Russellarbenfox

LATEST ARTICLES ( 607 )

• Thoughts on Dylan

  

  1) I saw Bob Dylan on Saturday here in Wichita, which was only the second show of his 2025 extension of his never ending tour (nominally supporting his most... Read more

  Posted on 30 March 2025 SOCIETY

• Minding Laurie Johnson’s Gap

  

  [Cross-posted to Front Porch Republic] President Trump has been in office a month as of today, and the maelstrom of orders and actions which he has taken has... Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2025 SOCIETY

• Leslie's Love Story in Songs, and Ours Too.

  

  Ian Leslie's John Paul: A Love Story in Songs is a terrific book. I say that as a major Beatles fan, though not, as I've confessed before, a fanatic. Read more

  Posted on 28 January 2025 SOCIETY

• Justice Together: Praying, Planning, and Partly (but Not Yet Entirely) Pushed...

  

  [Cross-posted to Wichita Story]Before Christmas, I had some complimentary things to say about Wichita’s city council. Here at the end of the year, though, my... Read more

  Posted on 01 January 2025 SOCIETY

• The 10 Best Books I Read in 2024

  

  Ian Angus, The War against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism (2023) and Wendell Berry, The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and... Read more

  Posted on 31 December 2024 SOCIETY

• The 10 Best Movies I Watched in 2024

  

  As always, this is a list of the best films I watched for the first time in 2024, regardless of when they came out. In alphabetical order: Bright Spark: The... Read more

  Posted on 31 December 2024 SOCIETY

• A Voice, a Chime, a Chant Sublime

  

  [Cross-posted to By Common Consent]One hundred and sixty-one years ago, on Christmas Day 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem “Christmas Bells. Read more

  Posted on 22 December 2024 SOCIETY

• On Substance and Signaling, in Trumpland, Topeka, and Beyond

  

  [This is an extensively rewritten version of an essay I wrote for Kansas newspapers last Sunday.] In a recent substack post, my old friend Damon Linker made an... Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2024 SOCIETY

• Still Processing the Day Before Yesterday

  

  Yesterday I did as I have regularly done for 16 years now, and replaced my Wednesday morning, post-Election Day classes with an open conversation, to which I... Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2024 SOCIETY

• Not a Mea Culpa, But Like Unto It

  When Trump won in 2016, I was genuinely flummoxed—disappointed and angry and frustrated as well, of course, but mostly just confused. It signaled the breakdown... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2024 SOCIETY

• Some Thoughts on the Republican Donald Trump, and All the Other Republicans,...

  

  [Note: this is a long and very party-centric set of musings for the day before the presidential election ends and the real electoral and legal chaos begins.... Read more

  Posted on 04 November 2024 SOCIETY

• Dear Mormon Voters of the American West (But Actually, Mainly Just Arizona):...

  

  [Cross-posted to By Common Consent] The presidential election campaign will come to an end 50 days from today. A lot could change in 50 days, but probably won’t. Read more

  Posted on 16 September 2024 SOCIETY

• Two Short(ish) Thoughts About Socialists and Other Nice People to My North

  

  Minnesota isn't Ontario, of course, and Tim Walz isn't a secular Jew and bass player who became passionately devoted to hard and progressive rock in the late... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2024 SOCIETY

• How Informational Overload Destroyed American Democracy (Maybe)

  

  [A slightly different version of this essay appears in Current.] James Davison Hunter's new book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2024 SOCIETY

• 20 Years of In Medias Res

  

  Remember this image? Of course you do. Everyone does. Especially those of us who had already been blogging for years (in my case, five of them) by the time it... Read more

  Posted on 13 August 2024 SOCIETY

• Thoughts on Dallmayr and a Different Post-Liberalism

  

  [Cross-posted to Front Porch Republic. Also, a blog note: it's been over 10 years since I last used this space to think at length about a philosopher or theoris... Read more

  Posted on 05 August 2024 SOCIETY

• Thinking About Music, Age, and Being Politically Surprised by Summer

  

  I stopped by Wichita’s main library the other day, looking to pick up some cheap media from the summer clearance sale, because I still use the sorts of... Read more

  Posted on 24 July 2024 SOCIETY

• On Fascists, Jesus, and Woody Guthrie

  

  I’m awake early this morning, thanks to a headache, after going to bed late last night following 2 ½ hours of talking about yesterday’s terrible news at a... Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2024 SOCIETY

• Justice Together: Pushing for Justice One City and One Step at a Time

  

  [A version of this piece has appeared in Kansas Reflector and Religious Socialism.]Back on May 9, something remarkable happened in Wichita, something similar... Read more

  Posted on 21 May 2024 SOCIETY

• On George Scialabba and the Left Conservative Possibility

  

  [A version of this piece is cross-posted to Current] How might one politically categorize the following statement?[M]y apparently disparate-sounding worries.... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2024 SOCIETY