Originally published November 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
– George Orwell
“I don’t want to be part of your revolution if I can’t dance.”
– Emma Goldman
Rumsfeld is gone. Mehlman is gone. Delay is gone. Yet let’s not have our progressives’ version of a strutting on the flight […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

Originally published November 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.”
–Theodore Adorno
“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
–Samuel Beckett
One’s actions grow out of one’s beliefs. Beliefs grow out of the ecosystem of our collective lives known as culture. In this way, cultures are organic: they germinate, sprout, grow, bloom, bear […]

Posted in Essays 1 Comment »

Originally published October 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts”
– Reuters headline
“O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.”
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick
All human beings have a […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

Originally published October 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Day-to-day life within an empire consists of the deceitful leading the disengaged. Although when the artifice shielding a nation’s populace from the ruthlessness of their leaders begins to fall away, hysteria and displaced rage rises in the land. Ergo, in the American empire, we’re witnessing these demented days of […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

Originally published October 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Many believe fascism will come to the United States of America resembling contrived spectacles such as The Super Bowl, The Academy Awards, and American Idol, with the proceedings intercut with teary, yet ultimately triumphant, Oprahesque tales of how redemption can be gained through the renunciation of one’s rights, […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

Originally published October 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality . . . and through this death a rebirth, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.”
– R. D. Laing
The […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

Originally published September 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
— H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, 1920
As Americans Waddled into the new century, overweight, overworked, and as self aware as a […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

Originally published September 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“Mrs. O’Kelly, do you believe in fairies?” “No, I don’t — but they’re there.” –Irish aphorism
There is something missing in The Oakdale Estates subdivision. Oak Trees. Years ago, they were cut down to clear the property for development.
Is it possible the gated walls of Oakdale Estates are fitted with […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

Originally published September 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
At present, 46 percent of the American people hold the delusion
that Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.
This statistic came to light as ABC/Disney aired last weekend a drama based on 9/11 containing the corresponding degree of historical accuracy […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

Originally published September 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
An entire American city has become an uninhabitable mire of fetid water, sodden ruins, and toxic sludge. Moreover, the destruction will not end there: the financial, political, and psychological spill-off, incurred by the deluge, will cause our nation to sink further into a morass of debt, denial, and despair.
How […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

Originally published August 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“If he [Hugo Chávez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”
– Pat Robertson
“Muslims want to rule the world. They want […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

Originally published August 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
The rising price of gasoline troubles Americans because it threatens the sustaining cultural illusion of our freedom of mobility — a commercial con job that, over time, has served to transform us from the citizens of a sprawling republic into de facto slaves of the corporate classes. Our masters […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

originally published August 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
In a small, prefab house on the coastal Carolina lowlands, an old man, the son of a son of a tobacco sharecropper, my wife’s father, lay dying. Even though the St. James Bible had been placed at his bedside, Fox Cable News served as his Psychopompus, conducting him up […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity, Readers' Favorites 1 Comment »

Originally published February 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
I dreamed I was a fetus floating within the protective womb of Dubya’s America. In the dream, my work cubicle, the sealed interior of my SUV, and my insular guarded gate suburban home were awash in an amniotic fluid of mass media imagery; an umbilical cord tethered me to […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

Originally published August 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
An unpopular war drags on, gas prices rise and rise, as a cloud of scandal gathers over Washington D.C. At times, it seems as though the 1970s never ended: it’s just Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s Quaalude-laced, faux populist snake oil caused us to sleep through the 80s and […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

Originally published July 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“Despite a nearly 500% increase in mental health drugs being prescribed to children in the previous six years, the NFC [New Freedom Commission on Mental Health] recommended a plan of mandatory mental health screening for all public school students and follow-up treatment with drugs when needed.
“The fact is, this […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Thank you, fellow murders.
Before you made your return to us by way of the London Underground, our existence was beginning to get tiresomely complicated again.
In the late summer of 2001, you bestowed us with a simple, easy to follow story line — a tale so preposterous it even allowed a dullard, usurper […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

Originally published June 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
In the early 1970s, when George W. Bush was shirking his National Guard duties in Alabama, state Republican Party insiders tagged him with the moniker, “The Texas Soufflé,” due to his habitual arrogance, ceaseless indulgence in braggadocio, and preening sense of privilege and entitlement.
At present, after nearly half a […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

Originally posted June 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“Having an unexciting occupation may increase your risk of a heart attack, believe researcher.”
– Headline from the BBC, 7 June 2005:
It now appears the dire consequences that puritanical hysterics have attributed to human sexuality — from ill-health, early death, and societal decay, to being the flat-out progenitor of nearly […]

Posted in Essays No Comments »

A Conversation with Joe Bageant & John Steppling
Originally published February 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
As a fan of Joe’s, I asked if he wanted to participate in a cyber-conversation with Phil and myself. We purposely avoided any pre-determined topics or rules — this was meant to be just a friendly talk about the condition of the […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

A Conversation About Culture with John Steppling Part II
Originally published January 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Odd coincidence: I was thinking of cell phones and Aeschylus, on and off, all day. I had not connected the two, mind you…until your missive.
You’re right, John — cell phones make the world before you disappear. A few years back, I […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

A Conversation About Culture with John Steppling Part I
Originally published January 2005
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“It is uncertain whether art is still possible; whether, with its complete emancipation, it did not sever its own preconditions.”
—Adorno
“So all things hobble together for the only possible.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Murphy, 1938
It seems that man has always searched, both collectively (both […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

Originally published November 2004
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
With the season being fall — perhaps I should let some illusions fall away like dead leaves.
Outside my apartment window, across a wind-blown courtyard, the crimson leaves of a white oak are falling into a swirling breeze, revealing the gnarled limbs and stark branches of the time-battered tree beneath. […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity, Readers' Favorites No Comments »

(For Tom Butcher) Originally Published August 2003
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“On reflection, the work we did on this given day, maybe that was the product that came out of that phase some time in the past when we were ostensibly incredibly idle.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
“I don’t want to be part of your revolution if I can’t […]

Posted in Essays, Writer's Vanity No Comments »

Originally posted May 2004
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“The story of Wal-Mart exemplifies some of the very best qualities in our country — hard work, the spirit of enterprise, fair dealing, and integrity.”
—Dick Cheney
“To all of us who have been charged, we all agree that we don’t feel like we were doing things that we weren’t supposed […]

Posted in Essays, Readers' Favorites No Comments »