BY RICHARD C. GROSS “’Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.” — Shakespeare, Gloucester in King Lear There are times of calm and times of change and upheaval, once wrote the German-Swiss psychiatrist-philosopher Karl Jaspers. “Ours is clearly an age of upheaval,” wrote Jerome Roos, a Fellow at…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Trump is a national disgrace and an international pariah.” — Colin Powell (1937–2021), secretary of state (2001–2005), Joint Chiefs chairman (1989–1993) Got him! Maybe. To get him good, New York state could link the bookkeeping fraud charges to state tax laws to make the case before…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.” — Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist, essayist, 1817–1862, Walden If you think you’re woke, not to fret. It’s not something bad. The right-wing appropriated the leftist word just to mouth…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “In a democracy, you believe it or not. In a dictatorship, you believe it or else.” — Evan Esar, American humorist, 1899–1995 When I picked up my grandson from school one recent afternoon, he told me excitedly in the car that he learned that day about…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” — George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher, 1863–1952 We in the West watch the slaughter in Eastern Europe as if it were a football game, rooting for an underdog team as it courageously stands up to a stronger adversary. …

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Yes, how many times will it take ’til he knows That too many people have died.” — Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” 1963 President Joe Biden needs to start saying no to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But it’s not easy and it’s complicated. The adversaries…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Without the truth of the people, politics degenerates into mere spectacle and democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void.” — Jerry Brown, Democratic California governor, 1975–1983 and 2011–2019 Rightwing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is overturning every liberal rock in his state of Florida…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “If you want to get along, go along” — Sam Rayburn, 1882–1961, three-time Democratic House speaker If there’s a symbol of the Republican Party today, it’s heralded replicant Rep. George Santos of New York, known resume creator. If that, indeed, is his real name. He’s right…

BY RICHARD C. GROSS “Two souls live in me, alas, Irreconcilable with one another.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Faust,” 1808, 1832 Republican Kevin McCarthy of California sold his soul and the House of Representatives to the Devil of Congress, the juvenile far-right flank of his party, in exchange for…