Tag Archives: Bertolt Brecht

Will Trump Pay? Literature Is Unsure

By Robin Bates | Published: February 21, 2021

Will Trump escape all accountability? Literature weighs in.

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Brecht on Trumpian Democracy Attacks

By Robin Bates | Published: December 15, 2020

Brecht has the perfect poem for Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

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Wanted: Teachers, Not Martyrs

By Robin Bates | Published: August 8, 2020

Some say teachers should, like soldiers, should put their lives on the line. This A.E. Housman poem brings up the question of whether even soldiers should do so when there sacrifice will be meaningless.

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The Real Face of Patriotism

By Robin Bates | Published: January 22, 2020

When William McRaven asked, out of sympathy with John Brennan, that his own security clearance be withdrawn, he behaved like Brecht’s poet in “Burning of the Books.”

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Brecht on the Rejection of Refugees

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2019

 Thursday As some Americans harden their hearts against Central American immigrants, shrugging off the 2600+ children who have been separated from their parents, the six children who have died in (or immediately following) border patrol custody, and the cages in which people have been housed, we would do well to remember how in 1942 America […]

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The Danger of Normalizing Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: May 2, 2019

Friday Recently the Washington Post reported that Trump just told his ten thousandth lie, a fact that barely raised eyebrows since we have become inured to his incessant falsehoods. Bertolt Brecht describes the normalization process in “When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain.” Imagine that you’re hearing the 10,000th lie for the first time–which is to […]

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A Poem for International Workers’ Day

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2019

Wednesday – May 1 Despite incessant GOP attacks on unions with their Orwellian-named “right to work laws,” increasing income inequality may push Democrats to aggressively push for more actual workers’ rights. I was struck that Joe Biden, in announcing his presidential bid, said he was “sick of this President badmouthing unions.” Later he tweeted, “Labor […]

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Brecht’s Warning for Democracies

By Robin Bates | Published: December 17, 2018

Monday In an important debut article for the Atlantic, former New Yorker writer George Packer mentions a Bertolt Brecht poem to illustrate the threat that the GOP currently poses to democracy. The article contends that Donald Trump is the logical culmination of the Republicans’ 50-year descent into an authoritarian, white identitarian party. According to Packer, the descent […]

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On Mac the Knife & Presidential Pardons

By Robin Bates | Published: August 23, 2018

Trump, like Mac the Knife, is an escape artist extraordinaire. Might a presidential pardon save him as a reprieve saves Mac?

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