zMo

Amazon Reviews:

A Joy to Read:

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2024

Glen Brown’s humbling collection of personal poems, Hum If You Cannot Sing, is a joy to contemplate, again and again. His verses are a fun and flawless reminder of the riotous carnival of our lives: past and present. Bizarre historical oddities are often summoned in a surreal séance of the bygone and notorious quite off the spectrum(?) of human behaviors; not to mention, the life of a Chicago child growing and erupting into corporeal and mindful enlightenment; and constantly fresh reminders of who and what we all are in this parade of emotional souls. If you seek you’ll find yourself and all the others of us in this fun, dreamlike and image-perfect sideshow in a magical collection of verse. Enjoy! -John Dillon

Must-Read Poetry Collection:

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2024

We should all take Glen Brown's advice and "hum if we can't sing" while breaking into song and dance "at every conflict in life." Wouldn't the world be a better place? This eclectic mix of poetry hooked me from the first page and took me through an amazing journey where Brown showcases his mastery and love of poetry. Metaphorical fairy and folk tales, hilarious interpretations of popular news stories of the weird, reflections of family, profound social commentary, memories of growing up in and around Chicago in the 1950's and 1960's are all included. I have read the book three times now, and I'll be sure to go back to it many more times in the future. -DJM

Full of insight and beauty

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2023

I don't know how many people buy books of poetry. I sure didn't for a long time. I was under the impression that poetry was a complex undertaking, full of strict rhyme schemes, esoteric culture and impenetrable philosophy. Turns out I was wrong- poetry can be the very opposite of all that. It can be simple, delightful, accessible and understandable. In Hum If You Can't Sing, Glen Brown shares with us a collection of poetry that is inviting and enjoyable but still rich with insight and clever turns of phrase.

The stories told here are both universal and deeply personal. They are full of fairytale heroes and modern scenes, with stories either large enough to fill a newspaper front page or otherwise small enough to fit into a quiet afternoon. Glen is a master of juxtaposition, creating the new from the familiar, mixing joy with sadness, frustration with humor, in equal measure. So read it, without reservation. There are no rules to the dance. Read if you can't write. Hum if you can't sing. -Nick Vovos

Delightful

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2023

I'm a retired high school English teacher and know of Glen through his pension writings. Intrigued by those, I purchased HUM IF YOU CAN'T SING. This will be a simplistic review because I can summarize in a few words: These poems are my life. Section III reminds me of my childhood - Royal Blue where we bought our penny candy, neighborhood baseball games, my pet squirrels, our unlocked house, my name. I, too, have an obsession for chocolate; I stash it in the garage refrigerator and hide it in my drawer. I enjoyed the connections to politicians, film, fashion, literature and toys in section I. I know all too well the questions, the pain, and the deaths that surround surgery.

"Without Pomp and Circumstance" echoes my exact feelings. But I have to admit my favorite is "Keeping a Net beneath Them." I taught composition and honors classes, but I also taught special ed/remedial classes. There was nothing I liked more than seeing the "I get it" look cross a student's face. That is what I miss most about teaching. I know this is a collection I will read many times as it is as personal to me as it is to Glen, and I thank him for that. -Robin Cederblad

A powerful collection of poems . . .

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2023

This collection of poems by Glen Brown is powerful. Brown took me through a life's joys and sorrows, with grace, skill, and irony. I like his style, casual and elegant at the same time. I flew from one poem to the next, unable to put down this book . . . and in an hour, Glen Brown had taken me on a wonderful journey. Each poem is a beautiful surprise. This is one of the best books of poems I've read in a long time. I recommend it to anyone with imagination and an open heart. -Bob Borta

A compelling collection of vivid, insightful, and personal poetry

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2023

I've read many individual poems, but not many poetry collections. I read this one in a single sitting, which I rarely do with any book nowadays.

The imagery is vivid, well-crafted, and compelling. I found myself experiencing many glimpses of life moments both real and imagined. A childhood baseball game; a soldier in the jungle; couples engaged in heated arguments or conjugal bliss; a tragic death; a child playing in the snow. The broad range of people and experiences covered within and among these poems offers an insightful glimpse into the human condition. The tone ranges from serious to humorous, heartwarming to despairing, always with an eye to the humanity of the people and the poignant power of the experience.

This book also demonstrates the merits of a poetry collection. Taken individually, most of these poems would serve as excellent reads in their own right. However, including them in a shared collection creates space for the emergence of recurring themes and arcs that would be lacking when the poems are read individually. On a good day, a poetry collection is to poems what an album is to songs -- and this poetry collection is having a good day.

I definitely recommend this collection for anyone who enjoys reading and is currently experiencing the human condition. Whether or not you relate to the specific memories and experiences described therein, you will find poems and verses that speak to you. -Treesong (Justin O’Neill)

A masterful poet.

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2023

Glen Brown's poems are a revelation. They are keen observations on the human condition. He writes of families and philosophy, unusual answers to surprising questions, Barbie dolls and baseball bats. There's just a lot packed into 100 pages. -Fred Klonsky

Witty, Personal and Thoughtful

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2023

This was written by my most influential teacher from High School. This was my initial reason to purchase the book. I am so glad I did; it is full of insightful and inspiring words. I highly recommend this book. -Karen Rice-Heidewald

Beautiful:

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2023

Glen Brown has written a beautiful collection of poems that are approachable, emotive, nostalgic and universal. His stories resonate with my own life experiences, and I felt for the narrator in several. Thank you Glen for sharing this gift with the world.-Mike Magluilo

Variety of Poems, All Well Written!

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2023

Whether you are an avid poetry reader, only occasional, or anywhere in between, Hum If You Can’t Sing was written for you. Some of the poems are playful, others much more serious, and all came to life as they brought me to another time or place. A wonderful book to pick up time and time again. -Bekah

Poetry that speaks to the human condition in an intellectually and emotionally playful manner

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 17, 2023

Hum If You Can't Sing, is a great collection of poetry from a long-time friend, and former teacher, of mine. Since I purchased this book, it has not left my desk. I like to open it to a random page and to see what Glen has to say to me on that occasion. His sense of humor and social justice, as well as his awareness of history are played off against the sometimes-arbitrary nature of human existence. No matter where I turn in this treasure it gives me something I value. Hum let's me check in with my friend whenever I need it. -Al Rago

 Writing that touches you in body, heart and soul

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2023

From the title poem, through the landscape of Chicago through the years , to the metaphors of fairy tales, to his personal experiences, Glen Brown takes one on an inner journey with his poignant and beautiful poems. Glen covers so many ages and places and relationships throughout his book that there is something there to touch everyone. Growing up in Chicago, I had a deep appreciation for the references that touched my young adulthood there, but you don’t need to know them to connect with these poems. Yet, “Hum If You Can’t Sing” and “Birth of an Angel” are the most gorgeous among these. I can see myself dancing through “Hum,” and laying in the snow flapping my arms in “Birth of an Angel,” giving one body sensations of the words. This is when poetry touches me most deeply. Don’t miss this remarkable book of poems! -Jann, Signal Mtn. Tennessee

Pitch Perfect

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2023

Just as the title suggests, "Hum if You Can’t Sing" unconditionally invites the reader into poetry with no expectations or prerequisites. Glen Brown is a masterful wordsmith in this eclectic and engaging collection of work. He challenges societal constructs and teases conventional wisdom, captivating our curiosity and encouraging us to use our own voice, however out of tune. -Johnny Alletto

 Superb Book of Poetry

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2023

“Prose – words in their best order; poetry – the best words in their best order.”
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1827

The poetry of Glen Brown brings us the 2023 examples of this definition in his latest collection, Hum If You Can't Sing. The scope of his poetry ranges from well-articulated silliness to philosophical insights, all the while respecting a reader's intelligence. He never talks down to a reader; he never drowns a reader in obscurity. He chooses to be like the porridge that Goldilocks eats – just right. He writes of playing in the streets as a child, to revisiting Rapunzel, and of coming to terms with our ultimate end. Yes, simply read, alertly reread, and thoroughly savor his poetry. You will be amply rewarded for your journey. - Ken and Mary Lou Previti

Powerful and Thought provoking

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2023

Powerful, sensitive, thought-provoking, delightful! Creativity at its best! HUM IF YOU CAN’T SING is a keeper! Thank you, Glen Brown! -Sharon Jakubka.

On Messenger:

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2023

Got your book today. Preparing for an afternoon read. Thank You. I like the way you use “history” to set up your voice to follow. I’m a bitch with content. So I’m gonna disengage and enter with a clean slate to see where you take me… March 22: Been reading your work a coupla times… enjoy the plain story voice and the “headline setups” for the poems to follow… March 29: Glen/Poet: Clean lines that take us somewhere/ a triad of voices that blend into one. An enjoyable read of your history and those you admire or analyze. It’d be fun to do a dual reading… -Terry Jacobus

Plagiarize his book:

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2024

You’ll sound witty to your friends and maybe win over the target of your affection. You’ll laugh reading these poems if you are the type. You’ll cry if you’re more that type. While many writers aspire to have a way with words, Brown has his way with them. He threads together relatable fibers of everyday life into a tapestry commemorative of the human experience. Remarkable work. -Jeff Price

Hum If You Can't Sing:

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2025

“Let me say how much I admire what you’ve built over a lifetime. You bring a rare convergence of disciplines: teacher, philosopher, poet, musician and it shows in the way Hum If You Can’t Sing moves so effortlessly between the mythic and the domestic, the speculative and the familiar. Your poems don’t announce themselves loudly; they invite readers into a space of reflection, wit, and wonder. That kind of writing lasts.” -Fiona Benedict