My two most recent political essay at Salon complement each other as an exhibition of alarming trends in American political culture.

The first focuses on the mainstream media’s characteristically meek response to Trump’s increasingly fascist and violent rhetoric. I make the president’s recent remarks about how he would like to “turn the military loose” on refugees seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border the illustrative example of the anti-social and criminal designs of the American right, and how American culture is failing to react with adequate vigilance.

My next essay deals with the ubiquity of The Punisher skull – a popular symbol from the Marvel comic book that conservative men have adopted to symbolize their support of police and US aggression overseas. The celebration of the icon of death and murder – something to which the comic book creators object – demonstrates a dark impulse at the heart of American culture.