Ear to the Ground
My thanks to all of you for taking the time to read these posts, and to those who sent comments. Your words are a solace. Several of...
top of page
Please note:
I warmly encourage comments, and will often reply or revise the body of the post in response. However, I will not tolerate any disinformation or gratuitously offensive material on this site. Here we uphold our own highest standards. I will remove comments that violate them.
Search
Sarah Chayes
Aug 19, 20211 min read
Afghanistan Action Plan: January 2009
Dear Friends: A number of people have wondered whether any of the things included in my previous post were being said when it was soon...
Sarah Chayes
Aug 16, 20218 min read
The Ides of August
August 15, 2021 I’ve been silent for a while. I’ve been silent about Afghanistan for longer. But too many things are going unsaid. I...
Sarah Chayes
Jan 28, 20216 min read
Follow-Up
My last blog, “Time Out,” drew some excellent questions and reactions, most sent directly to me. So -- with thanks to the readers who did...
Sarah Chayes
Jan 15, 20218 min read
Time Out...
…From On Corruption in America, for current events – which are not unrelated. In the face of what went down on January 6, I, like many,...
Sarah Chayes
Dec 5, 20204 min read
Insight #3: Jesus Takes On the Kleptocracy
ONCE MONEY BECOMES the main measure of social standing, what do people running the endless race do? They turn humans back into apes. By...
Sarah Chayes
Nov 16, 20204 min read
Insight #2: The Egalitarian Ape
BEAR WITH ME. We’re getting to corruption, I promise. But first we need to step even further back in time, to the very origins of our...
Sarah Chayes
Nov 8, 20204 min read
On Corruption in America -- And What Is at Stake, Insight #1: Midas
A FEW WORDS OF BACKGROUND before I launch into the heart of this note. My recent book is not specifically about our unprecedented...
Sarah Chayes
Jun 3, 20204 min read
Happy Music
It may seem obscene to talk about money today: a day when our country is reeling with grief. Grief at a knee on the neck of a man. One...
Sarah Chayes
May 7, 20202 min read
The Power of Simplicity
How did “something so genetically simple…manag[e] to bring the planet to its knees?” Virologist Christopher Mores voiced that question on...
Sarah Chayes
Mar 23, 20204 min read
Bail Out
The U.S. Senate is in a tussle over the conditions for handing out more than a trillion dollars of our money in an effort to cushion the...
Sarah Chayes
Feb 5, 20203 min read
The Fix
In a half-asleep fog Tuesday morning, I switched on the news to find out what had happened in Iowa. That certainly woke me up. Results...
Sarah Chayes
Dec 12, 20193 min read
Impeachment Primer #1: "Official Acts"
As we embark on the momentous process of deciding whether the president of the United States is so dangerously unfit for office as to...
Sarah Chayes
Nov 15, 20195 min read
QUID PRO…What?
Three Latin words define bribery under U.S. law: quid pro quo. And they lie at the heart of the impeachment proceedings that, as of this...
Sarah Chayes
Oct 20, 20194 min read
Is This Not Corruption?
WARP-SPEED EVENTS have overtaken this reflection, roughed out in early October. I opted to post it anyway, to mark still-valid points...
Sarah Chayes
Oct 26, 20184 min read
Update
THE WORLD HAS BEEN NOISY over the past couple months, and I have been silent. After fifteen years living and working with corruption and...
Sarah Chayes
Aug 23, 20184 min read
Which Crime, What Punishment?
This post expands on some of the thinking in an earlier one, “Shame on Them.” I’m trying to get at the issue of how our society doles out...
Sarah Chayes
Jul 25, 20184 min read
Seeking Consensus
I’m having a hard time writing this reflection. It’s about the summit between Presidents Trump and Putin in Helsinki -- and how we all...
Sarah Chayes
Jul 15, 20186 min read
Shame on Them
I’ve been struggling lately with the issue of social shaming. Or rather, social accountability. I’m puzzling over what role it should...
Sarah Chayes
May 31, 20185 min read
Do You Need that $100?
Not long ago, I gave a talk at Frostburg State University. It’s a small campus of the University of Maryland, in the western part of the...
Sarah Chayes
May 28, 20183 min read
What happened to you?
I would like to hear what happened to you. Many people see corruption as a victimless crime. If a governor got fancy presents and a few...
bottom of page