Nullius in verba
In the slave-state of ancient Athens if you were an enfranchised free male (but not a woman, foreigner, or slave) and didn’t participate in the democratic process you were called an idiot. If you didn’t want to go to the Assembly where self-governing decisions were made by direct, simple majority vote, something like a sergeant-at-arms […]
Even though we witness major historical transitions building like thunderheads on the horizon, we can never actually see them for what they are until the storm of change has come and gone. This year, 2017, feels like something deep and fundamental is overthrowing the predictable world as we know it. And it is both gloomy […]
After Democrats lost special elections for the House of Representatives in Georgia, South Carolina, and blew a close one earlier in Montana, old school blue-collar lefty filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted last week that the Dems don’t have a “friggin clue.” “No message, no plan, no leaders.” Who can blame him, especially after losing again and […]
In the wake of last Wednesday’s shooting in Virginia at a Republican workout for the bipartisan Congressional Baseball Charity game, the murder of four UPS workers in San Francisco on the same day, and now a mass killing of five people in Northern New Mexico around Tres Piedras and Abiquiu, many of us are left […]
Obstruction of justice, nepotism, conflicts of interest arising from refusing to put his business empire in a blind trust, attacking the judiciary, flapping loose lips over top-secret national security issues, conspiring with the nation’s Cold War nemesis and adversary to fix our national elections – what more do you need in the way of probable […]
Dear Readers, The Mercury Messenger is still on a summer holiday hiatus to recharge and regroup. The column will reappear June 12. In its place, a poem for laughter and sanity. Thanks for your interest and many comments. -V.B. Price Christmas 2016 There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and […]
Dear Readers, The staff of the Mercury Messenger will be taking an early summer holiday to recharge and regroup. Perhaps we’ll even come to believe in sanity once again. The hiatus will last two weeks. The column will reappear June 12. In its place, the Messenger will publish two suites of poems instead. Thanks for […]