Category: history

Does Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ need a modern reimagining?

“The Lottery” (1948) is one of those short stories that generations of high school students have read. And sure enough, I read “The Lottery” as a high school student in the 1980s.

I recently reread the story. “The Lottery” packs a powerful punch in less than 4,000 words. Having read this story, no one can doubt Shirley Jackson’s skills as a writer.

(Likewise, I won’t summarize the story’s plot here. If you haven’t read the story yet, then do so now and then come back to this essay.)

Shirley Jackson died in 1965 at the age of 48. We can only imagined what she might have accomplished, had she been given another three or four decades to write.

Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery” seems to imply that sinister things are happening in small-town America. Stephen King, who has cited Jackson as an influence, has often written about the evil fishbowl of the American small town. Many of King’s novels and stories—‘Salem’s Lot, “Children of the Corn”, Under the Dome, etc.—reprise this theme.

Shirley Jackson was born in 1916, and Stephen King was born in 1947. I was born in 1968, and I can’t say for certain what life in small-town America might have been like in say, 1959. I have no firsthand experience of that world.

Throughout my lifetime, however, the big cities have been the epicenters of mindless violence in American life. Crime rates are almost uniformly higher in our big cities. Our big cities are often sources of grassroots mass violence: the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and the urban riots of 2020 being but a few salient examples.

Here in Cincinnati (near my home) a group of inner-city residents beat several people half to death over this previous summer.

Since 2020, residents of big blue cities have famously fled urban states like New York and California for more bucolic settings in states like Texas and Tennessee.

None of the above diminishes the impact of “The Lottery”. But perhaps this story, now published almost 80 years ago, needs to be “reimagined”. It would be interesting if a short story-writer were to pen a 21st-century version of “The Lottery”, set not in a small town, but in inner-city New York or Los Angeles.

For all you writers and aspiring writers out there, consider this a free writing prompt.

-ET 

The year is 1938…

The year is 1938. Betty Lehmann is an undercover German spy. Can anyone stop her? Find out in THE CAIRO DECEPTION, a 5-book, World War II historical fiction series.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene vs. Trump, and the problem with personality-based political movements

Marjorie Taylor Greene is now in open conflict with President Trump. This is not “fake news” or a mainstream media distortion. Both Trump and MTG are hurling insults from their respective social media accounts.

MTG claims that she is receiving threats because of Trump. Perhaps. But MTG has always been a controversial figure, with no shortage of detractors.

Trump and MTG used to be allies. In many ways, they represented two central planks of the MAGA movement: the septuagenarian, male Trump and the Gen X, female Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Marjorie Taylor Greene was born in 1974.) This feud is not what the Republicans need, going into the midterms, with mixed economic news and the culture wars as hot as ever. Continue reading “Marjorie Taylor Greene vs. Trump, and the problem with personality-based political movements”

Veterans Day, and my grandfather’s World War II stories

Tuesday was Veteran’s Day here in the USA. Many GenXers, myself included, had grandparents of the World War II generation.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1921 and enlisted in the US Navy in December 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor. In the video below, I relate some of the stories he used to tell me.

Happy Veterans Day to all who served!

-ET

Reagan, tariffs, and the 1980s

Yesterday President Trump announced an additional 10 percent tariff on Canadian products. The president claims to have done this because the Canadian province of Ontario aired an anti-tariff commercial that featured quotes from US President Ronald Reagan.

The commercial uses quotes from a 1987 Reagan speech. Among the included Reagan quotes are “Over the long run… trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer,” and “When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes, for a short while, it works — but only for a short time.”

President Trump called Ontario’s use of the Reagan quotes “dirty play”, and accused the Ontario government of “twisting Reagan’s words”.

I remember Ronald Reagan. Reagan was basically the president I grew up with. I was in junior high when Reagan took office in January 1981, and in college when Reagan left the White House in January 1989.

Throughout the 1980s, the Democratic Party was known as the party of tariffs and protectionism. Congressional Democrats like Dick Gephardt, Dan Rostenkowski, and Lloyd Bentsen repeatedly sponsored bills that would impose protective tariffs on our trading partners, especially Japan and South Korea.

Republicans generally opposed these measures. Opposition to managed trade, and the promotion of free trade, was a consistent theme of both the Reagan and the George H.W. Bush administrations.

Republicans of the 1980s were almost universally opposed to protective tariffs. Democrats were in favor of them.

Once again, folks: I remember watching all of this on TV as it happened. At the time, Americans were concerned about the struggling US domestic automobile and electronics industries. Trade-related debates were constantly in the news.

Outside of Congress and the White House, opinions varied. Critics charged Democrats with being too cozy with the unions (who favored protectionism). Republicans were accused of favoring business and economic growth over the concerns of the working class.

Forty years later, we can have a spirited debate about which side was correct, but two basic facts are indisputable: the Republican Party of the Reagan era was pro-free trade, and tariffs/protectionism was the default Democratic Party position.

There is, of course, another side to this. Neither of our two major political parties is what it was in the 1980s, back when the world made a lot more sense.

The Democratic Party used to be the party of farmers and factory workers. The Republican Party, on the other hand, used to function as a pro-free market, pro-business party.

In the 1980s, then, we had one party to make sure the people were taken care of, and one party to make sure there was money to take care of the people.

Today the Democratic Party is the party of Drag Queen Story Hour, open borders, and other fringe positions. The GOP, meanwhile, has become the party of MAGA, at times indistinguishable from a personality cult. At the national level, I’m not sure if there are any Republicans remaining who are willing to oppose President Trump’s positions when he goes off the rails. (Maybe Rand Paul, a little.)

But here’s the point, where Reagan is concerned. You can choose your own interpretation of history, but you can’t choose your own historical facts. If you want to claim that Reagan and the GOP of the 1980s were wrong about free trade, you can do that. But you can’t deny that Reagan and the GOP of the 1980s were opposed to protective tariffs and in favor of free trade. Those of us who were there remember the truth.

-ET

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The Columbus Day debate, 2025 edition

Another Columbus Day, and another debate over colonization, historical grievances, and whether we should rename the holiday ‘Indigenous People’s Day’.

This argument has arisen each year since at least the 1990s. It is what the Japanese call a 水掛け論 (pronounced mizukakeron) or “endless debate”.

You’ve heard much of this before, so I’ll be brief.

The Native American experience with European settlers was not a monolithic one.

Some Native American tribes were fierce. In 1813, a large force of Creek Indians slaughtered over five hundred US civilians and militiamen near present-day Mobile, Alabama. This became known as the Fort Mims massacre.

The Comanche were cruel to both other Native American tribes and white settlers alike. The Plains Indians were also formidable fighters.

Other native tribes were rapidly subjugated.

Many (most) Native American tribes got raw deals once the shooting stopped. In many cases, the victors (the US government) altered the terms of the agreements retroactively. Continue reading “The Columbus Day debate, 2025 edition”

NKU staffing cuts, and my college days

Longtime readers may know that I attended two universities here in the Cincinnati area: Northern Kentucky University (NKU) and the University of Cincinnati (UC).

I have pleasant memories of both of them, but I especially enjoyed my time at NKU. I was a student there during the 1986-1987 academic year. The university had been founded the year I was born (1968). NKU felt like a dynamic academic institution that was rapidly growing.

Oh, what a difference 39 years can make. NKU is now suffering from a budget shortfall and declining enrollment. The university recently announced that it will eliminate 1% of its existing workforce. An unspecified number of vacant positions will also be eliminated.

I saw the news on Facebook, where the rule of thumb is: Don’t read the comments. But of course I did. There were plenty of people blaming both Donald Trump and “woke” professors. Continue reading “NKU staffing cuts, and my college days”

‘Red Storm Rising’ by Tom Clancy (reading notes)

Some quick reading notes…
 
I’ve been reading Tom Clancy’s 1986 novel, Red Storm Rising.
 
The book posits a war between NATO and the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
 
Here’s the odd thing: 
 
Clancy decided to more or less ignore nuclear weapons, making this hypothetical war a solely conventional one. Not a very realistic story choice, but Red Storm Rising would have quickly become a post-apocalyptic novel otherwise.
 
It’s interesting reading, if you like long battle scenes and the other books in Tom Clancy’s oeuvre.
 
-ET
 

Puerto Rican independence and the “Bad Bunny” “controversy

First things first: I don’t care who sings at the Super Bowl: Bad Bunny, Bugs Bunny, whoever. 

I don’t object to a Puerto Rican singer performing at the Super Bowl.

And it’s fine with me if BB wants to sing in Spanish, or Swahili, or Lithuanian.

Foreign language study is one of my passions. And I’ve been studying Spanish for more than 40 years.  I’ve spent weeks at a time in Mexico, speaking only Spanish.

So unless you’ve read Cien Años de Soledad in the original Spanish text (I have) please don’t play that card with me. 

But this controversy raises another issue: Continue reading “Puerto Rican independence and the “Bad Bunny” “controversy”

Please don’t call my WWII vet grandfather “Antifa”

Never a boring moment in 2025. President Trump has ordered federal troops to Portland, Oregon. Their mission is to protect immigration enforcement officers (ICE) from Antifa-provoked violence. The troops will also be charged with protecting federal buildings and facilities from those who throw rocks, bricks, and flaming objects in the name of Antifa.

This has once again stirred up the debate about what Antifa is, exactly, and what it is not.

Is Antifa truly “anti-fascist”? Are Antifa like the Weather Underground? Or are they the French Resistance? Is Antifa an organization, or a mere set of ideas?

Does Antifa even exist at all? Continue reading “Please don’t call my WWII vet grandfather “Antifa””

Bonner Fellers, ‘Emperor’, and postwar reckoning in Japan

On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally, effectively ending World War II. The American postwar occupation of Japan began shortly thereafter.

Japanese forces committed many atrocities during World War II. Their victims included subjugated Asian populations, as well as Allied prisoners of war. The postwar era would bring a reckoning. Among the first tasks of the US occupation authorities was to round up Japanese officials who were guilty of war crimes.

Japanese officials aboard the USS Missouri on September 2 1945 for the surrender ceremony

Adjacent to this was determining the culpability of Emperor Hirohito. Hirohito’s future status was a sensitive topic.

The Allies did not demand Hirohito’s overthrow and imprisonment as an explicit condition of surrender, which prevented Japan from continuing the fight until the last man. But Hirohito’s long-term continuation on the Chrysanthemum Throne was not a foregone conclusion, either. That would depend on whether or not the American occupation authorities would try him as a war criminal.

In a worst-case scenario, Hirohito would hang, and the Japanese would stage a general insurrection against the US occupation. A bad outcome for everyone. Therefore, the options had to be weighed carefully, and it would all begin with an investigation.

This is the subject of the 2012 movie Emperor. Continue reading “Bonner Fellers, ‘Emperor’, and postwar reckoning in Japan”

The Graham Linehan arrest: Was JD Vance right about Europe? Is Keir Starmer England’s Putin?

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, US Vice President JD Vance ruffled some feathers with the following words:

“Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not, and thank God they lost the Cold War.

They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build.

As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected.

And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners.

I look to Brussels, where EU commiss- — commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, “hateful content.”

Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, “combating misogyny on the Internet, a day of action.”

I look to Sweden, where, two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant — and I’m quoting — “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.”

Vance’s speech was not greeted with much enthusiasm among the Eurocrats in attendance. The Munich Security Conference was supposed to be an extended Two Minutes Hate against Russia and Vladimir Putin. Vice President Vance suggested that many so-called democracies in NATO and the European Union ought to reexamine their own commitments to liberty on the home front instead. Continue reading “The Graham Linehan arrest: Was JD Vance right about Europe? Is Keir Starmer England’s Putin?”

‘Texas’ by James Michener (mini-review)

I have just finished reading Texas (1985) by James Michener.

James Michener (1907-1997) specialized in vast historical novels, usually centered upon the history of a particular place.

For example, Hawaii (1959) covered the history of Hawaii. Alaska (1988) covered the history of our 49th state.

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His books are long and vast in scope. A thousand pages is a typical length. Michener wrote novels that today’s short attention-spanned, Internet-addled American finds daunting. But he was quite popular during his heyday, the 1950s through the 1980s.

Because of the historical scopes involved, Michener’s novels span many generations, with wide casts of characters. His books are less novels, in the conventional sense, than collections of interconnected novellas. If James Michener were alive today, and publishing on Amazon Kindle, he would almost certainly be publishing his long books as series of novellas. But that wasn’t what the brick-and-mortar-centric book retailing industry of the 20th century wanted. And so James Michener’s long tales were delivered as doorstop-sized novels.

Texas follows the usual Michener formula. There are storylines from the Spanish colonial period, the obligatory story about the Alamo (of course), and characters from more recent times.

I have sometimes found James Michener to be a bit too didactic. (In the historical fiction blockbuster space, I much prefer Edward Rutherfurd and John Jakes.) A novel based in historical events is fine; but if I want to read an actual history, I’ll turn to nonfiction. But in Texas, Michener emphasizes story and mostly avoids the dreaded info-dump.

I am not even going to attempt a plot summary of Texas. There is simply too much to describe. Any plot summary I might write would run on for five thousand words, the length of a long essay or a middling short story.

Suffice it to say: Texas contains many plots and characters related to the history of Texas. It’s also a very entertaining book, if you aren’t daunted by the 1096-page length.

-ET

‘The Americans’: is now the time for a sequel?

I don’t evangelize many 21st-century television shows. But I am unabashed in my enthusiasm for The Americans, the period spy drama that originally aired on FX from 2013 to 2018.

The Americans is about big events of the final decade of the Cold War. But it is also a family drama: about Philip and Elizabeth Jennings and their two children. The Jenningses are deep-cover Soviet KGB operatives. Philip and Elizabeth do all the bad things you would expect KGB agents to do. But they also cope with the pressures of maintaining their cover, and keeping their secret from their two children, who were born in the USA.

The series finale was set at the end of 1987/early 1988, just as Cold War tensions were easing. No spoilers here, except to say the series ended in a way that was satisfying, while simultaneously leaving the door open for sequels.

And it’s easy to imagine any number of sequels, based on a myriad of post-1988 plot lines. So much was yet to happen: the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (1989), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the collapse of the USSR (1991).

And what about the post-Soviet, Yeltsin and Putin eras? The possibilities are endless.

In a March 11, 2023 interview on The Rich Eisen Show, series star Matthew Rhys hinted at the possibility of The Americans continuing in some form.

That was almost two years ago. I remain cautiously hopeful. But I am also realistic about these things. Despite the high quality of the show’s concept and execution, a revived version of The Americans would face certain obstacles.

To begin with, young audiences may have difficulty relating to the subject matter. I am in my 50s and I remember the 1980s as if that decade ended last year. Viewers under 40, who lack such a perspective (and who have suffered the intellectual depredations of American public education) may struggle to get a foothold as they begin a show that involves Cold War-era history.

The Americans premiered in a crowded 2010s TV arena, filled with more accessible shows involving dragons, superheroes, and teenagers performing magic. The Americans was always a critical success, but it never got the viewership it deserved.

That may also have been an issue of timing. Between 2013 and 2018, the US public was focused on economic recovery, ISIS, Islamic terrorism, and the 2016 presidential election. The Cold War and Russia seemed far, far away.

That faraway perception of Russia may have changed, however, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and talk of a Cold War II from all quarters.

Now may be the perfect time to revive The Americans, in fact. A post-Soviet storyline would make the most sense. But there is plenty of material surrounding the fall of the USSR, too.

Even if The Americans zoomed forward to the present era, it could be made to work. All of the main characters, though much older, could plausibly still be alive.

I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel to my all-time favorite television show. As the above interview with Matthew Rhys suggests, I’m not alone in hoping for more seasons of The Americans.

-ET