Stacey Roberts
Bio
Stacey Roberts is an author and history nerd who delights in the stories we never learned about in school. He is the author of the Trailer Trash With a Girl's Name series of books and the creator of the History's Trainwrecks podcast.
Stories (22)
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The Death of Storytelling
The storyteller has become so important nowadays that the story itself is irrelevant. I always knew Ernest Hemingway was a misogynistic great white hunter and philanderer who liked whiskey and smoking, and many of his books had a misogynistic great white hunter in it, busily smoking and guzzling whiskey on his way to philander. But Hemingway managed to make his stories about something larger. I never knew which of the kids in Stephen King’s IT was Stephen King himself, but it didn’t matter. His stories were so good and so varied they seemed to have been written by a gaggle of writers instead of just one man. John Irving was in fact a prep school rich kid like John Wheelwright, but A Prayer for Owen Meany is still one of the best books ever. Toni Morrison was a black woman for sure, but she was neither Sethe nor Denver in Beloved.
By Stacey Roberts4 years ago in Confessions
The Problem With America
The problem with America is that we are good people pretending to be bad people. We are like those schoolyard tough guys who protect the small and weak kids when no one’s looking. We threaten and posture and act as if we will truly turn our backs on the weak and helpless among us. In this way, we aspire to a brash, damn-the-torpedoes bravado that no great nation can ever embrace. A mature society sees the world as it is, not as it wishes it to be.
By Stacey Roberts4 years ago in The Swamp
The Greatest Threat To The Republic
Modern American partisan politics is one of the greatest threats to our Republic. George Washington wanted no part of political parties, because he knew that at some point a partisan identity could become more important to a citizen than their national identity. His prediction has come true in our time.
By Stacey Roberts5 years ago in The Swamp
The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetimes
“This is the most important election of our lifetimes.” Let’s not kid ourselves. I’ve heard that so many times in my lifetime that I’m starting to think I’m immortal. Or maybe politicians are trying out a heightened sense of impending doom to get me to go vote for them.
By Stacey Roberts5 years ago in The Swamp
No One Grows Things In The Ground Any More
Come on--no one grows things in the ground any more. Do they? An ex-girlfriend decided one year that we should grow our own tomatoes. We spent six months and two hundred dollars in order to save three bucks on salads. We didn’t break up over super-expensive tomatoes, specifically, but maybe my pigheaded resistance to amateur agriculture was one of the two hundred and fifty seven things I did that persuaded her to seek out greener pastures.
By Stacey Roberts5 years ago in Earth
Public Servant, Private Slave
I’m sold. A sitting member of Congress would be a good thing to own. I could get them to sponsor bills I wanted, vote on ones I agree with, and give me tours of the Capitol so that I might be awed by Federal splendor. They could get one of my children into West Point or Annapolis, but those are just the minor perks. The big deal is the lawmaking.
By Stacey Roberts5 years ago in The Swamp
When It's Your Time To Go, It's Your Time To Go
We were all doomed, and my mother knew it for sure. “When it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go,” she would say. The first time I heard it from her was around 1980, when we watched the movie Meteor, which was about the certain destruction of the entire planet. It had Sean Connery in it. He and his team worked around the clock to find ways to divert a meteor the size of Texas that was mere days away from pulverizing our cute little civilization. Mom just shook her head while she watched.
By Stacey Roberts5 years ago in Families
Loving America At Forty Cents On The Dollar
I know who you are. You work for about sixty cents on the dollar, once federal, state, and local taxes are taken out of your paycheck. You pay rent or a mortgage with what you have left, buy groceries, make car payments, and get insurance on your home, car, and health. You might put some away in savings, but not enough for retirement. If you have children, you might have a college fund, but not enough for a full university education. If you have pets, you try not to think about how much their food costs or what’s in it. You hope that you don’t get sick.
By Stacey Roberts5 years ago in The Swamp
