Hot on the heels of this post, I’ve got a new column in the Kalamazoo Gazette on the wholesale ineptitude of American elites: But while there’s certainly far, far too much corporate money in American politics, coordinated elite corruption isn’t really our biggest problem. On the contrary – it’s incompetence. There’s nothing organized about collusion … Continue reading
I think that I’ve identified part of my disconnect from the Occupiers: Most of their rhetoric alleges supposed collusion between political and economic elites in the USA. They see our current troubles as the product of coordinated manipulation by corporate barons, massive banks, corrupt and avaricious politicians, and so on and so forth. Some of … Continue reading
Here’s what it looked like (the last photo is an attempted panorama shot stitching the first two together): Most of the buzz was about police horse droppings on one of the sidewalks. A few people were complaining about illegal immigrants taking American jobs.
You probably know by now that UC Davis is the newest hotspot for the Occupy Movement. Here’s why: Watch this. Read this. Thomas Hobbes’ real genius was to recognize that the State of Nature is a lurking logical possibility—NOT a chronological moment in the past. Humans are chaos and violence and pride and self-interest, and … Continue reading
(Here’s the original post that started it all.) David Sessions responds to my response: That last line there was basically the crux of my essay; in fact, I was not at all saying leftist hope (or belief) and Christian hope have the same content. My goal was to describe a condition of sitting on the … Continue reading
David Sessions has posted a searching essay on the difficulty of sustaining conviction in Zucotti Park: But there is still that frustrating way that radical hope can turn into religious hope and back again, like they were caught together in a Möbius strip. Terry Eagleton describes both Marxism and Christianity as resting on the demented … Continue reading
Last week I wrote that Clark Durant (a candidate running for the GOP nomination to face Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2012) was peddling a new brand of Reaganomics. I thought his enthusiasm for widening the gap between America’s rich and poor was a “serious conservative rhetorical innovation.” Conservatives have been pushing anti-middle-class, pro-wealthy policies for … Continue reading
One of the frustrating things about being a progressive is endlessly contending with the seemingly unslayable myth of Reaganomics. Empirics be damned, conservatives have convinced many Americans that cutting the government will lead to prosperity for all. Supply-side economists promise that public welfare programs for the wealthy (various tax loopholes, shelters, etc) will eventually be … Continue reading
Freddie deBoer lights up an unsuspecting hipster in his uniquely beautiful, brutal way: The idea that the Occupy protests have no core complaints is and has always been a pure media phenomenon. It is an invention, fobbed off on people like Tom Bridge or Beardo McNotFunny here by a media that plays them for fools. … Continue reading
This sign—via Think Progress—pretty much captures my take on OWS perfectly: less drum circles, less style, more concern with electoral success, more substance. The Occupy Movement’s potential is huge, but its pitfalls are equally as substantial.
