CARLA SEAQUIST
Writer & Playwright
“My work has always been about ultimate things and a wider world, all the more so since the world crashed into America on September 11, 2001.”
Carla Seaquist is a writer and playwright. Since 9/11 she has been writing commentary on politics, culture, and ethical-moral issues, first for The Christian Science Monitor, then HuffPost, and now Medium. Her latest book is a collection of her HuffPost and Medium commentary, titled Can America Save Itself from Decline? Volume II. An earlier book is titled Manufacturing Hope: Post-9/11 Notes on Politics, Culture, Torture, and the American Character. Her book, Two Plays of Life and Death, include “Who Cares?: The Washington-Sarajevo Talks” and “Kate and Kafka.” Her play-in-progress, “Prodigal,” is about the Prodigal Son.
COMMENTARY
This is only a sample from the library of my work. Check out my archives for so much more.
READER: “The country owes you a big vote of thanks for your commentary.”
NEWS: “America Needs to Grow Up” (6/1/2023)
NEWS: “Banks, Risk, and Moral Hazard: So Much for the ‘Lessons’ of 2008 Crash” (4/1/2023)
SPECIAL: “‘The Case Against the Trauma Plot’: Life Beyond Trauma”
SPECIAL: “Ridiculous: I Get Happier as I Get Older?”
SPECIAL:“Classic Films of Enduring Love”
SPECIAL: “Marcus Aurelius, Stoic: Rx for Pandemics, Trumpism, History Upended”
NEWS: “Dear Feminists: On Abortion, Shall We Finally Embrace the Golden Mean?” (5/31/2022)
NEWS: “If Putin Wins, Atrocity and Decimation Become ‘Normalized’” (5/19/2022)
NEWS: “Volodymyr Zelensky Is a True Hero. Only a Helpless World Can Make Him Tragic” (3/25/2022)
SPECIAL: “Resolved: The Art Is Not All. Character Counts, Too (or Goodbye, Philip Roth)”
NEWS: “Republicans’ Deal with the Devil Delivers—with Pro-Trump Mob Rampaging Capitol” (1/7/2021)
SPECIAL: “‘Shut Up, Hamlet, and Drive’: Appeal for an Essential Art”
NEWS: “White America Must Stand with Black America for Equal Justice” (6/3/2020)
NEW SERIES: “NOTES FROM A PLAGUE-TIME”
Starting with:
“In a Plague-Time, We Need Truth and Experts”
Sixth posting:
“In a Plague-Time, Can-Do Nation Is Unmasked as Can’t-Do”
Ninth posting:
“In a Plague-Time, Classic Films of Courage and Character”
Eleventh posting:
“In a Plague-Time, Rereading Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’”
Twenty-fourth posting:
“In a Plague-Time Extended: COVID Hits Home—Finally”
“Lawlessness Normalized”: What Acquitting Donald Trump Means (2/2020): What guardrails remain—legal, institutional, moral—for a lawless president now that he’s acquitted?
“My Fellow White Americans: Are We About Blood Identity—or America’s Ideals?” (8/12/2019): Enough with Trump’s race-baiting and the white supremacist incursion.
“Impeaching Donald Trump Would Be Right in Principle, but Disastrous Politically” (5/2019):
“No collusion. No obstruction. And now, no impeachment.” Trump’s dream script for re-election.
“How to Keep a Good Marriage in Bad (Trumpian) Times” (8/2018): Even the best of marriages can get snarled by discussion of You-Know-Whom.
READER: “I can’t tell you how your writing has sustained me over the years.”
My Archive On:
“A ‘Breaking Bad’ Culture Got Its President” (8/2017): Donald Trump is not only a product of our politics, but of our culture.
“Mourning a Friend Who Saved My Life” (3/2017): Sprung from a bad marriage by a good friend.
Books for Our Times: “Why Nations Fail” (7/2013): Why do nations fail? Two words: “Extractive elites.”
“A War’s Premise Must Justify Our Troops’ Suffering” (3/2012): Sky-rocketing rates of PTSD and suicide demand a war’s premise serve as stabilizing tent-pole afterwards.
“Wall Street: Brush Up Your Melville” (11/2011): Risk management according to “Moby-Dick” and the monomaniacal Captain Ahab.
“Recovery Without a Reckoning.” (11/2009): Wall Street recovers from the crash it caused—with no ethical-moral lessons learned.
“Carla Seaquist is an essayist in the great American tradition of plain talk, common sense, strong ethics, and an understanding that one cannot understand current politics, foreign policy or domestic travail without a deep knowledge of history. Her work is informed, readable and provocative, in the best sense—making the reader think in new ways.”
-Seymour M. Hersh, investigative reporter
“Prescient and eloquent. Carla Seaquist is in top form.” –Brian Baird, former member of Congress
BOOKS
Can America Save Itself From Decline?: Politics, Culture, Morality
Volume II
2015-2021; 612 pages
In Vol. II, Carla Seaquist in her HuffPost and Medium commentary traces the tumultuous period 2015-2020—from the “anger election of 2016” to the earthquake tenure of Donald Trump, examining how Trump accelerated America’s decline with his assault on American democracy itself. Seeking elevation, Seaquist counsels on creeping authoritarianism, racism, sexism, despair (“Don’t”). Culturally, she examines Western Civilization’s playbook of Tragedy and points the way upward (“Shut Up, Hamlet, and Drive”). In a series “Notes from a Plague-Time,” she chronicles the COVID-19 pandemic, including rereading Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, this time with real understanding. In an end-essay, Seaquist again addresses the question raised in the book’s title. READ MORE
“Smart and well-informed takes on the great
issues of a tumultuous era.” Kirkus Reviews
Can America Save Itself From Decline?: Politics, Culture, Morality
Volume I
2009-2015; 344 pages
Can America save itself from decline? Great nations throughout History have followed the pattern of rise and rise, then decline and fall. Is this America’s fate, or can we reverse our decline and rise again? In the belief that if any great nation can reverse its decline, America can—we believe in reinvention, we are not fatalists yet, but it will take stronger leadership and reform—Carla Seaquist in her wide-ranging commentary for The Huffington Post addresses this historic challenge from various angles—political, economic and financial, cultural and moral—all in the context of the American character. Vol. I traces the 2008 financial crash through increasing political polarization and cultural weakening. In an extended end-essay, she addresses the question posed in the book’s title. READ MORE
TWO PLAYS OF LIFE AND DEATH:
“Who Cares?: The Washington-Sarajevo Talks” and “Kate and Kafka”
Universal and timeless, these companion plays chart the journey of a man and a woman struggling together on the Road of Life and Death.
MANUFACTURING HOPE: Post-911 Notes on Politics, Culture, Torture, and the American Character”
On 9/11, living in one of the targeted cities (Wash., D.C.), the author instantly switched from playwriting to commentary, to combat with reason whatever was coming at America next.
PLAYS
In Progress: “Prodigal”
A drama about the Prodigal Son and his non-prodigal brother, examining the question, Why be good? The prodigal is an aging bad-boy filmmaker famous for his “edgy” films of violence and sex. The good brother is a social worker who’s burned out cleaning up after the prodigal’s social debris. After a lifetime of warring, can they achieve the peace that, at midlife, they both need? Pivotal is the brother’s wife, a litigator. A classic conflict revised. READ THE SYNOPSIS
TWO PLAYS OF LIFE AND DEATH:
“Who Cares?: The Washington-Sarajevo Talks” and “Kate and Kafka”
“Who Cares?: The Washington-Sarajevo Talks”: A universal drama about the saving power of human contact and normalcy amid chaos. Based on the author’s phone calls with Vlado Azinovic, who ran Radio Zid in Sarajevo during the siege of 1992-96.
Productions to date: 3
“Kate and Kafka”: Katharine Hepburn the Life Force meets Franz Kafka the Death Force and tries to change his attitude. Set in the Sanatorium Ultime amid biological warfare.
OTHER WRITING
Including
