Mark R. Stoneman

  Social Criticism

Nov 7, 2024 ∞

“Easy to Be Hard” by Three Dog Night (1969) 🎵

Dec 27, 2022 ∞

Choices

Many conservatives and liberals share an ableist worldview that says getting COVID is now a matter of individual responsibility. Entering society to earn a living, visiting loved ones, buying food, and seeing the doctor are all optional activities, our free choice. We can choose to move about a society that couldn’t care less if we live or die, as long as we do so quietly, without complaint, or we can choose to wilt and die alone.

Jul 14, 2021 ∞

American Sociopathy

In the United States in the year 2021, you, as an American citizen, do not necessarily have the right to vote.

You do not necessarily have the right to teach or to learn about matters of race, gender or anything else state lawmakers consider “divisive concepts.”

But you do have one absolute, sacrosanct, inviolate, God-given, self-evident and inalienable right: the right to refuse a coronavirus vaccine — and to infect as many people as you can.

— Dana Milbank, Washington Post

Sep 28, 2020 ∞

Depression in Two Senses of the Word



Shot in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, in 1934. Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013647257.

Feb 19, 2020 ∞

Migrant Girl in the Dust Bowl



"Migrant worker looking through back window of automobile near Prague, Oklahoma. Lincoln County, Oklahoma," 1939. Repository: The New York Public Library.

Jul 22, 2009 ∞

Life Imitating Stereotypes

Monday afternoon outside the Fairfax/Vienna/GMU Metro station there were two young women with signs about health care. Today there was an older guy, maybe retired, working class with an old Virginia look to him. The young women were supporting health care reform, and he was against it. Sometimes life imitates our cultural, social, and political stereotypes.