Meredith ap Robert

Category: politics

  • Americans are the frog in the pot, part I: Grand Rapids

    Grand Rapids is a weird place to call home. Today it’s all breweries and hipsters and weed dispensaries and overpriced apartments. But growing up, it was Bland Rapids. A place so boring and unimaginative that corporations would come to town to trial new products. If the straight-laced, God-fearing people of Grand Rapids, Michigan, will buy…

  • Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

    Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

    In an airport that welcomes 50 million people every year, I’ve found a quiet corner. Tables empty. Outlets free. Plenty of seats at the bar. Just workless workers and captains of industry, keeping one another company in a world that’s waiting, between resignation and rebellion, for whatever’s next.

  • The religion of getting

    The religion of getting

    When I was 18, I worked as a barista. It wasn’t a bad job. But I will never forget the trainer, I’ll call him Sean, who—in addition to calling me a “PMS-y woman” during training—one day proclaimed, “I have the greatest job in the world.” 

  • Mental health, community, and giving a shit

    Mental health, community, and giving a shit

    When it comes to mental health, we have lots of misconceptions—and I think one of the biggest is that mental health difficulties are a phenomenon that occurs purely on the individual level, to be cured with the right balance of therapy, medication, and exercise. I know from personal experience that each of these can help…

  • Non-binary, but he/him is fine

    Non-binary, but he/him is fine

    I spent 30 years looking in the mirror trying to find myself, trying to make sense of myself. Or rather, trying to make sense of how I fit in—perhaps the most terribly cliché of human pursuits—and largely finding that I don’t. (I’m a medievalist for a reason.) Along the way, I played some good roles,…

  • We Were Supposed to Be a City on a Hill

    We Were Supposed to Be a City on a Hill

    In 1630, Puritan lawyer and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop uttered the words that have come to represent the audacity of America’s founding enterprise: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people will be upon us.”  Three hundred and fifty years…

  • Democrats: Stop Talking Down to Voters

    Democrats: Stop Talking Down to Voters

    Well, here we are folks. Another Trump presidency. What has surprised me, and I think many, isn’t necessarily that Trump won, but that it wasn’t even close.  The numbers still aren’t final, but it looks like Kamala Harris got about 10 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020, whereas Donald Trump has slightly surpassed…

  • This is my voice

    This is my voice

    I spent the final four months of undergrad at York St. John’s University, where I took a creative writing module.  I honestly don’t remember any of it very well, apart from two gems from the instructor: First, that I had been using “per se” incorrectly my whole life. (Thanks.) And second, in response to a…

  • Thoughts as I Finish My Dissertation

    These days, the act of sitting down and writing a dissertation on an eight-hundred-year-old text feels absolutely absurd.  I believe on some level that what I’m doing is important and in fact relevant—whatever that means.  What is relevant these days?  These days are dark; indeed, some of the darkest I have lived.  A recent social…

  • What next after Michigan Uncommitted campaign?

    What next after Michigan Uncommitted campaign?

    It’s the day after the 2024 Michigan primary. With 95% of the vote counted, more than 100,000 voters in the Michigan Democratic Primary have voted “Uncommitted” to protest Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.