Essays

Twitter thread posted by @djrothkopf on 1-30-2020 If you thought the end of US democracy & our greatness as a country would come with missiles raining down or battles in our streets, you were wrong. It will come silently, in…

“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany.…

Last night I dreamed I was a student at Notre Dame. I suppose that university was floating around in my consciousness after reading about Attorney General, William Barr’s speech at Notre Dame’s law school. The closed-door speech, reported to address…

This list was first published the week after the election of Donald Trump to the United States Presidency. Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we…

This essay is adapted from a Twitter thread posted by the author on April 21, 2019. In today’s America, the president and those who work for him are above the law. The president can’t be indicted for crimes he commits.…

Merriam Webster: troll: a dwarf or giant in Scandinavian folklore inhabiting caves or hills. —lived under a bridge and terrorized The Three Billy Goats Gruff in that children’s fairy tale Wikipedia: A Troll doll (Danish: Gjøltrold) is a type of plastic doll with furry up-combed hair…

On Thursday, December 20, Secretary of Defense James Mattis submitted a letter of resignation to President Donald Trump. “Because you have the right to a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects,”…

Seventeen years ago, my mother purchased a tiny cabin near Cooke City, Montana, right at the northeast portal of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a blonde log cabin, 12 by 14 feet, but with the sleeping loft it was her idea.…

T he front room, as the adults called it, was my favorite place in my grandmother’s house.  Originally intended for entertaining guests, it functioned for as long as I can remember as a repository for all things out of date…

The network architecture built in Gamergate helped propel Trump to the presidency and fuel conspiracies like Pizzagate and QAnon. Now it’s backing Brett Kavanaugh. Since the advent of Donald Trump’s candidacy, there’s been a ton of focus on botnets and…

Most Americans who followed the September 27 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the sexual assault claims by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, walked away stunned.  Exhausted and disgusted, the question of the hour was, “What…

In a prescient speech given on January 27, 2011 to the Citizens Crime Commission of New York, then FBI Director, Robert S. Mueller III, warns of the coming threat of the international organized crime. Good morning; it is good to…

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, 1984 At a Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Kansas City, MO on Tuesday, President Trump told…

After posting a well-worded invitation to Trump supporters to engage in civil discourse with me, a woman, LR, who first responded with dismissive scorn began commenting on my Facebook page. After some trust building between us, and editing out the…

In light of the recent defections from the GOP, including Republican Party stalwarts, George Will and Steve Schmidt, I was compelled to reprint this October, 2016 essay explaining my personal break with the GOP.  As disgusted as I was at…

The Artists in Action, a Colorado Front Range socially driven art project, is a love letter to the people of Colorado.  On exhibit at the Manitou Arts Center’s Hagnauer Gallery May 18th through July 15th, The Artists in Action showcases artwork…

The March on Washington was a massive protest that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event…

One day in the autumn of last year, I was lazily scrolling down my Facebook feed, as I often do when bored, glancing through the selfies, silly memes, and food preparation videos by Tasty. It was then that I began…

Introduction by Cyd Chartier Cohn Not long ago while having a conversation with a friend concerning an issue related to trauma I had experienced in my past, I was taken by surprise when my friend abruptly asked, “Are you ever…

Recently the term “Deep State” has been employed by the Trump Administration to characterize a conspiracy of government employees to take down the president and his agenda. The drumbeat against this supposed cabal has dramatically increased in tempo and volume…

Sleep eludes me this early morning, as a perfectly-orbed moon floats across the illuminated sky. Deep in my bones, I sense the fear, malice, and terrible injustice which seem to have led us to this moment. Stubbornly awake, I try…

“What kind of joke is this?” I thought December 14th as I saw the first nighttime photo of the big blue frame erected in the Garden of the Gods. My first instinct was to assume it was similar to the…

“Morning darlin’. I’m heading to Ditch if you wanna do your camera thing. I’ll pick you up in five.” It was 6 a.m. and though it was an abrupt wake-up from a deep sleep, I couldn’t have been happier about…

Time Magazine’s choice for the 2017 “Person of the Year” brings to mind something I wrote in 2016 after Donald Trump was so named.  Because the essay is particularly relevant in light of this year’s issue, I have reprinted it here.…

Summer of 1996.  I was on duty as deputy sheriff.  I took a call from dispatch about a vicious dog in the northeast part of Jefferson County.  I loaded up a dog crate in the back seat of a Ford…

“I AM SO fascinated, and so on edge, about this journey, that I suspect…that there is still something there, in Europe, which pulls me back.  It may attract me or it may repel me when I see it at close range. …

Recent revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predations in Hollywood should surprise no one; it’s a familiar story these days.  Weinstein is just the latest high-profile man making headlines for multiple alleged accounts of sexual harassment and assault.  In the Weinstein…

Part I I woke up today, just as I had the day before. The only difference now is that my husband has cancer. He looks the same and says that he feels the same. Okay, so maybe he is more…

It has become difficult to be hopeful under the current political circumstance of Donald Trump’s poisonous presidency. The small doses of hatred he spouts daily work like a sprinkler, set to a timer that comes on every morning at daybreak,…

I’ve had house cats, barn cats, fluffy cats, sleek cats, friendly cats, aloof cats, bold cats, and shy cats. But never, until now, have I had a cat who was a stone-cold killer. The first time I saw Phoebe was…

July 18, 2017 marked the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. It was on the 100th anniversary of her death that Reginald Farrer’s essay, “Jane Austen, ob. July 18, 1817,” published in the Quarterly Review, pages 1-30, observed that Austen…

The mood is upbeat on this bright, warm, final winter Sunday in downtown Colorado Springs. Sidewalks are bustling with families hurrying to church; groups of friends gather for brunch; an informal peloton of cyclists pedals swiftly and expertly among the…

“There is no way you could understand.”  These words grab my attention as a friend, now sober 20 years, tells me of his addiction. Drug addiction has not been my personal journey, not one that I see reflected back in…

Back in the day — if “the day” means six years ago, in a bygone era when each hour wasn’t punctuated by absurd breaking news — Steve Krause and Matthew Paull in The New Republic lamented the loss of ties…

The road that brought me to the Mississippi Delta is 1,100 miles and 25 years long. I traveled the last leg of it in May of last year, before the withering heat of summer hit, when the soft green of…

On a cool overcast October morning in 2009, following a nonstop overnight flight from Denver, I drove my rental car north from Frankfurt toward the tiny town of Horn-Bad Meinberg, located in north-central Germany. Traveling through lush rolling meadows, bordered…