There is tyranny in the womb of every Utopia. Bertrand De Jouvenel We’ve had about four months of Trump 2.0 now, and the most staggering thing about his new term is the sheer volume of damage he is able to do, mostly just from speaking and tweeting off the cuff. The overall sense is of a bloated and bored sultan, lying on a mountain of … Continue reading Poison Pyramid: The Tyrannous Tiers of Trumpism
Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind. King Lear Those who are most asleep think they are most awake, being under the power of vivid and fixed visions, so that those who are most ignorant think they know the most. Theodotus (2nd century C.E.) The dizzying pace of Trump’s rampage through the tattered hallways of American precedent continues. The Walmart Price-Fixer-in-Chief can wreak … Continue reading The Illusory Future of Trumptopia
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. Albert Einstein There is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible, and wrong, H.L. Mencken The world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker. Things are more complicated than that. And nothing is scarier than the people who … Continue reading The Tyranny of Easy Answers: Trump’s comic-book destruction of America
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller You have to see it to be it. Billie Jean King Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day, and by a cruel twist of fate, Inauguration Day for Donald Trump. As we lurch into this new year and new era, partisans … Continue reading A Different Project for 2025: Finding an Off-Ramp from Trumpism
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. H.L. Mencken In (what feels like) the thousand years since the election, the postmortems have been coming fast and furious, including one on this very blog. The theories for the Democratic debacle are many, from the perseverance of systemic racism and sexism, to the global turn to strongman leaders in times of … Continue reading Where Do Dems Go From Here? The Chimera of Appealing to the Working Class
Clinging to politics is one way of avoiding the confrontation with the devouring logic of civilization. John Zerzan The only paradise is paradise lost. Proust In the big picture, the pandemic was probably the best thing that could have happened to Donald Trump. Had there been no Covid, he would have cruised to reelection, mainly due to the favorable conditions inherited from the Obama years. … Continue reading Convergence & Cataclysm: The Tectonic Plates of Trumpism
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller This past week, Donald Trump won the NH primary, all but locking up his candidacy for the fall. So we’re fated for a rematch that most Americans want no part of, and the odds are that Trump will come out on … Continue reading A Different Game: A New Liberal Playbook
Abide not with dualism, Carefully avoid pursuing it; As soon as you have right and wrong, Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost. Edward Conze The only illusion is division. Wald Wasserman As 2023 winds down, the specter of a Trump-centric 2024 looms large. Despite the general suckiness of this past year, I haven’t met too many people eager to turn the calendar page, because they … Continue reading Transcending Trumpism: Breaking the Death Grip of Dualism
To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment….would result in the demolition of society. Karl Polanyi The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying but the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Antonio Gramsci As the planet flounders and fails under … Continue reading The Great Interregnum
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