MAGA’s Bad Bunny Conniption Exposes Their Retrograde Agenda

MAGA’s Bad Bunny Conniption Exposes Their Retrograde Agenda

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The National Football League announced last month that rapper Bad Bunny, who is Puerto Rican, will headline the halftime show at the Super Bowl next February. This got MAGA in a tizzy – as everything nowadays must of course become poltically partisan.

Rapper Bad Bunny giving the opening monologue on Saturday Night Live’s Oct 4, 2025 episode

Trump lackey and chief Congressional obstructionist Mike Johnson claimed that someone with a “broader audience” would be a better choice. He suggested an 82-year old country singer named Lee Greenwood (I had never heard of Greenwood until I saw the clip where Johnson mentions him). Doesn’t Johnson know that Bad Bunny holds the record for the most streamed album of all time? Clearly he has a very broad audience!

OK, I’ll be nice. Maybe MAGA missed that Bad Bunny has broad appeal because they don’t stream music, they still listen to Lee Greenwood albums on their old vinyl collection. They’re just a bit behind the times, is all.

But I don’t think that’s where Johnson’s mind was. MAGA’s problem with Bad Bunny is that they don’t think of him – a U.S. citizen, of course, like anyone else born in Puerto Rico – as an American. From the MAGA perspective, Bad Bunny’s broad audience is the wrong audience.

His audience is the Spanish-speaking part of America, the people they are trying to exclude. The people current acting President Stephen Miller is actively trying to remove from the country, and that scatterbrained Homeland Security boss Kristi Noem promises to sic her ICE-troopers on at the Super Bowl itself.

Look behind the headlines to see how MAGA is really behind the times. We all know it’s true: America is becoming more racially diverse. The Spanish-speaking population has grown significantly in my lifetime. This is the trend that MAGA’s policies are trying to somehow reverse, returning us to the great again Golden Age the Boomers grew up in, when America was all white and all Christian.

Never mind that the only way to do this is illegally, outside of the bounds of the Constitution, and at great moral cost. They’re fine with that. White supremacist America has ethnically cleansed the continent before, and they are trying to do it again.

I don’t think this will be possible, given the geographic expanse and huge population of the United States, compared to previous centuries. But I could be wrong. I don’t really know how bad it will get.

In an earlier post, I reviewed a book by Michael Lind called The Next American Nation. In the book, Lind argues that we have gone through other periods of resistance to newcomers to America, leading into eventual assimilation and expansion of the definition of who counts as an American.

First it was just Anglos, the original “Mayflower stock”, so to speak. Then Germans and other Northern European Protestants. With some fuss, the Irish. The freed African slaves following the Civil War. And, early last century, Eastern and Southern Europeans.

We had taken a long journey from being a Protestant offshoot of England to becoming a “Judeo-Christian” melting pot nation. In this melting pot recipe were certain ingredients that give America its distinct cultural flavor. Our unique Thanksgiving holiday, with all its traditions. Our way of celebrating Christmas, including our version of Santa Claus. Our two big major league sports – baseball and American football.

In my generation’s lifetime, the challenge has been assimilating Hispanics, Asians and Muslims, adding them to the melting pot. Hispanics, being the largest population, are bearing the brunt of a backlash that seeks to flip back the calendar to somewhere in the 1950s. The huge irony, of course, is that Spanish-speaking people have been on this continent for longer than English-speaking people have.

Gentle reminder about Spanish-speaking America. This map is from the book The Dominion of War by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton.

Welcoming Latin Americans as part of the broader United States of America is the true expression of American values, the true fulfillment of America’s destiny to become a land of freedom and opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, or national origin. So kudos to the NFL for inviting Bad Bunny to the Super Bowl – an iconic annual event that helps define America – because that clearly moves the country in the right direction.

The assimilation of Latin Americans into the U.S. is already happening in many ways, of course, no matter what anyone does. I’m just glad that the NFL is embracing this instead of fighting it, unlike the backwards-thinking MAGA regime. Even if the NFL is only doing it with their profits in mind. To show my appreciation, I will probably watch the Super Bowl, even though I don’t normally follow sports.

Shame on MAGA for trying to take us backward in time, in such a cruel, repressive, and un-American way.

See y’all at the No Kings marches this weekend!

COVID-19 Retrospective

COVID-19 Retrospective

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Do y’all remember that we had a pandemic? And that it was a seriously big deal, that had the world in a panic?

At the onset, there were overwhelmed health care systems. As it went on, overflows of bodies. Mass graves. People were scared. This new virus was killing at an accelerated rate.

I remember watching a dashboard of the spreading infection. Before it really hit the U.S., thinking – maybe they’ll do something to stop it. Maybe the authorities will figure their shit out and it won’t be so bad here.

Then the red dots started spreading on the U.S. part of the map. It dawned on me that no, there is no stopping this. I called my boss to tell him I wouldn’t come to the office any more, but would work from home (lucky me with my email laptop job), and hours later got a notification that was sent to the whole company: don’t come to work.

We were in lockdown.

Remember how we knew so little about how this “novel coronavirus” spread that we were spraying sanitizer everywhere? There was actually a rumor for a bit that people were becoming infected when they pumped gas. We kept gloves in our car for the gas station!

And the shortages as people stocked up. Supply chains were in crisis. Suddenly it was revealed that toilet paper was the essential commodity of civilized life. Medical supplies in particular were in short supply, to the point that the Governor of Maryland was hiding testing kits from the Feds. Can you believe that shit?

Was it all a massive overreaction?

That’s such an unfortunate word, IMO, because it implies there is some way to know what the exact correct reaction should have been. But of course there is no way to know that, just as there is no way to know what the outcomes would have been had we made different choices as a society.

What if there had been no lockdowns? There would have been different rates of sickness and mortality and different effects on unemployment and inflation. But would these outcomes have been preferable, even if one could come to agreement on preferences? One can speculate, form a theory, but one cannot test the theory because, by the nature of time and choice, the data are not there.

The simple truth is, leaders faced a high degree of uncertainty, and the glaring fact that, in the initial waves, COVID-19 was an extremely deadly contagion. It both spread easily and had a high mortality rate, and it’s no wonder we were all spooked.

Just consider this: in 2020, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer. That’s insane for a disease that didn’t exist the year before. It’s hard to imagine what an “overreaction” would look like for such a thing. Please do click on that link and look a little closer. For one age cohort, the core of my generation, it was the leading cause of death in 2021. No wonder we drank so much.

I made this chart using our actual spending in 2020, I won’t deny it

I remember how much I blogged about coronavirus in those early years of the pandemic. As the emergency eased, officially declared over by President Biden in 2023, I mostly dropped the topic. In 2024, COVID-19 was no longer in the top 10 causes of death. Accidents and strokes had restored their respectable statuses under heart disease and cancer, the twin grim reapers awaiting us all in our advanced years.

But the disease is still with us, of course, and it is still dangerous. I caught COVID just last month, in fact. I immediately went on the antiviral PAXLOVID, because I do not want that nasty thing multiplying in my body.

SARS-COV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID, is not like influenza or the common cold. It gets into your system and it does damage everywhere. Long term damage that could lead to long COVID, or to some other condition down the road that reduces your lifespan. As one substacker explains it, catching COVID is like smoking cigarettes – you can keep doing it over and over, but you will pay for it in the long run.

Is the pandemic over anyways? There’s no end date given on Wikipedia’s helpful page of deadly pandemics, so I guess not. There COVID-19 sits, nowhere near the death toll of the Spanish flu, history’s GOAT pandemic, but catching up to the slow burn HIV/AIDS.

Luckily, the U.S. is a world leader in medical research. Right? Oh no...

The Old Ways

The Old Ways

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This isn’t a very deep post today, just some fun observations.

I am a domesticated creature who typically doesn’t go out very much. Also, I am unemployed, so I don’t have anywhere to go anyway. When everyone else in the household is away at work or at school, I do have one activity for exercise – walking about town, weather permitting (I should go to the gym, but that’s another story).

I live in a shabby little town in Pennsylvania, where there are just enough side streets to create walking circuits through the small neighborhoods that bracket either side of the busy main drag (the traffic is almost all going through town).

The main drag of Morgantown, PA

Most of Pennsylvania is small, dilapidated towns – well, that and forested mountains. That’s because of the state’s irregular geography, and its historical development, which has encouraged small, localized municipalities to spring up everywhere. These patterns have also suppressed economic development, hence the dilapidation. It’s an aesthetic. This is a land that embraces its weathered past.

The myriad muncipalities are typically “townships,” though the town where our address is located is simply a “Census designated area” within a township. Don’t ask me why. I’ve blogged about life here before, which is kind of like being in a liminal space between the DEI city and the MAGA country.

The point I wanted to make with this post is that when I’ve been out walking, multiple times now cars have slowed down, and the drivers have lowered their window to ask me for directions! Like, don’t they have a smartphone for navigational purposes? Apparently, not everyone does.

Not to stereotype here, but invariably the driver will be an older white person – a Boomer, I’m sure. Ok, maybe they could be a Gen Xer since our generation is now entering its early 60s, but I’m pretty sure they are Boomers. They might be looking at a piece of paper, presumably with the directions they were trying to follow written on them, but as often happens with that old fashioned approach, they wrote something down that turned out to be illegible. I’m making up a story here.

Of course, I am happy to help these lost drivers, and I always can, since I have a smartphone. Which the drivers would know, since my phone is always out, because as I walk I play a casual game called Pikmin Bloom. Some of us here embrace the new ways of doing things. I just thought it was interesting that there are still people out there following the old ways.

Reflections at the End of the World

Reflections at the End of the World

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Once more I am on the job hunt. So far, it doesn’t seem much different than in the past. There are positions out there for which I am qualified. I have registered successfully for unemployment compensation, as I have many times before in my life.

In my job searches, I am limiting myself to remote work. The convenience of it is too much to give up, if I don’t have to, and so far there have been multiple remote positions to apply for. But obviously, if the search drags on, I will have to cast my net wider and consider going back to commuting – perhaps only on certain days of the week, in the now common “hybrid” mode which combines working from home with working on site. The point is, I might not be so lucky as I was a couple years ago, when I easily transitioned from one remote job to another.

I worry, actually, that I might be really unlucky at this juncture. With insano-fascist-guy upending the American economy via his unhinged policies, the job market is in trouble. Companies facing the uncertainty of the times are freezing hiring. We might even be heading into a recessium. I’m almost 60 years old, not a good age to have my career suddenly stalled.

I recently wrote on my substack about the problem of “gerontocracy” – our political leadership skewing older than the population, and therefore being out of touch with the needs of the American people. I made the point that this is a bigger problem for Democrats than for Republicans, and helps explain the Republican rise to power. Currently my generation, the middle-aged generation, are the primary Trump supporters. Democrats are either the older generations on their way out, or younger Millennials.

A generational shift in power is surely going to be a fallout of this tumultuous social era. I can see – in the long term – MAGA burning out and the Millennials taking over with a more progressive agenda. At that point, Gen-X will be sidelined. With the demographic collapse making Social Security less sustainable, we will probably also be impoverished. There won’t be a lot of sympathy for us, especially if we’re seen as the ones repsonsible for the worst of what is to come.

Those are some depressing thoughts, I know. It’s just where my head is at right now. It would be just like my generation grow old just as the gerontocracy was being eliminated. Another boat missed.

I’m going to take advantage of the time I have been given to do more writing. Maybe some political activism.

And I would appreciate more subscribers to my Substack if you can: https://stevebarrera.substack.com/

Peace out.

Doubt: A Review

Doubt: A Review

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Last weekend (August 15-17), I had the privilege of attending performances of Journey Theatric Sanctuary’s production of Doubt: A Parable. This was presented at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center on the HACC community college campus in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Doubt: A Parable is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play by John Patrick Shanley, about a nun who is Principal at a Catholic school and suspects a priest of taking liberties with a young boy. She attempts to get to the truth of the matter, enlisting the help of a younger nun, and of the boy’s mother – hindered as she is by the Church’s strict patriarchy, which makes reporting her concerns according to the rules a hopeless cause. It’s a challenging script with a difficult subject matter.

Director and Journey Theatric Sanctuary founder Troy Cooper assembled a stellar cast of four actors, each of whom was perfect for their role. Griffin Yeyna opened the show as the priest, Father Brendan Flynn, giving a sermon on the topic of faith and doubt. In a later monologue in the role of teacher, he came across as an easygoing authority figure. But in his scenes with the nuns, he sometimes squirmed under their questioning, and sometimes lashed out with indigant rage.

The main character in the show, the stern and determined Sister Aloysius, was played by veteran actor Aileen Lynch-McCulloch, who brought her experience to bear to bring out the layers in her character. Sister Aloysius was hard-headed and persistent in her pursuit of the truth, adamant in her beliefs on the proper relationship the clergy should have with their parishioners and students. She employed a kind of Socratic method in her probing questions as she recruited the younger nun to her cause, and as she interrogated the priest. She also had a worldly sense of humor that got laughs from the audience at times, breaking the tension in the very taut script.

Her counterpart, Sister James, was a less experienced nun, played by Jess Mooney in just her third role on stage. Mooney brought a sweetness and eager naivete to her character, which made her susceptible to Father Flynn’s charisma, and hesitant to see his potential dark side. Janae Yellock as Mrs. Muller, the young boy’s mother, had only one scene, but she brilliantly portrayed a 1960s era black mother, used to navigating a world of both male and white supremacy. Mrs. Muller’s strategy for guarding her son’s interests was an unsettling and eye-opening surprise for Sister Aloysius.

These four actors did excellent work expressing the subtleties of their characters’ different viewpoints. Each, in their own way, had blinders on that limited their perception of the whole truth of the matter at hand. Each, consequently, faced their own doubts. Caught up in the turmoil of these conflicting perspectives was the fate of one little boy.

The design of the quite beautiful set helped underscore this theme, being split into two sections with starkly different appearances and color palettes.

Journey Theatric Sanctuary’s production of Doubt: A Parable was tense and emotionally powerful, doing justice to the company’s stated mission of demonstrating the transformative power of theatre. I wish it had had a larger audience and/or a longer run, because there was so much talent brought to bear which deserved to be seen.

I note here that Griffin Yeyna and Aileen Lynch-McCulloch have appeared together before, in Reading Theater Project’s November 2023 production of Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky. They have great chemistry on stage, and I would love to see them opposite one another again. Also, in the interest of full disclosure I must mention that I have known Aileen for many, many years and she is my dearest friend.

Journey Theatric Sanctuary’s website is here: https://www.journeytheatricsanctuary.com/
I wish this new theatre company the best of luck growing its program and expanding its outreach.

Introducing “Darkest Hour”

Introducing “Darkest Hour”

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I’ve had this blog for over eight years now. My posts cover a variety of topics (just look at the list of categories). Some of them are personal, about my own life story, while others focus on my interests and hobbies, which is nerdy stuff like board games, books, film and theater, science fiction. Plus – as you know if you have followed this blog for long – analyzing history and social change, particularly through the lens of theories of historical cycles like generations theory.

Those latter posts can get pretty involved. As it turns out, there is a platform out there where lots of folks are posting the same sort of deeper social analysis, and I’ve decided to shift my own content of that nature over to there. So I have started a Substack publication.

Behold!

Looks pretty cool, huh? A bit ominous, too, I admit.

If you are reading this blog post soon after it was published, you are probably one of my subscribers and got it in an email. If you are interested in my involved social commentary as much as lighter fare like my posts about what’s going on in my life or movie reviews or whatnot, please subscribe on Substack as well. I would appreciate the support. And don’t worry, the lighter fare will continue to go up on this blog.

You can click on the image above to get to my Substack, or go here: https://stevebarrera.substack.com/

That’s all, thanks!

Life in the Blue Zone

Life in the Blue Zone

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We live in Berks county, Pennsylvania, just south of Reading, which I have described as living in the purple zone. We’re in a Democratic Congressional district, surrounded by Trump supporters. But right now I’m visiting my Mom in Northern Virginia, near Washington DC, and I gotta say, it is refreshingly blue zone here. By which I mean, clearly liberal Democrat in its political leanings. There are lots of lawns around here with signs like these:

Granted, having four signs in a row is a rarity, but lots of lawns have one or two like this

The neighborhood my Mom lives is a middle class idyll, lush with vegetation and flowers thriving in the summer season. The plant life here loves the heat and humidity, which I am not as used to since I moved up north about ten years ago. I can tell I’m south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The lovely Crepe Myrtle, beautifying Southern neightborhoods since 1790 (per Wikipedia)

The houses were built in the mid-twentieth century, and are a bit crowded together, with well-cared for and nicely decorated lawns. It’s much neater here than where I live; Pennsylvanians are fine with leaving piles of junk in their yards. That’s part of our “pursue your happiness” mentality (we started this whole experiment, you know).

There are birds and butterflies everywhere when I go on my walks, as well as the occasional adorable four-legged creature like a squirrel, rabbit, or chipmunk. It makes sense because the neighborhood is basically a forest filled with houses.

What’s great, and what really reminds me that I’m not in MAGA-land any more, is the ethnic and religious diverity here. I hear a variety of languages when I’m out and about. I see women wearing traditional head coverings. There are loads of Spanish-speaking people, and not just working as contractors on the houses, but living in them. And no signs of the frosty brigades.

It feels like I’ve gone back in time to the Obama administration!

Of course, we could never afford to move here. The low-end prices on the houses is $700K. So we’ll just have to stay on our dirt farm in Pennsylvania, and get along with our Trumpy neighbors. But it’s nice to visit the blue zone from time to time.

A well manicured lawn in the blue zone, with the latest sign of the times
Yes, the Boomers Did That

Yes, the Boomers Did That

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I was struck by this post on Thomas P. M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines substack, because of how well if dovetails with generations theory: [POST] Conjoined at birth, separated by death?

Here’s an excerpt so you can see what I mean:

In my reading, the Greatest Generation’s influence peaked around 1965 and began its slow surrender to the whims and desires of the Boomers from that point on. So, yeah, while we can say that the Boomers came of age during a period of immense social change, driving movements such as civil rights, anti-war protests, and shifts in cultural norms (e.g., feminism, environmentalism), they didn’t really dominate the workforce and political elite until the early 1980s (the shift from Hippies to so-called Yuppies).

Again, the Boomers were blessed from the start, growing up in a time of American confidence and expansion. Like most would-be “revolutionary” generations, after the raucous efforts of their youth, the real talent went into business and technology and the leftovers went into politics. As such, the Boomers remade our world with the information revolution but passed very little meaningful legislation, instead succumbing to a bizarrely counter-productive ideological polarization as they aged.

The Boomers accumulated vast wealth, but also presided over growing income inequality. Their consolidation of political power and economic resources created serious barriers for younger generations, and has contributed to a serious decline in our nation’s institutions — almost all of which now are held in low esteem as the Boomers begin to depart.

The Boomers’ long reign likewise distorted America’s perceptions and understanding of the Greatest Generation’s greatest legacy — namely, the international liberal trade order we now call globalization.

I see these parallels all the time with geostrategists like Barnett. They are pattern-seekers and they inevitably detect the same pattern of generational change found in Strauss-Howe generational theory. Barnett doesn’t see it in Strauss-Howe terms (that there are generational archetypes and cycles), but he does get that Boomers (Prophet archetype) grew up in post-war prosperity, and that they attacked the institutions established by the Greatest Generation (Hero archetype) in their youth (1960s), and dismantled them when they came into political power (now).

Different thinkers might come up with different explanations for these kinds of sociological patterns, but the fact that they all see similar ones tells me they are looking at something real.

Barnett laments what Boomers have done to the international liberal trade order, but it’s hardly surprising – they’ve been bitching about it for decades, at least in their right-wing camp. If you read Barnett’s substack posts, you will see that he see some good in this desrtruction, as it is pushes us along to needed reforms in the world order. And, of course, the destruction and recreation of the world order is exactly what Strauss and Howe predict as part of their “Fourth Turning.”

I will conclude this post by noting that I plan to start writing more on substack; I will probably post all my social commentary there, and only post more personal or ligher fare on this blog. Here is my substack link for some teaser posts I already have out there: https://stevebarrera.substack.com/

Come Share a Dream with Alice and the Arts Bubble

Come Share a Dream with Alice and the Arts Bubble

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Last night I had the pleasure of watching the preview performance of The Arts Bubble’s Alice by Heart, which opens tonight (July 24) and runs through the weekend. From what I saw, it’s really quite an amazing production that you won’t want to miss. For one thing, it is presented in the round and environmentally (meaning the actors are all around the audience and even interact with them) which I now believe is how this show should always be done. It does a great job of making the story clear, which is hard to do because of all the clever wordplay in the dialogue, in the spirit of the source material. These young actors understand the script, and bring incredible physicality and energy to their performances. Plus, there is a live band!

Since I am good friends with the director, I was there from the ground up watching this production come together. I remember how exciting it was when The Arts Bubble got the rights to Alice by Heart, because it is the kind of show, in my opinion, that fits the project’s pattern of showcasing the more interesting, whimsical yet meaningful musicals that aren’t being done over and over elsewhere. This is, after all, the company that did The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals last year. There were some harrowing weeks when they temporarily lost the rights for admininstrative reasons, but luckily that all worked out. Some perspectives needed to be changed.

In her program note, director Aileen Lynch-McCulloch starts off with some physics, discussing quantum entanglement and relativity, and how reality isn’t fixed or solid. It varies based on frame of reference, like a surrealist painting. Our ability to shift our frame or perspective gives us power over our lives, a message at the heart of this show. Through our dreams and our imaginations, we are all creating this Universe together, and we can choose to create a world defined by love and understanding. This deep spiritual realization is something I’ve always admired in Aileen, and a reason why I am proud to be her friend and love to see her shows.

The opening performance tonight is sold out. There are three more performances: Friday, July 25 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, July 26 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, July 27 at 2 p.m. Reserve your tickets here: https://vagabondgal.wixsite.com/artsbubble/alice-by-heart

A scene from The Arts Bubble production of Alice by Heart
Life, What Is It but a Dream?

Life, What Is It but a Dream?

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Having more fun with the goodreads book review “post to your blog” html code. This time I read a children’s literature classic.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In the summer of 2025, I was thrilled to discover a copy of a 2015 Princeton University Press 150th anniversary edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” featuring art by Salvador Dali, in a little free library in Arlington, Viriginia. This is a trade version of a limited edition that was first published in 1969, copies of which are rare and pricey. Dali’s thirteen illustrations are fascinating, dark and somewhat abstract, a bit hard at times to connect to the chapters in the book, though elements are there that tie into the story. Dual introductions to this edition, one by editor Mark Burstein and one by mathematician Thomas Banchoff, expose the connection between Dali and Lewis Carroll, who was a mathematician as well as a writer of children’s books. The introductions are far more about Dali than about Alice, touching on his mathematical obsessions, and his artistic technique that focuses on perspective and subjectivity. This edition puts Dali in the center, with Carroll’s story as a kind of filling. If there is a synergy, it is that Alice’s adventures are indeed a dream, where perspective shifts suddenly and unexpectedly, and meaning is always ambiguous, if it’s there at all. As for Lewis Carroll’s story, as I re-read it after I don’t know how many years since the first time, I found it amusing, but sometimes maddening in its refusal to make sense. Carroll’s wordplay and marvellous nonsense verse are certainly delightful. Alice, it struck me, was kind-hearted, and always doing her best to behave as she must have thought a young girl should, under the circumstances. She takes the bizarre events happening to her at face value, at most admitting they are “curious.” As almost all of the denizens of Wonderland are self-involved, incompetent, and utterly irrational, I couldn’t help wondering if this was how children see the adult world, with Alice’s incomprehension at the stupidity of adults being the subconscious source material for her dream reality. How relieved she must have been, upon being attacked by a deck of playing cards, to awaken in the familiar comfort of her sister’s lap, on a lazy summer day, though as the memory fades she only remembers her dream as something wonderful.



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Here is a picture of the copy of the book that I found, in the little free library. Pretty cool, huh?

I was so excited to find it, because Aileen is currently directing Alice by Heart for the Arts Bubble, so Alice’s adventures are prominent in our minds.

Like Dali’s unique illustrations, Alice by Heart interprets Lewis Carroll’s work in its own way. The Alice in the musical is an adolescent, not a child of tender years as in the book, and consequently has a different perspective and different priorities. Lyrics and book are by Steven Slater, who also wrote Spring Awakening, so you can imagine.

Both Dali and Slater manage to find darker, more mature themes than are in the original source material. The book(s), as written by Carroll, are whimsical children’s literature, and it takes an effort to find deeper meaning than that they are a vehicle for playful riddles and word games. But searching for meaning is what makes us human, and is, after all, why we dream.