On Friday, in an email to a journalist with whom I had been discussing the murder of five policemen in Dallas, I repeated a point I had been making since Dallas to various friends in private conversations and on Facebook: We’re going to be seeing more [anti-police] violence. The combination of returning military vets, with real training (and in some, perhaps many, cases, PTSD); the widespread availability of firearms; and the persistence of the fundamental grievance at the heart of all of this: it’s a witches’ brew. On top of that, I just have to believe there are some groups out there — less the lone wolves, more little groups — who are asking themselves these very questions [about the legitimacy […]

I wonder how Prometheus came to be championed by the left. At least in Aeschylus’s hands (there are other versions of the story, but I think Aeschylus’s was the most well known), he’s a more ambivalent figure, politically speaking, than the one we’ve come to know on the left. Yes, he sides with the insurgent Zeus against the the old order of the Titans, even though he is a Titan himself, but he comes to regret that. And not just because Zeus turns on him but also because, as the Chorus keeps repeating, insurgent power is always crueler than its predecessor, ancient power has more majesty. Part of the backdrop to the story is that Prometheus made a mistake: not […]