**Reformist consciousness was famously described by Gramsci as “dual” or “contradictory”; on the one hand accepting the permanence of the system, on the other rejecting the effect of its operation. The most basic expression of…
Browsing Category Politics
By Force of Law
Nothing new under the sun. Why do you suppose a “Sanders” presidency would change what is described below in Chapter 12 of William Morris’s News From Nowhere? The concept of property trumps everything. ******* “I…
A Commons Or A Prison
I prepared the following for the Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice. From Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.” Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling…
The Working Day Redux
There are no honest capitalists. While there are no exact figures on the extent of wage theft, authorities say it is rampant in such industries as construction, garment manufacturing, restaurants and home health care. The…
The Tragedy of Influential (White Supremacist) Liars: Distorting the Commons (Against Fair Housing and Civil Rights)
How can we measure the influence of bad ideas? If there is anything to learn from the “system” of social media it’s that bad news travels and expands exponentially while the “good news” is always…
Happiness Is Notoriously Difficult To Describe
Preface to the Paperback Edition of George Kateb’s Utopia and Its Enemies (1972, 1963). “Of course, no honest person claims that happiness is now a normal condition among human beings; but perhaps it could be…
UPDATED: Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs, Oh My!
I watched American Sniper (prepping for an interview with Clint Eastwood biographer Patrick McGilligan tomorrow on Interchange) and there is a bit of “warrior philosophy” to give our hero motivation near the beginning of the…
Assume Forever-War: Thoughts After Viewing Wounds of Waziristan
There is some contention that in particular cases of cancer, removing tumors, often the only treatment that can extend life by reducing the burden of carrying the disease (thus reducing its effects), actually speeds metastatic…
Proving the Need to Resist Government by Shadows
Last night on Interchange I talked with Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine about government secrecy–more specifically the secrecy of “dark budgets” and “dark operations” and “dark lords”–inherent in the National Security State. [A Power Unto…
**UPDATED**In Contradiction Against Itself: The CIA and The Government
UPDATED: 5/21 [I’ve added one example of Slahi’s book as an illustration of the Report on Torture–there are many others I may add later.] Last night on Interchange (The State of Terror: Guantanamo Diary) the…