History/Archeology Archives - Attention to the Unseen

Memphis on the frontline in the GOP assault on voting rights

From elsewhere — Thu, 21 May 2026 00:45:00 +0000

States across the South are being accused of a major assault on Black voting rights, as their Republican leaders race to redraw political maps ahead of the midterm elections. It’s the first time in decades they’ve been able to erase Black majority districts after a Supreme Court ruling last month ripped up the historic Voting Rights Act. And the orders to redistrict have come from President Trump himself. He was celebrating today after some success in the primaries for...

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Trump shows his contempt for America and the rule of law by creating a 1776 slush fund

From elsewhere — Tue, 19 May 2026 02:31:41 +0000

David Gardner writes: It is a sick joke on America’s history that Donald Trump chose the amount of $1.776 billion to bilk from taxpayers to pay his MAGA friends. He has already picked a sport with a fragile hold on the rules—UFC—to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary with a cage fight at the White House on June 14. Now the president is using 1776—the year the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain—to frame an unprecedented challenge to the U.S....

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A super El Niño killed millions of people in 1877. Are we better prepared now?

From elsewhere — Sat, 16 May 2026 01:31:16 +0000

The Washington Post reports: As chances rise for one of the strongest El Niño events on record later this year, the potential for dangerous conditions has prompted comparisons to 1877, when such an event drove catastrophe around the globe. El Niño is a warming of ocean waters in the east-central tropical Pacific that develops every few years. This year, ocean temperatures there could surge 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average and break records. The climatic shift devastated crops...

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Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

From elsewhere — Tue, 12 May 2026 23:47:04 +0000

The New York Times reports: When President Trump visited China in late 2017, Xi Jinping welcomed him with a grand display of Chinese history and culture: a four-hour private tour of the Forbidden City culminating in a performance by the Peking Opera. Eight years, a pandemic and two trade wars later, Mr. Trump is returning to Beijing, where the theme of future dominance, not ancient majesty, has filled domestic and international headlines with articles about dancing robots, drone swarms and...

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The U.S. can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing the war against Iran

From elsewhere — Mon, 11 May 2026 00:07:47 +0000

Robert Kagan writes: It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the...

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An erudite account of the foundation of Israel and its subsequent moral and political decline

From elsewhere — Mon, 11 May 2026 00:06:55 +0000

Avi Shlaim writes: Israel’s attack on Iran is only the most recent example of its degeneration in recent decades, coming on top of its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, genocide in Gaza, invasion of Syria and relentless bombardment of Lebanon. The fact that the US joined in this illegal war confirmed to many in the region what they have long suspected: that the country is an outpost of western imperialism in the Middle...

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Thoreau the scientist – how environmental research informed ‘Walden’ and later works

From elsewhere — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:31:15 +0000

Henry David Thoreau investigated the Sudbury River as America’s first river scientist. Robert M. Thorson By Robert M. Thorson, University of Connecticut The steam locomotive chugged its way toward Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Aug. 15, 1859. On board was an impatient young scientist wanting to understand the math and science governing how river channels should behave. After disembarking at Harvard College and searching the stacks of its library, Henry David Thoreau checked out “Principes D’Hydraulique,” a three-volume tome of hydraulic engineering....

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John Roberts believes in an America that doesn’t exist

From elsewhere — Thu, 07 May 2026 01:14:49 +0000

Jamelle Bouie writes: Descriptive representation, as it is known, is not perfect; race alone does not guarantee that a lawmaker will act in the interest of his or her community. But the record suggests that in places where racial polarization is the norm, where the legacy of Jim Crow segregation shapes the political and social landscape, the opportunity provided by a majority-minority district can mean the difference between some representation and none at all. For the Roberts court, however, these...

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Trump’s Washington redesign is a betrayal of America’s founding values

From elsewhere — Mon, 04 May 2026 01:25:55 +0000

Nikki McCann Ramirez writes: On Valentines Day in 1962, millions of Americans tuned in for a never before televised event: a tour of the White House. A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy would go on to be viewed by a global audience of over 80 million in its initial airing. The black and white documentary was syndicated in over 50 countries, including the Soviet Union, and was a transformational use of American soft power through...

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The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

From elsewhere — Fri, 01 May 2026 00:48:17 +0000

Adam Serwer writes: For the conservative editor and columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick, the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was an atrocity. Brown v. Board of Education, he wrote in the 1950s, was a “revolutionary act by a judicial junta which simply seized power.” He warned in 1963 that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would destroy “the whole basis of individual liberty.” And in a 1965 National Review cover story, he argued that in order to “give...

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