If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in … Continue reading Are Bad Economic Indicators Actually a Sign of Hope?
Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think? L Frank Baum Last time, we looked at the dreaded C-word, capitalism. For this go-around, we’re going to pivot to en even more shadowy E-word, The Economy. Unlike capitalism, talk of the economy is everywhere, and it has largely been assumed that the primary role of national leadership in the US is … Continue reading It’s Not Always the Economy, Stupid
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes Sorry, faked you out with the C-word teaser. The word I have in mind is capitalism, that thing that we all swim in for our whole lives, but which … Continue reading Why We Can’t Say the C-Word
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility. Neil Postman The recent flap over Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a … Continue reading Stories Are Not the Story: Our Primate Brain Problem
Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Karl Polanyi Could there be anything more demoralizing than having to wake up in the morning five out … Continue reading The Omnipotent Consumer & the Neutered Worker
The American Dream keeps you working for a future that never comes built on a past that never happened. It is not so much a dream as a value judgement. A pretense of patriotism at a price few can pay and at a cost few can bear. Sarah Kendzior In the United States, few ideas carry as much weight as the American Dream, that old … Continue reading The American Dream vs. The American Bargain
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Maybe) Mark Twain (but probably not) As regular readers know, I spend most of my time writing about Trumpism, politics in general, Bigger Home Bases, and Universal Basic Income. But just as important to my overall project proposal, if not more so, is Modern … Continue reading Why We Don’t Need to Tax the Rich
Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in state and federal elections. It’s a federal crime for noncitizens to register or vote in federal elections, and it’s a crime under every state’s laws. So it should come as no surprise that every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare. Brennan Center for Justice Trump … Continue reading Why the Voter Fraud Myth is the Core of Trumpism
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. E.F. Schumacher As we have covered many times in this blog, American political and cultural polarization is almost completely a rural-vs-urban split. As the sophistication and cost of political operations have expanded over the … Continue reading A Rural Strategy for Libs
You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time. Angela Davis What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that. Arundhati Roy As Donald Trump sinks further into his dementia-addled, narcissistic hate bubble, and the Democratic would-be king breakers cross their fingers, toes, and every other appendage, hoping that a midterm blue … Continue reading Battle for the Soul of America: A Three-Horse Race
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