I do not much care for “The Star Spangled Banner”. I find it a somewhat hack song that has been used to fetishize one particular symbol the United States. Still, in light of the remarkable outcome of Tuesday’s midterm election, I feel it’s perfectly appropriate to quote that song’s line: Oh say, does that Star […]
It’s almost amusing how Donald Trump’s hardline approach to immigration suddenly and spectacularly goes soft when it comes to friends and friends of friends. The man who insists that mass deportations are needed to keep the United States free of criminals and dangerous people, when the opportunity presents itself, rolls out the red carpet for […]
NOTE: The following is a revised copy of a letter sent to Samuel Stein after reading his book Capital Cities (Verso, 2019). For whatever reason, my letter went unanswered and so is reproduced here. Dear Mr. Stein, I recently finished reading Capital Cities and was reviewing the notes I had taken when it occurred to […]
It’s fitting that a man who never came by anything through hard work, honesty or through the strength of his character got a Nobel Peace Prize secondhand from a woman who actually put her life and freedom at risk to earn it. Whatever one’s thoughts on Maria Corina Machado’s politics, one cannot help but feel […]
Those lyrics come from Tim Fite’s powerful anti-establishment song “Getaway” from his 2015 album Resist. Although the specific circumstances surrounding that album’s origin were different, the words still ring true in light of what happened recently in Minneapolis. I can easily imagine a world where Kristi Noem, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi all got a […]
At 40, I am beginning to find myself more intellectually and emotionally adrift, more so than what we’ve come to expect in the post-modern, end-stage capitalist warzone into which we have been herded by the “loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires” (thank you Paul Simon) that seem to direct every aspect of life. I find […]
Aaron Benanav’s Automation and the Future of Work, is, first and foremost, a whirlwind of a treatise. In a mere 99 pages (excluding preface), the author traces a line from the utopian ideals of Sir Thomas More through the socialist movements of the middle to late 19th century through the universal basic income (UBI) evangelists […]
As one of the current darlings of MAGA’s upper echelons, my first impulse when I saw El Pais‘s interview with Curtis Yarvin was to immediately discount it as either a superficial piece of ego stroking or an extended game of cat and mouse where the mouse constantly hid behind thick panels of grandstanding and ad […]
In any other timeline, the storming of the United States Capital Building would have been a ‘snapshot moment’, one of those moments that people remember in a visceral and completely in-focus way. Historic examples of such events include the September 11 attacks, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the space shuttle Challenger explosion, the moon […]
“To Protect and Serve” is the slogan of police forces across the country, but it is merely a slogan, a tagline put on cars to identify the brand. It’s ultimately hollow and in few ways reflects the actual role police play in society. A better slogan, in my opinion, is the one seen on patrol […]
