All about me.
I. What Is and What Never Should Be It can be very easy, living where and how we live, to lose sight of what we refer to, and even then in quotes ironic or otherwise, as reality. We are, as people, overburdened by the needs of commerce, and are thus …
If you are an organizer or an activist, think about the time you felt most effective, most powerful, most joyful in struggle. Was it alone? Was it in solitude, your face bathed in the artificial light of a telephone or a laptop screen? Was it after finding le mot juste …
Let us dispense, on this sad steaming Wednesday, with how strange it is to cry hot tears of loss and shame for someone you have never met. Let us take it as read the curious nature of fame, the odd parasocial relationships we develop with the famous, the very notion …
This has been a rough week and I’ve had to make some pretty grim decisions. I could tell you all about it, but then you’d just know about another set someone else’s problems you can’t do anything about. Instead, I’m going to tell you about ten ideas I had for …
Every so often, a television series appears that is so unusual, so distinct and with such a deliberately crafted worldview, so unlike anything else that surrounds it in the shifting bars of the channel guides, that it seems like a small miracle that it ever made it on the air …
Who owns the working classes? The question would not seem to be a complicated one. Starting from a philosophical position, the working classes are comprised of individuals who own themselves; they must achieve their liberation through collective action, and only then can they truly become themselves and realize the potential …
The Great Man interpretation of history — the idea that civilization is driven by a few exceptional men of will who impose their vision on the world and shape the development of humanity — was never particularly true, but it’s only been recently that it stopped being taught. Most of …
I don’t know who coined the delightful term “ratfucking”, or when, though I first encountered it in reference to the Richard Nixon administration, which seems entirely appropriate. As a term for acts of political sabotage, it is without peer, as the American political system is largely comprised of rats, and …
Two weeks ago, in the early evening hours of a mild Paris night, the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris burst into flames. The images of bright orange flames cast against a steel-blue sky, eating up the very outline of one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, bought …
In the mid-1960s, a young man from a well-to-do New York family began attending the Little Red School House, a private high school that practiced progressive educational policies and was in favor with some of the city’s most artistic and left-leaning luminaries. It championed humanitarian values, cooperation, internationalism, and a …
So, he’s running. Bernie Sanders, who will be 79 years old when the 2020 election takes place, has announced his decision to run for President of the United States again. To say I am extremely conflicted about this announcement would be an understatement on the level of saying I have …
Capitalism is designed to make you give up. The very nature of class struggle, the very structures capitalism sets up, are made by intent or by accident to exhaust you, confuse you, make you miserable. Even the most dedicated people who organize against it are vulnerable to burnout; for every …
Aretha Franklin died today. All our idols are dead and our enemies are in power, as it’s said in the memes that seem to be our only shared language anymore; and as always happens when someone of such greatness and depth goes away for good, we find ourselves struggling over …
Let us, for the moment, forget about whether there is anything to the so-called ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theories. Let us leave aside whether there is any proof that President Donald Trump or his hangers-on knowingly collaborated with Russian operatives to alter the outcome of the 2016 election. Let us forego the …
Please repeat, as you do every year, the words (written by Paul Fussell) you try to live by on America’s Independence Day. “There is one day of the year when America should receive nothing but praise. That’s July Fourth. On all other occasions, those who wish the United States well …
