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by Bill Lasarow July 2, 2026 Robert Motherwell, “Elegy to the Spanish Republic XXXIV,” 1953-54, oil on canvas 80 x 100”. Courtesy of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Split Screen 1 This time, a three-parter … Former President Barack Obama presided over the public opening of the Obama Center on Chicago’s South Side. He and his closest partner, Michelle, opined with their usual eloquence about our democracy and our diversity. I chose the adjective “usual” to stress the quasi-boring fact that we have come to expect this from the most normal and capable president we have ever had the good fortune to elect. Be sure to read Margaret Hawkins’ account of the Center’s first impression in this current edition. The same day we got to see the current president, on multiple occasions, all quite awful. Immediately following the G7 Summit in France (June 15-17), Caligula dined at the Versailles Palace. His excellency proclaimed that Italian PM Giorgia Meloni had “begged for a photo with me.” Meloni responded that “Neither I nor Italy ever beg.” And that was the big news coming out of our participation at the Summit. He then made his near-daily pitch about how close we are to extracting major concessions from a defeated Iran, whose unconditional surrender he was just about to obtain. This while comfortably dissembling about consumer prices tumbling while the stock market numbers go “through the roof.” In the background there was the usual drumbeat of Emoluments Clause violations; the continuing unlawful and botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool; incessant babble about his billion-dollar White House ballroom and who would really bear that cost (spoiler alert: taxpayers); and racist slurs about deporting Haitian and Syrian refugees currently in America under Temporary Protected Status, as the Supreme Court ruled that it is permissible for a president to strip away those protections (a Democratic president will undoubtably restore them). Racial prejudice, corruption, blatant dishonesty and incompetence for this man are all just another day at the office. And, yes, he retains quite a number of cultists who are right there with him. Norman Lewis, “The Gremlins,” 1961, oil on canvas, 47 1/4 x 63 3/4”. How any thinking person could fail to see the contrast for what it is, it’s just beyond me. Leonora Carrington, “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur,” 1953, oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 27 9/16”. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Split Screen 2 Caligula’s latest Big Lie for the midterm election is equating the Social Democrats with the Soviet Communist Party. To quote, “These are hard core, godless Communists … They will close your churches in this country … They will kill your people, and that what they’re about.” For the Fascist Party of America, which truly is dedicated to morphing America into a White Christian Nationalist state, anyone whose political views are to the left of Attila the Hun qualifies as a Communist. They invariably lump moderate Democrats into these deliberate mischaracterizations, never learning to resist the slander. I would love to see Democrats call the red-baiters on it, have them explain what “Communism” and “Socialism” and “Social Democracy” each mean. Zohran Mamdani is the most talented among the young leaders of all wings of the Democratic Party, and it happens that he is openly a Democratic Socialist who is helping other Democratic Socialists win elections. The “churn” appears metaphorically in the form of a large wave. Over the course of the next four months that wave may somewhat dissipate or it may build into a national tidal wave. The trend line has been towards the latter, and that will be much to the national interest. The latter could result in this mafia family tightening its grip on the country as a whole. William Kentridge, still from “History of the Main Complaint,” 1996, 35mm film transferred to video, 5:50 minutes. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In my Boomer lifetime I have seen a wide range of outcomes in this ongoing political melodrama. Caligula marks an aggressive and violent return of a Tammany Hall culture that today is nearing the end of a two-year monopoly on federal power. Tammany Hall controlled New York, but not the country. Keeping that monopoly in place, in mafia terms, is not about winning over the electorate. It’s all about creating the conditions for a significant minority of voters, somewhere between 40 and 45%, to hold sway. In the Democratic coalition there is virtually no Communist component. What little true Socialism there is wields little influence and enjoys no power. But the Fascist crap keeps on coming, and is a major feature of that mafia family as manifested in Caligula redux. This guy is a profoundly poor excuse for a human being. He is a sexual predator, a racist, misogynistic xenophobe. His and his minions lies and corruption can be so brazen and yet so routine that when his Vice-President argues that Watergate would today have amounted today to no more than a 12-hour news story, I have to nod in agreement. Vance got that one right, but for all the wrong reasons. This is not a president of all the people, only of those who swear fealty to his cult. The foundational Big Lie is Jan6. If you buy into that lie because you are heartless and greedy, let’s see if you can be a player on the team. A whole lot of money is at stake, and most Supreme Court rulings modify or ignore the meaning of the plain language of the Constitution starting with Citizens United, Shelton County, and now Louisiana v. Callais. Even the 14th Amendment’s stipulation of birthright citizenship just narrowly survived their naked partisanship. For now. Piero Manzoni, “Le Socle du Monde (Base of the World),” 1961, inscribed iron plinth, 100 x 100 x 82”. Courtesy of Harning and the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark. Mail-in ballots did a bit better in SCOTUSland, but the inherent logic of the argument to do away with it stands logic on its head. The extra time that California, in particular, takes to certify election results reflects the care taken to ensure that voter fraud cannot take place. Ballot counts are reviewed by hand, with care taken to match signatures and verify voter information. Then, there is the sheer scale of California elections when compared to other states. In the June primaries California recorded over 9 million ballots. In the Los Angeles Mayoral election, about 850,000 ballots were recorded. The entire population of the state of Wyoming is about 650,000. In the Presidential election of 2024 that state counted just over 270,000 ballots. Tell me that you would argue California should count 9.2 million ballots as quickly at Wyoming counts 270,000? No wonder California takes longer to tally results. We have a whole lot more voters than anywhere else, and we take precautions to make voter fraud nearly impossible. Getting those results more slowly is exactly the reason that we have virtually no voter fraud. And allowing for the time of postal delivery (it’s the postmark that determines whether or not a ballot counts) provides voters with the assurance that if they drop it in the mailbox their ballot will be counted. Saype, “Beyond Walls, Step 22,” 2026, ground mural, eco-responsible paint on grass, Boom Island Park, Minneapolis, 310 x 75’. Print edition available. Courtesy of the artist. Split Screen 3 We are publishing this, edition #56 of our monthly Democracy Chain: Culture and politics from an art critical perspective, today, July 2nd, rather than the normal Saturday, which this month falls on July 4th. We are all aware that America is turning 250. I was 26 fifty years ago at the time of our Bicentennial in 1976. These round-figure dates alone are cause for celebration, but also for assessment and planning. For this one I will have seen two anniversaries. If I live to see a third, I would be 126; not so likely. It is still hard to imagine any human being living past 100, but a lot of folks do that now. No human being makes it to 126, let alone 176. You can only see so much history in a lifetime. Who knows? If we play our cards right there will begin to be people surviving to 126. But, no matter the hands dealt us, we’re blowing through our chips — and nature is kibitzing. One of my personal and aesthetic inspirations is an old Marvel Comics character, Uatu, The Watcher. One of Kirby and Lee’s stellar inventions, Uatu first appeared in April 1963 (“Fantastic Four,” #13). “Star Trek” premiered in September 1966. Uatu was fashioned to be majestic and benign, yet all powerful and all knowing. The alien presence of an observer who practices not just restraint but firm non-involvement in the affairs of the species being observed becomes the Prime Directive in “Star Trek”: No interference with the social development of [any given] planet. Vija Celmins, “Night Sky #19,” 1998, charcoal on paper, 22 1/2 x 26 1/2”. © Vija Celmins, courtesy of the Tate Modern, London. The principle of the Prime Directive came out of the radical break America made after World War III with all prior post-conflict resolutions. To the victor did not belong the spoils, but the means to construct an international order designed to prevent a recurrence of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese debacles. The Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill, and the policy theories distilled by FDR that were meant to aid the developing middle class here and abroad proved wildly successful. The top income tax bracket stood at 70% until Ronald Reagan began his term in office. Let’s get back to that tax structure. And why does the cutoff point for paying the payroll tax today stand at $180,000? There should be no ceiling at all. The Social Security fund would never be spent. My belief is that the 6% interest rate on the payroll tax could be reduced to 5%, perhaps 4%. That would save businesses a lot of money in a way that serves the general public, and certainly that portion of the middle class that is has been struggling to stay there. For Americans who enjoy that much wealth, a 70% tax bracket at the top (say over $10 million of reportable income) means that they have plenty of means to do whatever they want. In nearly all of the 50 years since our Bicentennial I have been so privileged to practice the blend of art and philosophy that I was first taught at UCLA. The visual art world has changed every bit as much as society in general over those five decades, but mostly in ways that reflect the best of us. My first priority upon joining the art world was to reflect that world and funnel observation of what enabled so much creative achievement, yet failed to fully support talent or engage a significant public interest. That generalization comes with an understanding that the work of our museums and art fairs engaging and growing that audience has been significant. Next to the worlds of sports, film, TV and music, the visual art world is much smaller, its audience much less affluent or well informed. On the other hand, there are also many other important cultural forms that the visual art world dwarfs. While my personal circumstance for some years has greatly limited any travel, I have been able to do a lot for colleagues who are dedicated to visual art like I am. They are the ones who view exhibitions regularly and help break them down for you. By facilitating them I am doing what has been my priority this last half-century: caring for my family. After that, I love enabling my fellow editors and writers (and through them our artists), and I support an important interest, that of the exhibiting galleries and museums. Mark Bradford, “Pickett’s Charge (The Copse of Trees),” 2016–17, mixed media painting, one in a series of eight, 12 x 45’. Photo courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Joshua White. At the same time, this is a moment in which Americans who truly are patriotic are stepping forward, but against a determined and unscrupulous foe, one now endowed with all of the unique wealth and power his office provides. He is the great traitor to American history and values, and he has loads of facilitators and allies slavering for their own payday. The broad public now sees that. But so does the dictator, who will say and do anything to avoid losing what he now grasps. His sense of ownership may be both false and odious but he feels it baby, he really feels it. His current Congressional leadership stands ready to negate votes and undermine certification. His militia stands ready to repeat Jan6 but with much more deadly results. And we stand ready. The power lies with our non-violent millions demonstrating, with our representatives pushing back, our observers reporting on what they observe, and of the fairness of our policy priorities. Not just their fairness, but their dedication to the better angels of our character — our rejection of repression, of brazen untruth, of enormous grift, of predatory capitalism run amok. We stand ready. Bill Lasarow, Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (1987); and Visual Art Source (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

by Margaret Hawkins Obama Center, Chicago, Illinois July 2, 2026 Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “The Obamas: Springing Forth,” 2026, acrylic, colored pencils, charcoal, and transfers on paper, 9 x 10'. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner. Commissioned by The Obama Foundation. Photo: Marten Elder. Five days after CNN aired the dazzling opening ceremony of the Obama Center I went to see the place. I’d gorged on every televised minute — the moving speeches, Christina Aguilera’s blazing rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” the fascinating dynamics of the ex-presidents and their wives. Watching all this was like drinking fresh water in a desert. We in Chicago have been anticipating this opening for years. We’ve followed the details, carped about the cost, argued about where it should be and what it should look like and what its impact on the surrounding neighborhood will be. The jury is out on that last matter. Some people have described the Center’s architecture as a crashed spaceship. It’s Chicago; we have to take our landmarks down a peg before we get used to them. As Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” became better known as “The Bean,” so the Obama Center is now the Obamalisk. Maya Lin, “Seeing Through the Universe,” 2025. All artworks courtesy of, commissioned by and on view at the Obama Center. Despite all the buildup, I wasn’t fully prepared for how moved I was by the actual place, the physical experience of being there. It’s gorgeous, not just beautiful but welcoming, inclusive, expansive, both soothing (psychologically) and exciting (intellectually, aesthetically). Each building stands free enough to view individually, yet close enough to form a campus without challenging most walkers. Trees, gardens, buildings, and open fields intertwine with wide sloping paths paved in stone colored in subtle, calming grays. Gently inclining walkways lead to a rooftop vegetable garden that offers views of the city, although you may be more interested in the fresh crop of Swiss chard. Nothing is roped off. There are no don’t-touch signs. No alarms go off if you get too close. I hate to say it, lest someone take advantage, but I didn’t see any guards. Even the parking garage feels welcoming and easy to use. It’s roomier than most, not claustrophobic. Simply put, the place is people friendly. Except for the museum, the restaurant, and the garage, it’s all free. Just show up and enjoy. Barbecue grills await. What’s going a little under the radar, though, is that the place is very much a public art venue as well. It goes way beyond celebrating the family it’s named for. Here, culture and values are inextricable. The commissioned art on view, both indoors and out, is the living expression of what Obama has long advanced — freedom, hope, and the elevating power of culture to open minds. Alison Saar, “Torch Song,” 2026, bronze. Courtesy of Alison Saar. I hadn’t realized how important visual art is to this project until I saw it firsthand. It’s not just the usual portraits. There are some of those — whole families lined up to be photographed with Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s double portrait of the Obamas, “The Obamas: Springing Forth,” in The Forum. But here, art isn’t just an illustration of historical events and famous people. Aesthetics have a place at the table, and art speaks for itself in its own mysterious language. Here are my four favorite artworks at the Obama Center: Maya Lin, “Seeing Through the Universe” Two 10,000-pound granite elements combine stone and water in a symbolic symbiosis that evokes the Obamas’ dynamic relationship but could refer to any cohesion of opposites. The horizontal stone functions as a fountain while the upright lopsided donut exudes a mist that forms a transforming lens at its empty center. Things look different when viewed through it. While I was there a tall dog drank peacefully from this elegant burbling fountain with no intervention from the guards. The dog’s enjoyment enhanced everyone’s. Alison Saar, “Torch Song” Alison Saar Saar’s sculpture of a single female figure overlooking the Women’s Garden is made of blue green patinated bronze that calls to mind both the Statue of Liberty and generations of Black female vocalists. She holds a torch in the palm of her left hand and wears two bandoliers of piano keys rather than bullet cartridges. Nekisha Durrett, “The Hem of Heaven,” still from video. Nekisha Durrett, “The Hem of Heaven” Durrett’s multi-story sculpture of interwoven ceramic tiles references Harriet Tubman’s protective shawl and her heroism in freeing over seventy enslaved people under the cloak of night. Viewable from the Obamalisk in sections through windows on several stories, it adds to the meaning of the word ‘underground’ in underground railroad. Aliza Nisenbaum, “Reading Circles/Weaving Dreams/Seeding Futures,” along with the Chicago Public Library branch in which it resides, with a special call-out to The President’s Reading Room. My most emotionally piercing moment at the Obama Center was walking into the library, where Chicagoans were standing in line to check out books. And not just books about and by the Obamas, but the kind of books public libraries still carry all over this country: bestsellers, kids’ books, serious fiction. Yes, reader, they had literary fiction there, full of all the dark thoughts and imaginative detours and politically incorrect musings available to mankind. This deeply touched my writer’s heart. Nothing has the potential to counter narrow-mindedness like fiction. Presiding over this scene is Nisenbaum’s room-length mural depicting a single day in a library. Beneath it real life was zipping along. It was crowded! Aliza Nisenbaum, “Reading Circles/Weaving Dreams/Seeding Futures.” Adjacent is what I regard as the crown jewel of the Obama Center, the quieter President’s Reading Room. This book-lined study is stocked with titles chosen by Michelle and Barack. Strangers were sitting around a big table together, reading. The shelves are full of not just history and biography, but poetry and fiction, and not necessarily of the sanitized variety. I caught sight of a collection of stories by Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author recently canceled by some bookstores following the 2024 revelations of the decades-long cover-up of Munro’s second husband’s sexual abuse of the youngest daughter from her first marriage. But nothing censorial here. This is the American spirit of freedom in full bloom. Bill Maher did a riff on the Obama Center right after it opened in which he made the arguable point that too much money was spent and we didn’t need a three-quarter-of-a-billion-dollar park to remind us of the values embodied by Obama’s administration. That money would be better spent helping the people who elected him, he argued. I understand the spirit of his complaint, but he hadn’t been there yet. The physical experience of being in the space filled with people, in the middle of the city, surrounded by art and books and nature, all free and open to the public is, well, priceless. Margaret Hawkins is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University. Visit Margaret Hawkins’ website.

by Liz Goldner July 2, 2026 Joe Sohm, photograph from “American Mosaic,” celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. Music by composer Peter Boyer. Courtesy of Joe Sohm and Peter Boyer. I have never been a flag waiver or backyard patriot reveling in Fourth of July parades. But our nation’s birthday has always been a time to reflect on the familiar sights, sounds and images relating to the sweep and scope of America and Americana. This year, as we commemorate our country’s 250th anniversary, our reputed President attempted to co-opt this momentous holiday with a barbaric UFC fight on the White House lawn, a failed attempt to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool an “American flag blue,” and a highly partisan Trump rally on the National Mall after seeing most of the entertainment talent flee his sparsely attended Great American State Fair. As David Frum wrote in “The Atlantic” that “Trump has made a pitiful shambles of what should have been a glorious moment.” Jesse Wilcox Smith, “Have YOU a Red Cross Service Flag?,” 1918, print, 32 x 25”. Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Stockbridge, MA. Conversely, President Obama said at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, "It is our greatest inheritance, the story of America at its best, because it reflects a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens, and the possibility that, despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together." Regardless of what activities our current president engages in to make a hash of our semiquincentennial, I am celebrating my own memories of the sights and sounds of our country, accumulated over a lifetime, in the belief that we have arrived at a pivotal moment, and that we will overcome the nation’s current travails. Having grown up in three of the original 13 colonies, I lived in and visited homes with architecture inspired by the old world Europe. I passed by homes with signs reading, “Washington Slept Here.” I visited Colonial Williamsburg, the reconstructed 18th century Virginia town with costumed actors portraying historical figures, and hiked the Appalachian Trail, which extends through 14 Eastern states. I visited a replica of the Mayflower near Cape Cod, and the nearby re-creation of the original Plymouth Colony. I walked to the top of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, MA, with its displays commemorating the establishment of many New England towns. Tim O’Brien, “Vote!,” 2020, oil on board, 19 ¼ x 12 3/4”. Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Stockbridge, MA. I have lived with the sounds of Americana, including but well beyond the patriotic marches of John Philip Sousa. These include music extolling America’s grandeur by composers like George Gershwin (“Porgy and Bess”), Charles Ives (“Three Places in New England”), Aaron Copland (“Appalachian Spring”), and Leonard Bernstein (“On the Town”). In Junior High, I learned the words of Emma Lazarus’s sonnet, “The New Colossus” (famously inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty) by singing the poem’s final stanza, “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” set to the music of Irving Berlin’s 1949 musical, “Miss Liberty.” At a recent concert by the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, CA, I was treated to a performance of a new addition to that compendium, “American Mosaic,” a multimedia collaboration by composer Peter Boyer with photographer of Americana Joe Sohm. The multimedia experience blends orchestral music, live narration, quotations from the Founders, and iconic images embracing people of all ages, races and ethnicities. The composition’s movements are evocatively titled “The New World,” “Rivers, Rails and Roads,” “Cities Arising,” “The North Star,” “The American Spirit” and “In Defense of Freedom.” Images of America seared into my consciousness include those depicting our ambitions struggles to establish and subsequent efforts to uphold and expand democratic rights. A personal favorite is a copy of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence, included among 250 artifacts included in the exhibition “In Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness” at the National Museum of American History. Norman Rockwell, “Freedom of Speech,” 1943, offset color lithograph on paper, 48 x 35 1/2”. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Norman Rockwell’s 1943 series of paintings, “The Four Freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear — are based on FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address. These familiar images continue to inspire me. Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” illustrates a working-class man speaking courageously to an attentive crowd. It serves as an antidote to today’s dysfunctional political climate and honors the many fearless citizens who refuse to accept the current regime’s efforts to destroy so many constitutional rights. John Falter, “Family Portrait on the Fourth,” 1952, cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post, July 5, 1952. Courtesy of the Saturday Evening Post Archive. Other images that memorably express American liberty include Jessie Willcox Smith’s “Have YOU a Red Cross Service Flag?” (1918), created during World War I, and Tim O’Brien’s dramatic “Vote” (2020), from a time of attempted voter repression, especially for people of color. There is also John Falter’s “Family Portrait on the Fourth” (1952), which served as a cover illustration for the “Saturday Evening Post.” The sights, sounds and images of our country not only help to illustrate and reflect the ideals of America's evolving story, they strengthen the values that we celebrate. As Michelle Obama remarked at the Obama Center opening, “… you all have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that when we truly see each other, when we strive to bring out the best in ourselves and one another, oh, there is no limit to how high we can go.” Liz Goldner is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009. Liz Goldner’s Website.

by Bill Lasarow June 6, 2026 Jenny Holzer, “Protect Me From What I Want,” 1987, embroidered hat. Courtesy of the University of Iowa Libraries. But first … It is now well established that the billionaire Ellisons’ absorption of CBS, etc., was a political, not a business decision. The publicly stated reason for the cancellation of “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” was transparently false, and that has been followed by the effective cancellation of “60 Minutes.” Soon enough, this media conglomerate, which will also include CNN, will be unrecognizable, recast in accordance with the vision and at the order of one man using the power of the federal government to censor speech that he hates (truly). Does the eradication of the First Amendment remain in doubt? Former Republicans even now invoke the word “socialism” as though it were a curse word, even as the most socialistic government in American history calls private sector winners and losers. Let’s be clear: these people are just getting started. When First Amendment rights of speech and expression apply only to their own partisans, there are no First Amendment rights at all. And the murdering of 60 Minutes lays it all to rest. I do have a rather obvious suggestion. Either NBC or ABC should poach the 60 Minutes team and simply move the program to its network. Good economics. There are four major components that make up the Fascist Party’s constituency. The central and most militant group consists of the true fascists and Nazis, xenophobes at their core. Then there are the descendants of the traitorous Confederacy, who may have given up on slavery, but who persist in their deeply felt racism. Third are the homophobes for whom transgender female (formerly male) athletes serve their desire to end same-sex marriage and the legalized practice of homosexuality in any form. And fourth are the misogynists who favor the reduction or elimination of women’s rights — both reproductive and voting — and equal access to the workplace. Nari Ward, “Duty Colossus,” 2011, dhow boat, metal, hemlock wood bamboo, metal chimney, copper drum, used furniture and Plexiglas. Courtesy of the artist. I’ve left of the Christian fundamentalists for last because they have every right to their faith beliefs under the Constitution. As such, they are the one group that forms a legitimate opposition constituency. But their desire to impose their faith principles on the rest of us is wrong, both morally and in terms of the Founders’ Age of Reason principles and beliefs. Most were Deists (with some exceptions) who wanted nothing to do with the form of Christianity that modern fundamentalism represents. Today’s conservative Christians regard America as a Christian nation and strongly oppose the separation of church and state that the Founders stipulated. No, America is not a Christian nation; it was founded and conceived as a secular government that is legally constrained from imposing ANY religion upon its citizens. Which brings me to the Democratic Party. It is easy to understand that the economy is, if anything, even more the issue of greatest concern to voters than it was in 2024. The actual policies, such as they are, of the Mafia Regime have noticeably weakened the economy, not to mention our national security. It does make sense that Democrats have been racking up off-year election victories on the mantra of affordability, with a strong side order of corruption. But the continuing and intentional dismantling of democracy and the rule of law are the real enemies from within that drive affordability, and I would like to see those dots connected by Democratic candidates. Shahzia Sikander, “Pleasure Pillars,” 2001, vegetable color, dry pigment, and watercolor on tea-stained wasli paper, 17 x 12”. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. I would like to see Democratic candidates explicitly reject the Fascist Party’s four major voting blocs and make it abundantly clear that they will find no home in the Democratic Party. Not now, not ever. Doing so would help draw the contrast between the Founders’ vision and the anti-American vision that each represents — xenophobia, racism, sexism, and homophobia. I would like to hear Democratic Party leaders and candidates use that language and call out such voters as unwelcome in a democracy and specifically within the Democratic Party. I would like to hear them reject such voters and not back down. There remain millions of conservatives who simply do not have a political home, but that is their problem. They will need to form a new leadership with the patience and fortitude to rebuild. That is not the Democrats problem. Worse, to address voters as though this version of the former Republican Party were still the political opposition will make the much-needed blue tidal wave in November less likely and less massive. Make no mistake, we need a massive blue wave this November, and that wave must continue for some years to come. The single greatest success of the anti-American Mafia Regime has been to energetically undermine free and fair elections, the most foundational ingredient of any democracy. Consider the core falsehood that Caligula and his allies employ to undermine free and fair elections: fraud. Repeated without any evidence, it is a tactic that Republicans have used since the long-ago time of Newt Gingrich’s speakership. Gingrich’s big idea was to cast Democrats not as the loyal opposition but as the enemy. Sung Tieu and Vu Thi Hanh, “They Have Eyes, But They See Not, They Have Ears, But They Hear Not,” installation view (left) and detail (right), 2026, aluminum foil, aluminum, wood, magnet, lacquer dimensions vary. Courtesy of Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg. The history of health care coverage is a prime example of this shift. Bill Clinton sought to create a public health insurance plan in 1993 — referred to as Hillarycare because Hillary Clinton headed the Task Force on National Health Care Reform — that would have mandated employers to provide all employees with health insurance. There were conservative arguments against what they characterized as a “top-down big government” program, arguing that far from liberating families from the costs and uncertainties of the a profit-driven health insurance industry. It would do the opposite. Two factors doomed that plan. First, congressional Democrats never fully unified behind it. Second was “Harry and Louise,” a TV ad that ran for a full year claiming that far from making life more secure Hillarycare would subject families to a confusing and repressive bureaucracy. The formula has become all too familiar. Republicans characterize any major government program as “bureaucratic” and “socialistic” but offer no explanation or evidence how or why. Health care is such a pertinent example of malfeasance because of the existence of Medicare and Medicaid. These are big government programs to be sure, and they work. Yinka Shonibare, “Moving Up,” 2021, fibreglas mannequins, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, bespoke globes, brass, leather, hemp rope, paper, various toys, cotton, silk, steel, aluminum and painted wood, 90 1/2 x 141 3/4 x 98 1/2”. Courtesy of the artist. But rather than keeping it simple by expanding both to include the broad working age middle class, Democrats sought to reshape health care to resemble the free market. As though universal health coverage paid for with tax dollars would somehow destroy the free market any more than public education or highways do. If part of their intent was to soften Republican resistance or attract the moderate wing of those voters, instead it weakened the party’s political relationship with many of its own voters. Intended as a free market model, Hillarycare nonetheless allowed Republicans to ignore the details. Hillarycare was still “big government socialism.” Many liberals who had called for Medicare expansion for thirty years felt little excitement, and some felt politically homeless. When we move ahead to the Affordable Care Act, which of course did finally pass in 2010, it was tagged by Republicans as “Obamacare” and was again intentionally based on a free market model. It was first designed by the conservative Heritage Foundation and implemented in one state by a Republican governor. In spite of making the same mistake, and very nearly being repealed in 2017 (but for John McCain’s famous thumbs down, it would have been), the law reduced the number of uninsured Americans by half and gradually gained the kind of polling numbers it enjoys today — about 59% favorability. That did not prevent Republican leadership from calling it a “train wreck” — as usual without any evidence or even an explanation, just the terminology. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Ceremonial Arch Honoring Service Workers in the New Service Economy, Installation IV,” 2016–17, 5,000 hand-signed dirty work gloves from 13 New York City municipal and state agencies, steel armature. Installation at the Queen’s Museum, 2016-17. Photo courtesy of Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. This is essentially where we find ourselves today, only now confronted by the far greater evils of fascism and mafia criminality. No matter whether a given Democrat is a moderate or a social democrat, from Caligula on down the language of the opposition stays the same, marked by the same absence of evidence or a reasoned case. Meanwhile, I worry that even following a successful wave election this November that Democrats may still fail to articulate their liberalism and demonstrate a commitment to what that means. As we draw deeper into the election season my hope is that Democrats will sell what makes them Democrats and not fall into an old trap. And while they are at it, let anyone who is a racist, sexist, xenophobe, and/or homophobe know that they should stay at home with the one party that wants them. They can have ‘em. Bill Lasarow, Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (1987); and Visual Art Source (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

by Mark Van Proyen June 6, 2026 Ranu Mukherjee, “A Place to Find the Light,” 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. May 19, 2026 should have been a day that would live in infamy, if anybody had bothered to pay close attention. That was the day that Vice-President J.D. Vance stood in for an absent Press Secretary Karoline Levitt, who was away on maternity leave. Suffice it to say that for many reasons this was no normal press briefing. One of those was damage control pertaining to President Trump’s disappointing visit to China (May 12 to 15), during which Chinese President Xi Jinping clearly took the upper hand on the Strait of Hormuz, Taiwan, and tariffs. Trump all but assured Xi that the U.S. would not come to Taiwan’s aid if the mainland were to attack, signaling that by indefinitely delaying a multi-billion arms package for the island nation. In return, Trump got almost nothing in return beyond a Chinese promise to buy 200 Boeing passenger jets. Four days after Trump returned home, Russian President Vladimir Putin went to China to meet with Xi, walking away with 21 separate trade deals. During the three-day visit with Trump, Xi played him like a Stradivarius, first by refusing to greet him when he landed and then having a bevy of youthful tweeners flank Trump as he shambled toward an awaiting limousine — a pointed jab at Trump’s connections to the ongoing Jeffery Epstein scandal. Indo-Pacific allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines took notice of the whole display. Japan is already increasing its defense budget. “Bust of Commodus as Hercules,” c. 192 AD, carrara marble, h. 52 1/4”. Courtesy of the Capitoline Museums, Rome. Xi made the point that Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy ran the risk of falling into a Thucydides trap, which should have been taken as a thinly veiled threat had Trump only known who Thucydides was. His very presence as the American president made Xi’s case, and Trump’s ignorance closed it. The reference of course was to the Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian conflict between Athens and Sparta that took place from 434 to 404 BCE. The Spartans finally won, forcing the Athenians to relinquish most of their powerful navy, leading to an end of their maritime empire and the “golden age” built by it. Recent political scientists have over-simplified the idea as referring to the tendency of an established power to miscalculate the use of force into a disastrous conflict when a new rival power arises. That was what Xi meant when he spoke to Trump, but Thucydides had more to say that bears on the current situation. Indeed, Sparta did win the war, but it was not very good at winning the peace. In a matter of a few years, Athens regained its independence. Soon after came the age of Athenian philosophy, where new empires of the mind were built in the absence of the old maritime empire. This final point highlights the current US-China situation. During the past two decades, the US has spent about 5 trillion dollars on regime change wars that were partial or complete failures. During that same time, China has engaged in no military conflicts, although it has provided weapons to other combatants. What China has done is spend a similar amount of capital on a massive global infrastructure build-out from which it is now reaping exponentially greater benefits. This is the long game, and China is winning. One measure of their success lies in trade imbalances ($203 billion in 2025, down about $33 billion from the previous year) and the amount of US Treasuries held by China (currently about $233 billion). These statistics indicate that the newly emerging “empire of the mind” is measured in the use of money as a weapon, as opposed the ancient use of ideas for the same purpose. When Trump returned home, he was greeted with yet another sharp drop in poll numbers, his negatives dropping to an almost two-to-one disapproval rating. While the aging and increasingly incoherent President recovered from jetlag, J.D. Vance stepped up to the podium. His effort was directed at stopping the bleeding and to righting the Republican’s sinking ship. Giuseppe Penone, “Idee di Pietra,” 2017, bronze and stone installation, Gstaad, Switzerland. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, New York. Photo: Marcus Veith. His May 19th address to the press was much more than a standard exercise of media management. It was a stump speech that tried to reset the entire tone of the Trump administration at a time when it was and still is hemorrhaging supporters six months before the upcoming mid-term election. Vance was sharp, affable, confident and a bit smarmy in ways reminiscent of George Bush Jr. He re-affirmed his Catholicism while backing away from his recent criticism of Pope Leo XIV’s support for migrants and refugees, at that point a feeble bone-toss to offended American Catholics. At several junctures he was outright obsequious when referring to Trump’s stewardship of the war in Iran and the economic consequences stemming from it. In short, he was trying to rally disaffected supporters while not undermining the dotard-in-Chief … too much. The question is, who was Vance rallying support for? The obvious answer was himself. He is only 41 years old, but his political fortunes are tied to Trump and there can be no untying of that knot, no distancing himself from Trump administration policy mistakes. Instead, he drenched his appeal in rhetorical perfume. He is, after all, the Vice-President of an administration that has started an unnecessary war without the legally required Congressional authorization, a war most noteworthy for being a tactical success and a strategic failure of epic proportions. William Hogarth, “Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Téte á Téte,” c. 1743, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 35 7/8”. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London. That same administration will face a well-deserved tsunami of impeachment proceedings come January if it cannot contrive a way to steal the mid-term elections (lord knows it’s been trying), portending a two-year parade of lame duck shenanigans. Vance’s only chance for any political future is to win the Republican nomination in 2028 in hopes that the Democratic nominee will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the campaign trail. Judging from the amount of sheer denial with which the Democrats have greeted their much-delayed Autopsy report about the 2024 election, such a self-destruction cannot be dismissed. In any event, Vance’s nomination is itself less then certain, as Marco Rubio is also making noises about seeking it by calling for an invasion of Cuba, claiming on May 21 that it is a “national security” threat. But the very next day Trump announced that a ceasefire had been negotiated with Iran, with a framework for ending hostilities very close to follow. The stock market responded accordingly. Then on May 23 Trump threw cold water on the hope for peace by walking back his statement from the previous day. On Memorial Day, US forces attacked Iran in what was called a “defensive strike,” even though the Iranians were abiding by the terms of the 30-day cease fire that had lasted five days. In response, the Iranians fired ballistic missiles at American bases in Kuwait, missiles that supposedly had been destroyed. Both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains at a virtual standstill. Trump’s final humiliation is that sticking with the Obama administration’s JCPOA agreement with Iran was the best deal he could have gotten. In 2017, he ripped it up, and, after a costly military misadventure, it is clear that he can do no better. Eventually, we may have to learn to live with a future Iran more determined than ever to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Maurizio Cattelan, “No,” 2021, silicone, rubber, natural hair, clothing, boots and paper bag, 39 3/4 x 16 1/8 x 17”. Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Meanwhile, also on May 23, China deployed over 100 military ships around the island of Taiwan, rehearsing a blockade strategy at a much larger scale than previously undertaken. This may be the plan for how the PRC plans to force Taiwan to capitulate without conducting an outright invasion of the island. NVIDA CEO Jensen Huang recently claimed that Taiwan is at the center of the AI revolution because it is the place where high performance computer chips are designed and manufactured. If that is true, a peaceful takeover might have uniquely 21st century consequences that are yet to be fully imagined. Mark Van Proyen has written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. In 2020, he retired from the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught Painting and Art History. From 2003 to 2018, he was a corresponding editor for Art in America. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Bill Lasarow and DeWitt Cheng. Photo credit: Mary Ijichi

by Margaret Hawkins June 6, 2026 Hilma af Kint, “Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece,” 1915, tempera on paper, 59 7/8 x 72 7/8”. Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum, New York. “Until we are able to look at people who have come to radically different conclusions about the world and know that we are each other’s people, we are sunk.” — Allie n Steve, The Chicago Reader At the end of every semester, I ask students to write about what they learned. I find out what worked, what’s important to them, and where I went wrong. Sometimes they leave with a completely different experience than I thought I’d delivered. Some of these things I already know. I’ve watched their writing improve, seen how in a few short months they abandon cliché and embrace fresher and more precise language, which in turn allows for deeper expressiveness. They experiment with form and voice, and broach difficult subjects in brave and poetic ways. Tonika Lewis Johnson, “Folded Map Project: 6900 South Ashland Avenue and 6950 North Ashland Avenue,” 2020. Courtesy of the artist and the Chicago Community Trust. Reading their essays, I always hope to see they’ve fallen in love with some of the authors I hold in esteem. I want them to say they have taken up my campaigns, signed on to my crusade against adverb bloat. Sometimes they have. More often, though, they write about something I don’t associate with writing: community. I was going to say likeminded community, but it’s not even that. Repeatedly, they say what they most valued about the class was the workshop format, sitting in a circle rather than rows, listening to each other, being listened to. Every semester I see students excited by the respect and attention given their work by those who are not like them, people they formerly never would have talked with, and the opportunity to read and respect the work of those same people. They report, over and over again, how surprised they are to feel safe in the company of others. There’s a lot of talk among commentators about the coddled younger generation(s) demanding too much safety in their discourse. It’s my impression that college students don’t want safety so much as connection. They are lonely. They are hungry for civilized human interaction and, at the same time and for good reason, are afraid of it. What makes it possible in these classes I teach is Art. Talking about it, reading it, and, especially, making it allows people to be different together, and to be so with respect and curiosity. Differences don’t disappear. On the contrary, they more than coexist. They shine. They feel exciting, engaging, and if not blandly safe, then safe enough in the very act of dialogue. Zen garden at Chicago Botanic Garden. The same week I was reading these student reflections a guy showed up at my house to fix the garage door opener. While he worked, I noticed unusual sounds coming out of his truck. At first, I thought it was an odd phone ringer, but its hypnotic, atonal monotony began to take shape. The sound was structured, if not exactly melodic, and I realized it was music. It began to harmonize with the sounds and rhythms of my husband sweeping sand in circles into cracks between the patio stones. I thought of the raked sand in the Zen garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden and with that realization I fell into a mild trance. I stood watching and listening for a while, transported to someplace both calm and exciting while remaining in my own back yard. When we were settling the bill, I asked the repairman about the sounds emanating from his truck. He said it was techno music by a contemporary French composer. It turned out the repairman was a professional violist who performs chamber music. Later he sent a link. Jonathan Fitoussi, “Plein Soleil,” 2020, video of ambient music, 47 minutes, 50 seconds. I don’t normally listen to music or podcasts when I walk my dog, but now I listen to the French techno composer Jonathan Fitoussi and enjoy the walk in a new way. It makes me feel disembodied, like I’m in outer space looking down on the dog, the bushes and myself, and that we are all one. I wouldn’t know about this without having spoken with the repairman who turned out to be an artist. Which brings me back to what I learned from my writing students about being transgender (book recommendation below), about volcano parties, and the fact that these days girls get to play trombone. A self-described mobile gender sound artist and teaching colleague of mine calls themself Allie n Steve. I’m using the non-binary plural here, but they are quoted in an interview in The Chicago Reader that they don’t care much about pronouns, that other people are entitled to their own view of them. Their children, they point out, call them Dad. In a world where people are dedicated to and even proud of not getting along, where only Republican Supreme Court justices get invited to state dinners and families break up over politics, art is a way to get through it all. Art goes deeper, it digs under the wall of differences. It refuses to divide neatly into opposites. Art blurs boundaries. David Lang interview on Freakonomics (click image to listen). In an interview with Steven Dubner on his Freakonomics podcast, Pulitzer Prize-winning classical composer David Lang, known most recently for his oratorio based on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” described a musical epiphany he had at a soccer match in the UK. Listening to fifty thousand people sing “incredibly lewd” (his description) songs in harmony jolted his imagination. It was the democracy of the united voices that moved him, he says. The only requirement for joining the chorus was the belief that the home team should win. I see it every semester. People put aside differences and listen to each other’s stories and essays for a few hours a week for a few months of their life and they start to think more broadly. It’s not a coincidence. Art is a different way to live in the world than the usual judging, competing, and rushing. It doesn’t erase differences; it might even highlight them. But it also broadens context, illuminates a web of connectedness we forget exists. A current runs between us, a hum you can feel if you listen for it. Art is one of the best ways to make that happen. Margaret Hawkins is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University. Visit Margaret Hawkins’ website.

by Bill Lasarow May 2, 2026 Los Angeles, California Ai Wei Wei, “Oil Spills,” 2006, glazed porcelain in ten parts, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Artsy, artsy.net. But first … A downright hilarious irony having to do with Caligula’s arrogant, buried-in-his-ballroom bubble mismanagement of his little excursion in Iran: the price of gasoline at the pump is the equivalent of a Big Socialist Government’s implementing the price-per-gallon increase to fund the transition to renewables. Despite the overt hostility of the American Fascist Party to solar, wind, etc., the promise of much more expensive fossil fuel could hardly be better designed to get more EVs sold (a 14% increase in March sales was the immediate response to this adventure). Where might this force other environmental practices in the private sector? My best guess is that the response of consumers and private companies over the next year and beyond will far outstrip any of the nonsense “money saving” policies of this so-called government. Combating climate change, it turns out, may never have had a more committed friend. Or more to the point, a more useful enemy. The first punchline that the recent film “Nuremberg” delivers is a familiar courtroom drama. This is the point in the trial and the screenplay in which Hermann Göring, who has been using the psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Kelly as a foil to prepare for this very moment, is on the verge of avoiding the death penalty. Just as it appears that Göring has finally won his joust with lead prosecutor Robert Jackson, one final question comes from the British solicitor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe: “Do you still believe in Hitler?” The historical record of Göring’s response: “I am not here to deify or glorify Hitler. I am here to say that I have kept my pledge [to him], even now, because I believe in keeping an oath of loyalty not only in good times but also in bad.” Gerhard Richter, “Abstract Painting,” 1990 oil on canvas. Courtesy of Gerhard Richter. The prior sword play recedes, rendered unnecessary all along. And when we cut to the chase, the screenplay’s Göring must still say “Sieg Heil.” What does the record say? Now we can call that up … amazing. The basic details are historical. But that scene is still a writer’s conceit. The story could have been written another way: Göring is not found guilty of crimes against humanity punishable by death. Then in his mid-50s, a lifetime barring him from public life would have meant something, so long as it was enforced. Albert Speer was incarcerated in the unique prison at Spandau for 20 years. Göring would have been able to rejoin his wife and daughter, at least on occasion, who knows, he might have also been freed after 20 years to enjoy the kind of forgiving, if misguided, celebrity that his more contrite colleague gained as he aged and released books that so many of us were eager to read. But the real closing statement occurs in what plays as an epilogue. Dr. Kelly concludes in his new book about Göring more or less what Hannah Arendt expressed in “The Banality of Evil.” A confluence of a group of like-minded people is required to oversee great public benefit. But such groups also are formed to commit great and deadly injustices committed with alacrity. Because in America the model of organized crime has long been the mafia, the governing model of fascism in Europe here resembles an extortion racket. The Emoluments Clause? Voting rights? Racial and gender equity? Without meaningful regulation and enforcement the mafia boss (Caligula of course) simply does as he pleases, no matter the provisions and principles of the Constitution. The broadest expression of his own militia on the ground, ICE (… and others), is a direct product of threats of violence that often begin with the dictator’s social media proclamations. After a decade of insults and death threats the overall social decay has organically metastasized and escalated. The transparent greed of the ruling family drives decision-making on an ascending curve, up to and including the shaping of foreign policy and alliances based on radically favorable business deals. Taryn Simon, “A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII,” 2011, archival inkhet prints comprised of 4 components, overall 84 x 191 1/4”. Courtesy of © Taryn Simon and Gagosian Gallery, New York. Then there are the foot soldiers, themselves cannon fodder who either sign up in hopes of their own payday, or who do so willingly because they believe that the progress of women, minorities and immigrants pose a threat … to what exactly? Hitler convinced much of the German public that the Jews and other minority groups posed an existential threat to some racially pure German society that they only imagined. Their notion of science, then and now, was to place the cart before the horse. In exchange we give up our personal freedom to varying degrees and are expected to passively expose ourselves to the possibility of accepting the dismantling of the middle class and the social safety net. And so we have stepped irretrievably away from the era shaped by the Great Depression, the Second World War, the launch of a system of international law that began with the Nuremberg Trials and lead to the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations, the recovery of Europe and Asia enabled by the Marshall Plan, and the social miracles produced by key New Deal and Great Society programs. Trevor Paglen, “They Watch the Moon,” 2010, C-Print, 36 x 48”. Courtesy of the artist There is now a small class of overseers empowered to vet and issue orders without legal or moral constraints, guided only by the predatory instincts of the worst among us. Those orders ultimately come, directly or indirectly, from the one person at the top of the power pyramid. We are now living in an America where, however dishonestly and illegally achieved, the mafia model and the culture it logically produces are today operating the U.S. federal government. The worst barbarism of the Nazi Party has not come to the Fascist Party of America because so many Americans, aware of that past history and influenced by the shining example of our own Civil Rights Movement, refuse to give in. The danger of a future de-Nazification, in the event the war was lost, was well understood by the Nazis. Hitler himself issued the Nero Decree, ordering the self-destruction of the German nation, knowing very well that the Allies would uncover the death camps. Göring and his fellow collaborators understood the consequences of this very well. So does Caligula and his inner circle, who have thankfully not yet approached the ultimate moral horror of the Final Solution. It is millions of Americans engaged in a vast and energetic backlash who are to be thanked for that. And therein lies the next great era of our history. The opportunity lies before us to reinvent the Founders’ vision grounded on a stronger framework and a fresh dedication to the moral principles that can no longer be taken for granted. Shimon Attie, “Almstadtstrasse 5 (formerly Grenadierstrasse 24): Slide projection of former Jewish resident and hat shop, ca. 1930, Berlin,” 1993, color photograph and on-location installation. With that in mind, it is worth recounting the final scene of the movie “Nuremberg” verbatim: Ori Gersht, “Untitled 02 (Amalgamation),” 2024, archival pigment print, 48 1/2 x 39 1/4”. Courtesy of Tally Dunn Gallery, Dallas. Interviewer: I have to be honest, Dr. Kelley. I find some of the conclusions in your book quite unbelievable. You were dealing with the Nazis, who you must admit are unique people. Dr. Douglas Kelley: They are not unique people. There are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today. Interviewer: Not in America. Kelley: Yes, in America. Their personality patterns are not obscure. There are people who want to be in power. And while you say they don’t exist here, I would say I’m quite certain there are people in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half the American public if they knew they could gain control of the other half. Interviewer: Doctor, please. Kelley: They stoke hatred. It’s what Hitler and Göring did, and it is textbook. And if you think the next time it happens, we’re going to recognize it because they’re wearing scary uniforms, you’re out of your damn mind. Interviewer: More with our panel when we return. [Kelley begins to leave and a producer speaks to him] Producer: Yeah, uh-huh. They’re not going to invite you to stay for the next segment. Let’s go. And just so you know, trashing our country is probably not the best way to sell your book. # # # Magdelena Abakanowicz, “Agora,” 2006, hollow, seamless, rusted iron, each 106 figures are 9 feet tall. Courtesy of Polish Ministry of Culture and Grant Park, Chicago. For the record, Kelley’s biography in brief is that growing up he fought a fascination with suicide. His book, “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” indeed did not sell. He was very active in his field of study, the psychological motivations of criminals. He struggled with alcoholism. At the age of 45 he suffered a burn in a minor kitchen accident. His wife and three children watched in horror as he drank down a potassium cyanide capsule. And died. “Trashing the country is probably not the best way to sell your book.” Now that is a chilling and prescient punchline, and one that every American needs to engage in some soul searching about. The truth that Kelley exposed for all to reject: “If you think the next time it happens we’re going to recognize it because they’re wearing scary uniforms, you’re out of your damn mind.” So here we are, and the battle has been joined. Bill Lasarow, Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (1987); and Visual Art Source (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

by Liz Goldner May 2, 2026 Irvine, California Clare Romano, “Grand Canyon,” 1977, color colagraph on wove paper, 56 1/2 x 76 1/4”. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. In March 2025, our government posted to its Whitehouse website, “The widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.” The website also asserts: “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” Lewis Hine, “Climbing into America,” 1905 printed in 1930s, gelatin silver print, 24 1/2 x 19 3/8”. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Eschewing that directive, museums across our country are displaying historically accurate exhibitions celebrating our nation’s 250th anniversary or semiquincentennial. Two of these museums are mounting shows that authentically address America’s history and victories, its social changes, immigration as a major force in our culture, issues with indigenous people and those of color, struggles to achieve the freedoms that are at risk today, and much more. These historically oriented museums include the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., exhibiting “Dear America,” and the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, presenting “American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell.” “Dear America” (running through September 10, 2026) brings together more than 100 artworks, including prints, photos and drawings, exploring our country’s landscape, its people and concepts of freedom, most from the National Gallery’s extensive collection of American art. Robert Indiana, “Liberty ’76,” 1974-75 color screenprint on Lenox 100% Rag wove paper, 101 1/4 x 91 1/2”. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The exhibition’s first section, “Land,” is devoted to the grandeur of the American landscape, referred to as sites of wonder, belonging, survival, and memory. The paintings include the mist-shrouded “Tower at Tower Falls, Yellowstone” (1872) by Thomas Moran; Winslow Homer’s “Hudson River, Logging” (1891-1892), in which two loggers admire the magnificent scenery; the vibrantly colored nine-segment gridded “Grand Canyon” (1977), by Clare Romano; and “The Niagara Cascades” (2024), by Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma). James Montgomery Flagg, “I Want You for U.S. Army,” 1917, chromolithograph on paper. The paintings are accompanied by the gelatin silver print, “Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake, Denali National Park, Alaska” (1947), photographed by Ansel Adams to advance Alaska’s wilderness as the “most important campaign in which I have participated.” Mitch Epstein’s “Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Six Grandfathers, South Dakota” (2018) was shot with clouds partially obscuring the carved portraits, referencing the controversial history of the monument, as both an example and a symbol of broken treaties, given that the Memorial was built on Native American land. In the second section, “Community,” Tom Jones’ (Ho-Chunk Nation) painting “My Country, 'Tis of Thee” (2002) portrays an elderly Native American woman overwhelmed by a smiling angelic woman (a stand-in for the influx of white Americans) holding a large American flag over her. Several intense portraits by Sedrick E. Huckaby reveal the emergence of new ways of depicting Black Americans in the 21st century. His textured paint handling viscerally captures the emotions of people historically considered marginal, now aspiring to and often achieving entry into the middle class. Included also in this section is “The Family” (1976) series by Richard Avedon. Among his photos of politicians, media moguls and financiers are the more familiar images of Ralph Nader, Andrew Young, and President Jimmy Carter. The final section in “Dear America” addresses the concept of “Freedom,” starting with depictions of the American Revolution and the Civil War. These are followed by photos by Lewis Hine, “Climbing into America” (1905), a close-up of Italian immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, and Alfred Stieglitz’s “The Steerage” (1907), an overview of immigrants arriving as part of the mass movement of people, “fleeing oppression and seeking new opportunities,” over the four decades leading up to World Way I and the 1924 Immigration Act. Jumping several more decades ahead, Pop Art contextualized Robert Indiana’s “Liberty ’76” (1974–1975), created to celebrate the Bicentennial with the message that freedom is fundamental to our democracy. “American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell” (running June 6 to October 10, 2026) will present the history, sweep and scope of Americana from the Revolution to today. The exhibition explores how artists have illustrated our nation’s ideals and its evolution, creating legendary imagery in the process. Norman Rockwell, "Liberty Bell (Celebration),” 1976, cover illustration for American Artist, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum. Containing more than 250 works, including textiles, ceramics, paintings, prints, drawings and books, “American Stories” focuses on “the power of the image to express our aspirations, argue for social change, educate and entertain the populace, and bring light to dark moments.” The exhibition explains that America as an idea “is shaped, reflected, and honed” through many of these images. Galleries display historic and contemporary art works, chosen to inspire us to ponder the importance of illustrations contributing to our national narrative. “A Sense of Place” includes a series of works that relate the history of Niagara Falls, from early illustrations of its Indigenous ownership to paintings celebrating its natural grandeur, to images advertising its tourism industry, and finally to the Falls as a source of hydroelectric power. Images from the World Wars include the familiar James Montgomery Flagg’s “Uncle Sam Wants You for the U.S. Army” (1917), and J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” (1942). More politically oriented images by Tim O’Brien include “Go Back Where Your Came From” (2019), of the Statue of Liberty illustrated from the rear as she waves goodbye to immigrants, and his “Vote” (2020), of a young Black woman encouraging all of us to vote. Several compassionate paintings by Norman Rockwell, in his typically finely wrought realistic style, express political and social values such as democracy, service and integrity. These include 1943’s “Thanksgiving.” of a young homeless woman warming up food in the chilly outdoors. In “Golden Rule” (1961), a tightly knit group of people representing different religions, races and ethnicities stand harmoniously together, above the words, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Rockwell created his final painting, “Liberty Bell (Celebration)” (1976) a few years before he died, “to commemorate the birthday of the nation he had spent his whole life depicting.” Shonto Begay, “Navajo Blue Highway,” 2018, acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of © Shonto Begay and Art Bridges. Other topics in this vast exhibition are the natural world, innovation, the equal rights movements, and issues of Indigenous people. Shonto Begay’s painting “Navajo Blue Highway” (2018) focuses on a pickup truck carrying five Native American men and a dog, likely commuting from fields that could be in Gallup, Phoenix or Albuquerque back to their homes after a long day of working on the land. Its thick impasto brushwork, evoking the look of Vincent van Gogh’s nighttime paintings, conveys the intensity and determination of the Navajo people to survive and thrive. Under the partisan constrictions of the current administration, art exhibition statements can be subject to alterations and to the selective deletion of works. “Dear America” and “American Stories” demonstrate that curators and museum directors can still mount historically accurate displays that stimulate, educate and inspire us while refusing to align with the dicta of administration officials. These courageous exhibitions support our ongoing freedoms and democratic ideals at a time when these values are brazenly challenged. Liz Goldner is an award-winning art writer based in Irvine. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009. For further information: Liz Goldner’s Website.

by DeWitt Cheng May 2, 2026 San Francisco, California God Is Not Mocked Vergogna The papacy, GOPMAGA's new satanic scapeGOAT. Donald Rage-Tweets All Night Why Melania has her own Trump Tower apartment. Victory At Sea MAGA Greatest Generation dies nobly to protect the free flow of capital. There She Is, Miss World Peace A tearful, radiant Miss Iran joins President For Life Trump (and a leading Nobel Peace Prize hopeful) in wishing the killing to stop. Bagman-in-Chief Hot mess like never before. Madman Theory — Humor Him Happy End Times! Okay We Folded Flood the Strait of America! Back to the Stone Age Another day that will live in infamy (along with 2/28). The Climactic Holy War All our troubles, soon be over. DeWitt Cheng is an art writer/critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written for more than twenty years for regional and national publications, in print and online, He has written dozens of catalogue essays for artists, galleries and museums, and is the author of “Inside Out: The Paintings of William Harsh.” In addition, he served as the curator at Stanford Art Spaces from 2013 to 2016, and later Peninsula Museum of Art, from 2017 to 2020. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and Bill Lasarow. For more information: https://www.squarecylinder.com/contributors/dewitt-cheng/

by George Melrod March 28, 2026 Los Angeles, California   “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner William D. McPherson and A.J. Oliver, “The Scourged Back,” 1863, photograph. Originally published in Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863. Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois. What exactly does it   mean to make America great again? Apparently, it has a lot to do with actively whitewashing its past. The crusade kicked in exactly a year ago, in March 2025, when the White House issued its executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Accusing the Smithsonian of promoting a “divisive, race-centered ideology,” it directed the Interior Department to enact a broad review, and revise — or remove — any materials that cast American history in a negative or disparaging light. The names of Confederate generals were gleefully restored to army bases, using disingenuous logic. Descriptions of slavery, including the famous “The Scourged Back” photograph of the back of a slave crisscrossed by welts from whipping, were removed from signage, to historians’ dismay. Even positive tributes to admired icons like Harriet Tubman and deceased Black WWII veterans began to disappear. Jim Crow? Forget about it! We’re all just one big happy family! Tavares Strachan’s show at LACMA includes a room of whimsical ceramic sculptures from his “Inner Elder” series that are positioned in a field of fragrant rice grass. Courtesy of Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times. In striking synchronicity, two powerhouse Los Angeles museum shows now engage this issue of historical erasure and remembrance head-on. Even in ‘normal’ times they’d be profoundly moving, but given the moment, they feel bracingly vital. Tavares Strachan’s exuberant solo exhibition at LACMA, titled “The Day Tomorrow Began,”  mines unlikely joy and hope from the annals of neglect. Encompassing a staggering panoply of disparate mediums, the show offers an “excavation of histories that have been rendered invisible within mainstream narratives, particularly in relation to the Black diaspora.” The show opens with Strachan’s quixotic attempt at inclusion, his “Encyclopedia of Invisibility” which catalogs over 17,000 entries on people, places and events that the artist sees as unjustly ignored. It fills a giant volume set in a vitrine, while collaged pages swathe the walls in an effusive patchwork of photos, facts and artworks. The Encyclopedia’s foreword includes the warning: “Ralph Ellison reminded us that invisibility comes from a refusal to see.” Tavares Strachan poses with “Six Thousand Years,” which is made up of 2,000 panels from his “Encyclopedia of Invisibility.” The leather-bound tome contains 17,000 entries that the artist wrote to bring attention to little-known facts and Black trailblazers. Courtesy of Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times. Among Strachan’s pantheon of forgotten pioneers is Matthew Henson, the African American polar explorer who joined Robert Peary on seven journeys to the North Pole. He is represented by two tapestries. In homage to Henson, Strachan himself journeyed to the Pole in 2013, and planted a Bahamian flag sewn by his mother. Another is Robert Henry Lawrence, the first Black American Astronaut, who was selected for the Manned Orbital Laboratory program, but died in an accident in 1967. He’s depicted here by a small golden urn with a likeness of Lawrence’s head doubling as its cap. But it’s more than just an effigy; working with SpaceX, the artist launched a version of the piece into orbit in 2018, symbolically fulfilling Lawrence’s dream. Although the works themselves are modest, the aspirational vision informing them feels breathtaking. The exhibition finds its magic in a garden of fantastical ceramic vessels with portraits of figures like vocalist Nina Simone and Andrea Crabtree, the first Black female sea diver in the U.S. army, that are set amid a bed of fragrant rice grass, which sensually evokes scents and symbols from Ghana. Elsewhere, installations depicting a barbershop and laundromat, both centers of Black social life in America, are brought to life by costumed performers through spoken word and song — a form of oral history. Meanwhile, a gallery of char-black statues, setting colonial conquerors and freedom fighters against one another, are presented fused at their bases. Half of them hang upside down, the implicit critiques seasoned by a giddy dose of surrealism. Martin Puryear, “Tabernacle,” 2019, steel, red cedar, American cypress, pine, makore veneer, canvas, printed cotton fabric, glass, stainless steel, 74 x 90 x 96”. Courtesy of MOCA, Los Angeles. If Strachan’s work seems imbued with hopeful hints of transcendence, MOCA’s ambitious exhibition titled “Monuments”  confronts us with the relentless legacy of the past. Co-curated by Hamza Walker of The Brick and MOCA’s Bennett Simpson, along with Hannah Burstein, Paula Kroll and artist Kara Walker, this weighty survey juxtaposes actual decommissioned statuary with works by African American artists, some pre-existing and some created for the show. The dialogues are poetic, jarring, and often deeply sobering. From the get-go the show grounds viewers in the conflict, with hunks of the graffiti-covered pedestal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Richmond, VA, and just beyond, an allegorical figure of the Confederacy holding up a dying soldier and a laurel wreath. Flanking it are works by two paragons of historically resonant abstract sculpture: Martin Puryear, whose refined, cagey work hides a cannon inside a Civil War kepi hat, and Leonardo Drew, who gathered massive blocks of cotton into a towering minimalist wall. A statue of oceanic scientist Matthew Maury, seated before a giant globe, dominates the center of the room. An ardent Confederate loyalist, he dreamed of expanding slavery southward into a vast Pan-American empire. Leonardo Drew, “Number 363,” 2023, cotton and matte medium, 115 x 138 x 52”. Commissioned by The Brick. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins. An anxious hush hovers over the gallery presenting the Jefferson Davis statue, laid out on its side, spattered with paint, and surrounded by Andres Serrano’s looming Ku Klux Klan portraits peering out from within their hoods at the fallen idol. The most poignant face-off aligns statues of Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the infamous 1857 Dred Scot decision, and the obscure Wilmington, North Carolina publisher who stoked a murderous 1898 insurrection which overthrew the city’s elected biracial government. They stand opposite a wall of B&W photos from the early 1900s, by roving portrait photographer Hugh Mangum, of various anonymous Southerners, both Black and white, some overlaid atop each other on the irregular glass plate prints, gazing out in silent dignity. The caliber of contemporary African American art in this show is impressive, whether it’s the elegiac pieta-like photographs of Jon Henry, an update of the racist cinematic opus “Birth of a Nation” by Stan Douglas, or cast bronze landscapes of Ferguson, Missouri by Khalil Robert Irving. Installation view of “MONUMENTS,” October 23, 2025–May 3, 2026 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and The Brick. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. But the disparity in scale is formidable. Even off its pedestal, a giant double equestrian of Lee and Jackson manages to face down its counterpart, a full-sized copy of the fabled Dodge from “Dukes of Hazzard” that’s been puckishly set on end to parade the Stars and Bars on its roof. The asymmetry between these bombastic public statues, embodying the collective weight of civic authority, and the quirky visions of the individual artists selected to refute them echoes across the show. The contrast makes it clear how these monuments were not so much wistful memorials as symbols of power. The equestrian monuments of Generals Robert. E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Charlottesville, Virginia were already slated for removal when the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 rendered them toxic. The Lee statue was melted down into ingots, but the Jackson statue had a more interesting fate. It was obtained for artist Kara Walker to reimagine, which she does to stunning effect. Displayed separately at The Brick, the resulting work, titled “Unmanned Drone,” is perhaps the show’s most potent response to the trove of pro-Confederate iconography. Kara Walker, “Unmanned Drone,” 2025, bronze statue made from Charles Keck’s 1921 statue of Stonewall Jackson, which stood in Charlottesville, Virginia and was decommissioned in 2021, 156 x 132 x 56”. Courtesy of MOCA, Los Angeles. Photo: George Melrod. After mapping out various options Walker ultimately chose to disassemble and rebuild the statue, merging the figures of the famed Confederate general and his beloved horse, Little Sorrel. In the final work, the general’s stoic face is absent as the hulking, haunted beast rises up on its hooved legs, striding forward with the lifeless body of the fallen general laid out on its back. Exemplifying the baggage, and horror, of the Lost Cause legacy, with its Confederate nostalgia and all it stands for, the undead creature lurches forward like a reanimated Frankenstein. Now part of MOCA’s permanent collection, “Unmanned Drone” will remain in Los Angeles, where it will continue to provoke reaction and debate for years to come. As well it should. Much as we might yearn to exorcise the anguished specter of the past and put it behind us, it clearly stalks among us still. George Melrod  has written hundreds of articles on contemporary art and culture for such publications as ARTnews, Art in America, World Art, American Ceramics, Details, and Vogue, among others. In the 1990s, he was the New York critic for Sculpture magazine, and wrote a regular contemporary art column for Art & Antiques, for whom he worked as a Contributing Editor. A native New Yorker, he moved to LA in 1998, and has since contributed to websites such as artcritical and artillery. From 2007-2017 he served as editor-in-chief of art ltd. magazine.

by Mark Van Proyen March 28, 2026 Oakland, California Faith Ringgold, “Freedom the Grow (from the Story Quilt tradition),” c. 1990s, acrylic on canvas with fabric border (quilt), 72 x 72”. On February 23, the USS Gerald Ford made an unscheduled stop at Souda Bay on the island of Crete while on its way to rendezvous with a strike force in the eastern Mediterranean. The Ford, the most advanced aircraft carrier in the US Navy and the world, was previously deployed in the operation to support the “exfiltration” (read: kidnapping) of Nicholás Maduro in Venezuela. It can launch up to 75 advanced aircraft, while its support vessels include several guided missile destroyers capable of firing long-range Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. It was reported that the reason for the stop was to repair a problem with the ship’s plumbing system that caused its 4,500 crew members to wait in long lines before relieving themselves. One report claimed that the cause of the plumbing problem was sailors flushing undergarments into the ship’s toilets to undermine or delay what would be called Operation Epic Fury, scheduled to commence a few days later. At its outset Israeli and American military assets attacked over a thousand targets in Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other members of his inner circle. But make no mistake: the theocratic government in Iran has a number of deep layers of succession, meaning that its system is resilient to such decapitation. “What could possibly go wrong?” The Ford’s plumbing incident represents one of hundreds of potential answers to that question, reminding us of the many things that went awry in similar operations conducted against Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan during the past three decades. But, even more than those previous misadventures there was no time to think it through because the hasty timing of the operation had to work on a very tight schedule. President Trump gave his State of the Union address on February 24, making scant mention of any plans to attack Iran. Alan Sekula, “Panorama. Mid-Atlantic, November 1993” from “Fish Story,” 1989-95, chromogenic color print, dimensions variable (installation format). Poll numbers currently project that his party will lose at least two dozen seats in the House of Representatives and two seats or more in the Senate (a four seat switch would give Democrats majorities in both houses) in November’s mid-term elections, tying Trump’s hands for the remaining two years of his Presidency unless he can convince the country to rally around him as a wartime president. The initiation of hostilities that took place on February 28 fits that timeline perfectly, corresponding with the Jewish holiday of Purim while also taking place near the beginning of Ramadan to add insult to injury. To this add the distraction from the ever-worsening Epstein files controversy, which is still peeling away a steady stream of the president’s rank-and-file Republican supporters. Certainly, the situation in Iran had grown dire in January, with the unpopular government’s mass killing of dissident protestors by the tens of thousands. Estimates about the exact number of those murders vary widely, running from 20,000 to 50,000, with a government-imposed internet blackout accounting for the discrepancy. But Iran posed no imminent threat to the American homeland. Negotiations about Iran’s future nuclear capability were proceeding apace, with progress being reported by both sides, which might be one of the underlying reasons for the attack. Think back to the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration (the JCPOA) and ratified by the Senate in 2015. It was subsequently torn up by the Trump administration in 2018. Would a new nuclear deal be equally unacceptable to an already nuclear-armed Israel? And even if so, why should American foreign policy be beholden to that position at the risk of a wider regional war and major disruption of international petroleum commerce? Laura Aguilar, “Grounded # 114” from the “Grounded” series, 2006, inkjet print, 22 x 17”. Courtesy © Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016. Make no mistake: immanent threat is the key criterion for any presidential use of military force undertaken without Congressional approval, one of three enumerated by the 1973 War Powers Act. The other two require 48 hours notification to Congress after undertaking hostilities, and a limit of 60-90 days should any conflict last that long. In 1973, President Nixon vetoed that legislation, only to have his veto overruled by an overwhelming vote in Congress. To go beyond the parameters of that act would and should be an impeachable offense, if the quislings in Congress had any regard for their Constitutional oaths, which they clearly do not. This even holds true for some Democrats. In the Senate vote that took place on March 4, John Fetterman (D-PA) sided with the Republican majority to endorse the attacks, while Rand Paul (R-KY) voted with the minority. On March 5, the House of Representatives voted 219 to 212 to endorse the attacks six days after the fact. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spilled the tea on March 2. Addressing questions from the press, he stated that the rationale for the American attack was that we “knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, and we anticipated that Iran would retaliate against U.S. forces in the Gulf, and therefore we hit first to reduce American casualties.” Note the fuzzy logic of Rubio’s declaration. The next day, President Trump made a mealy-mouthed claim that it was he who convinced Israeli leadership to join the campaign, no doubt after some late-night telephone communication with Benjamin Netanyahu about dogs and the tails that wag them. Soon after that, it was revealed that it was Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff who had an evidence-free intuition that Iran was two weeks away from launching a nuclear attack on Israel — this after Iran’s nascent nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated” by last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer. Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison, “Fourth Lagoon, On Mapping, Mixing, and Territory.” Courtesy of the Harrison Family Trust. As always, we need to look at who benefits at whose expense. The first beneficiary will be the defense contractors who will make generous profits by replacing the armament stockpiles expended in the conflict. The second beneficiary will be the financial institutions who will gain from the debt incurred by the conflict, yet another case of public money going into private hands. Because the conflict has already spiked oil prices (as of publication it is running in the $110 range in a volatile market, up from about $60 at the start of the year) you can bet that the so-called energy sector will benefit, not from any direct government subsidy, but from rising fuel costs that have already been showing up at the gas pump, adding additional inflationary pressure to tariff-strapped consumers. Will the Trump administration benefit politically? If the conflict goes well, yes, although not enough to change its imploding poll numbers before the upcoming mid-term elections. If the conflict becomes a long-term quagmire like other recent Middle East military adventures, you can stick a fork into Trump’s global grift club, because it will be done. The fact that Trump is willing to gamble everything on the outcome of Operation Epic Fury indicates just how desperate he is, or how confident about nullifying the results of the mid-term elections in November. This latter point should be concerning, to say the least. The legislative battle over Trump’s Save America Act is worth watching, because it is a poorly disguised voter suppression bill intended to disenfranchise a large portion of the electorate who would be disinclined to support Trump. It also rests on shaky Constitutional grounds, as Article 1, Section 4 gives States the authority over the administrations of elections. If the so-called Save America Act fails congressional passage, the prospect of the Trump administration executing a pre-election false flag operation should not be dismissed. Harun Farocki, “Serious Games 1, Watson Is Down,” 2010, still from two-channel video, color, 8 minutes. Courtesy of Artforum, artforum.com . And so, a return to our initial consideration about what might go wrong. For example, what if China were to provide weapons to the Iranians? The Iranians have already used Chinese-made hypersonic cruise missiles to devastating effect on Israel and other Gulf States. Could medium range ballistic missiles be far behind? In the short term, the People’s Republic (PRC) benefits no matter which way the conflict goes, especially since China-flagged oil tankers are allowed to pass through the same Strait of Hormuz that has been blockaded by Iran to all other commercial traffic. Prior to that closure, Chinese oil tankers were already the largest plurality of maritime visitors traveling to and from the Gulf, inviting speculation about what might happen if the U.S. chose to blockade their passage. Would China use that as an opportunity to attack Taiwan? Given that 35 percent of U.S. Naval strike capabilities are in or near the Persian Gulf, close attention needs to be focused on the Taiwan situation, especially since Taiwanese petroleum reserves are running dangerously low because of the blockade. The same holds true for Japan and South Korea. In Korea, American air defense missile systems are being disassembled for transport to the Persian Gulf, creating a dangerous vulnerability.  U.S. strategic petroleum reserves are also running low, but Canadian production and oil stolen from Venezuela mitigates the risk of all-out fuel shortages. Because pump prices run about 5 weeks behind barrel spot prices, don’t be surprised if you see seven dollar-a-gallon gas by July 4th. The economic chain-reaction stemming from this will not be a good one. Walid Raad, “My Neck is thinner than a hair: Engines,” 1996-2001, one of 100 inkjet prints, 9 7/16 x 13 3/8”. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York. Russia, however, is the major beneficiary of Operation Epic Fury. The precipitous spike in oil prices puts a lot of money into Russia’s coffers, and Trump’s easing of sanctions on Russian oil makes it possible for India and other countries to purchase their energy needs from Vladimir Putin at a significant mark-up. Europe will soon have no choice but to follow suit. On March 6th it was reported that Russia has been providing targeting information about U.S. Mid-East deployments to the Iranians, adding additional risk to US military personnel. Trump’s foreign policy team has been suspiciously mute about this embarrassing fly in the geopolitical ointment. Another factor worth considering is what China could do with the $684 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds that it currently holds, down from the peak 1.4 trillion that it held in 2013, but still a relatively significant portion of the $35 trillion public debt that we carry, amounting to $230,000 per household. If China dumped its Treasury Bond holdings, significant economic stress could result, because other bond holders would very likely follow suit, especially since we are spending in excess of a billion dollars a day on this war of choice. While thinking about all of this, we should always remember that in war, truth is always the first casualty. [Note: Images in this article are drawn from contemporary and historical works that examine war, systems, and the instability of evidence. — Ed.] Mark Van Proyen  has written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. In 2020, he retired from the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught Painting and Art History. From 2003 to 2018, he was a corresponding editor for  Art in America . In 2025 he relaunched Square Cylinder with Bill Lasarow and DeWitt Cheng. Photo credit: Mary Ijichi

by Margaret Hawkins Chicago, Illinois March 28, 2026 Approximately one in 20 Americans suffers from severe mental illness. That comes to around 17 million. Multiply that number by three or four to represent each ill person’s closest family members and you begin to get an idea of how many Americans are impacted in life-changing ways by these devastating diseases. For many, mental illness is a final, unspeakable stain. Barb's high school graduation portrait, 1961. I spent much of my early life anticipating and, frankly, dreading the moment when I would assume responsibility for my older sister. Not that we spoke of it. Although Barb hadn’t been formally diagnosed and wouldn’t be for years, my family realized sometime in her late twenties that she was severely mentally ill. It didn’t take much research to conclude that she suffered from schizophrenia. But my parents were afraid and ashamed, and they didn’t discuss it openly. When Barb refused their early offers of gentle forms of help, they, already suspicious of the medical and psychiatric establishment, were at a loss as to what more to do.  So they kept to themselves, kept stiff upper lips, and took care of her at home. Barb was never treated, never medicated, never hospitalized. My parents were understandably terrified of relinquishing her to a notoriously cruel system that seemed the only recourse for families of the mentally ill in the 1970s. And they didn’t reach out for other kinds of support either. Shame, stigma, and fear kept my parents silent. This went on for over thirty years. I spent decades thinking and worrying about what to do when my turn came. The author and her sister Barb,  1959. Those decades went by, and my parents died, first my mother, then, ten years later, my father. Suddenly I was legal guardian to my 63-year-old sister, who now lived alone in the crumbling house we’d grown up in, which she refused to leave, even to carry the garbage from the back door to the alley. Nor would she answer the phone or make a call. She had no way of getting groceries, no funds of her own and, even if she had, no inclination to pay the many bills that piled up. Our father had handled all this, and he would bristle at any suggested changes. Now it was my turn, but without a network of support any change felt impossible. My farfetched hope was to get Barb psychiatric help while somehow honoring her wish to stay at home. I’d read about drugs that might alleviate some of her symptoms, symptoms that appeared to torment her and isolate her from even the most rudimentary human interactions. But how to connect her with a psychiatrist and get these drugs prescribed? How to get her to take them? That these things could in fact happen still feels like a miracle. Vincent Van Gogh, “Old Man in Sorrow (At Eternity’s Gate),” 1890, oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 25 3/4”. Courtesy of the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterio, The Netherlands. But it’s not a miracle available to most who suffer this type of condition. My sister had a place to stay, an advocate when she couldn’t advocate for herself, and a team of dedicated professionals — social worker Wendy Trafny, psychiatrist Dr. Steven Weinstein, and caregiver Yvonne Flowers — who stepped forward and went above and beyond their conventional duties to help Barb achieve a fuller life. Barb was lucky. People with severe mental illness are among the most marginalized people in America. Many of them land in prison or are otherwise institutionalized and forgotten; others live on the street. All of them deserve care and respect. Shelter and food. It shouldn’t be so difficult to ensure a decent life for these, our neighbors and fellow human beings, and it shouldn’t depend on luck but on well-conceived public policy. William Hogarth, “Scene in Bedlam,” 1835 , etching and engraving, 4 1/16 x 16”. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey. My book,  “At Home with Schizophrenia,”  is a revised and updated version of my earlier book, “How We Got Barb Back.” It tells my family’s story, beginning with Barb’s promising early life. Part One takes the reader through the inexplicable changes we observed in Barb, the climate of shame that surrounded mental illness when it struck my sister, my parents’ fears and the hopelessness that resulted in the stasis of their life with Barb over many years. Part Two describes what happened next. This book is an homage to people everywhere who suffer from severe mental illness, to those who care for and about them, and in particular to those who helped my family. It is also a plea to collectively shuck off the shame, stigma, and silence that surrounds mental illness. It is evidence that help and change are possible. But much work remains. Families caring for mentally ill loved ones still face terrible choices — medical, financial, and personal. Open discussion, better laws, community mental health care, a kinder and more compassionate public policy will all help. Simple respect for our fellow travelers is the heart of it. The Netherlands and the UK are light years ahead of the United States in how they handle this particularly human form of illness. Here we valorize independence and individualism, but it’s past time to embrace less selfish values.  I have seen that it is possible to reach someone who seems to be locked out of the world by this mysterious condition we know as schizophrenia. With a small dose of antipsychotics and the respect and help of many, my sister is now living a life my parents could hardly have imagined for her. It’s still not easy, but it’s possible.  Margaret Hawkins  is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University.  Visit  Margaret Hawkins’ website.