Steve Inskeep and Edward Curtin won’t sit down and shut up.

Inskeep because he is a mainstream media star best known as a co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition program (and keeps getting asked to propound on other platforms). Curtin because he is a non-mainstream writer and thinker who is good and annoyed about general acceptance of mainstream views (he doesn’t get invited anywhere except to non-mainstream websites). 

Each has just had out something new, Inskeep’s courtesy of Monday’s New York Times and Curtin’s courtesy of his own website and Global Research.*

Inskeep hammered another nail into the coffin of the Trump administration via his guest column headed (in the newsprint version) “Trump’s One-Term Legacy.” He contends that the obscurity of presidencies limited to four years or less will outweigh the Trump administration’s acts and antics. Good mainstreamer that he is, he disregards legal efforts challenging key states’ election results.

In his essay, Curtin contends the Trump-Biden matchup (he voted for neither) was opéra bouffe for the masses, exemplies “the real matrix,” and was designed to further cement into place control by the people who run things regardless. It is titled “The Past Lives On: The Elite Strategy to Divide and Conquer.”

Read both pieces.** Compare and contrast. See which expands your awareness more. (An unfair contest: Inskeep was limited to 700 words and a single idea; Curtin goes on longer and has touched on most of the same elements before.)

Each has a book to push. Curtin’s, published this fall, is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies: Critical and Lyrical Essays. Inskeep’s is Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War. There are plenty of reviews of each online.

— Mark Channing Miller

*  Also available on Disident Voice and other sites. The advantage of reading it on Behind the Curtain is that commenters usually have worthwhile things to say.

**  Access to Inskeep’s column may be restricted to Times subscribers or those who have not exceeded their free monthly quota of articles.