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Iowa Bluffs

Jarrod Shanahan

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This piece was originally published on October 4, 2023 and is one of a series of Trump-related articles we're republishing. Crossing the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa by car is an almost effortless glide, eliding entirely the forceful pull of the Great River and the centuries of violence greater still that harnessed its bucking current into an engine of commerce unsuitable for fishing, swimming, or drinking. It’s difficult to imagine that this momentary glimpse of blue in my peripheral vision was once the artery from which fortunes gushed or trickled, the playground where the nineteenth century’s Saint Hucks found death and adventure, and the vanishing horizon for the freedom of enslaved people sent ever-southward as the human traffic on which this nation’s wealth was built drew the entire southern social order into its own death spiral.

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Thankful for President Trump: Thanksgiving with Stop the Steal

Jarrod Shanahan

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This piece was originally published on November 29, 2020 and is one of a series of Trump-related articles we're republishing. On Thanksgiving morning supporters of President Trump’s doomed reelection effort descended on the Loop neighborhood of Chicago to raise the battle cry “Stop the Steal!” The “steal” in this tortured locution is the purported Democratic Party theft of the November presidential election, chronicled in a convoluted conspiracy theory that one conservative federal judge recently compared to “Frankenstein’s Monster,” as it is “haphazardly stitched together.”

The Show Must Go On

Jarrod Shanahan

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This piece was originally published on September 30, 2020 and is one of a series of Trump-related articles we're republishing. “It’s so great that we are all together in one place,” a middle-aged white woman gushed, almost directly in my ear. “Trump was sent by God!” I had other theories, but she was right about one thing. Donald Trump’s “Great American Comeback Tour” had brought me and roughly a thousand other souls together, far too closely for comfort, in Mosinee, Wisconsin – Trump country – as part of the President’s strategy to rally the hard-core of his electoral base leading up to the November election.

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The Future Belongs to the Mad

Jarrod Shanahan

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What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And ...

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Iowa Bluffs

Jarrod Shanahan

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“Indeed, we are all implicated in Iowa.”   –Heather Anne Swanson, “The Banality of the Anthropocene” Crossing the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa by car is an almost effortless glide, eliding entirely the forceful pull of ...

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Zoomers Go to Hell

Jarrod Shanahan

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This October marked the release of Hellraiser (2022), a putative reboot of the 1987 horror classic and the eleventh entry into the Hellraiser franchise. It is especially significant for the involvement of creator Clive Barker, who ...

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Hybrid Moments

Jarrod Shanahan

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On September 17th, 2022, I witnessed something long believed to be impossible: a reunion of “The Original Misfits,” founder, songwriter, and vocalist Glenn “Danzig” Anzalone, bassist Jerry “Only” Caiafa, and guitarist Paul “Doyle” Caiafa. Danzig and ...

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Listen: I Want To Believe Author A.M. Gittlitz Live in Chicago

Jarrod Shanahan

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On Friday, May 27th, Hard Crackers editor Jarrod Shanahan hosted author and Antifada host A.M. Gittlitz for a lively discussion of the latter’s book I Want To Believe (Pluto Press, 2020) at Pilsen Community Books in ...

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Death to The Walking Dead

Jarrod Shanahan

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After twelve years of blood and guts, AMC’s post-apocalyptic zombie epic The Walking Dead (TWD) is finally being laid to rest. With almost all of the original cast long torn to shreds since its 2010 debut, ...

Review of Earth II

Jarrod Shanahan

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Keanu Reeves clicks on the television, to be greeted with dire warnings of impending climate collapse. Antarctica is melting at a startling rate. The coming decades will be defined by death, disease, rampant flooding, rising seas, ...

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