Utopia and populism

occasional links & commentary

Much has been made of the rise of populism in recent years and the threat it poses to liberal democracy.

My view is that liberal critics of populism, standing on their heads, get it wrong. If made to stand on their feet, they’d have to admit that populism actually represents the failure of liberal democracy.

Populism has experienced a resurgence of late—in Hungary, Britain, France, Turkey, the United States, and elsewhere—especially the form of populism variously characterized as right-wing, nationalist, or authoritarian. It has attracted increasing support and achieved notable political victories within the institutions and procedures of liberal democracy.

The problem is that liberal democracy has failed to confront, much less solve, the problems that have led to the rise of populism in the first place.

source*

Consider, for example, the history of populism in the United States. The three notable periods—in the late nineteenth century (with the rise…

View original post 938 more words

Advertisements

Dystopia and global poverty

occasional links & commentary

This post is for all those dedicated activists and teachers, such as mfa, who are committed to teaching about and creating the conditions to eliminate global poverty and economic injustice.

I have been writing of late about utopia—for example, with respect to classes and the right to be lazy.

But the world economy today represents exactly the opposite, a dystopia of extreme poverty for hundreds of millions of people (768.5 million in 2013 according to the World Bank, or 10.7 percent of the global population).

And as Angus Deaton reminds us, those struggling to survive in conditions of extreme poverty aren’t just “over there,” in the Third World. Notwithstanding the focus of the World Bank-sponsored campaign to eradicate extreme poverty and the ubiquitous appeals on behalf of the needy in poor countries, a large portion—approximately 14 million people—live in wealthy countries—some 5.3 million in the United States alone.

Is…

View original post 579 more words

Returning American, Fresh Remote

maps and places along the way

edifiedlistener

I hold US citizenship and always have. I have also lived abroad for the majority of my adult years. When I enter the US anymore, it is as both citizen and visitor. This is both strange and normal at the same time.

I don’t consider myself much of a traveler. I like to go places and stay there; observe the people, try the foods and then come home again. I have been to some places often but not to tons of places. Even if I am resident in a country of my choosing, I remain a foreigner, an immigrant. Living in a foreign country is what I do. It’s a big part of who I am.

When I return to the United States I no longer return home which would be Cleveland, Ohio. No, I go where the people are: to see family in Georgia, to conferences where they are…

View original post 385 more words

How Much is Too Much to Save a Dying Cat?

Longreads

s.e. smith | Longreads | November 2017 | 17 minutes (4,363 words)

The veterinarian looks anxious as she enters the room, clearly dreading the conversation she must have many times a night on the late shift at the emergency clinic.

Yes, your pet is dying. No, I’m afraid there’s not much we can do, she is bracing herself to say.

Her scrubs are a rich maroon, coordinating with the jewel-toned surroundings of the hushed exam room in the swanky clinic. Thick doors block the sound from outside, the interstitial space where they’ve left me alone in an echoing silence with a grim steel table and a box of tissues after the technician rushed my cat to the back, somewhere in the bowels of the hospital. The last time I saw her she was gasping for air, eyes huge, expression: betrayed.

I wonder if I will see her again.

It’s…

View original post 4,530 more words

From highway to master

occasional links & commentary

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations makes for uncomfortable reading these days. That’s because, as my students this semester have learned, the father of modern mainstream economics—who has become so closely (and mistakenly) identified with the invisible hand—held a narrow theory of money and advocated extensive regulation of the banking sector.

This is contrast to the obscene growth of banking in recent decades, which Rana Foroohar observes “isn’t serving us, we’re serving it.”

According to Smith, the “judicious operations of banking” did nothing more than convert dead stock into active and productive stock—”into stock which produces something to the country.”

The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if…

View original post 572 more words

Nurture your “Weirdos”

Clay Forsberg

“We have a new bigotry in America. We don’t want to be around anyone who disagrees with us about anything.”~ Bill Clinton at the 2013 GLAAD Awards

We live in world of conformity. Being different, being … “not like everyone else is or like your supposed to be” – is bad. Because if you’re different, then you’re unpredictable. And most people need predictability. Their minds aren’t programmed to understand, or even accept these “outliers.”

And it seems like it’s getting worse.

In the misguided (and ineffective) effort to be globally competitive in the education world, we have sacrificed all for the pursuit of rote math and science instruction. This relentless focus has left all creative pursuits, such as art and music, nothing more than carnage in the ditch along the academic road to mediocrity. It’s like we’re programming an army of drones.

Instead of nurturing creativity, we test. Instead of teaching applicable…

View original post 682 more words

A Transgender-Military Reading List

Longreads

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, a ban on transgender people serving in the United States military.

His tweeted justification was that “our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military [sic] would entail.”

It was, several Twitter users noted, an odd way to mark the 69th anniversary of President Harry Truman signing an executive order that ended racial discrimination in the military. There are currently thousands of transgender people serving in the nation’s all-volunteer military.

The military's & Trump's new transgender ban will affect an est. 2000-6000 active service-members in the all-volunteer US military https://t.co/cMbA3wfKoN

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) July 26, 2017

As BuzzFeed Newsnoted, a policy instated last year ensures transgender people the right to serve in the military, and have the medical costs of their transition covered…

View original post 2,416 more words

As Climate Change Threatens Food Supplies, Seed Saving is an Ancient Act of Resilience

The Revolution Where You Live

In Norway, a high-tech seed vault flooded from melting permafrost. In Montana, locals share their seeds at the library.

Volunteers and librarian at the Great Falls, Montana, Seed Exchange. Photo by Sarah van Gelder

On Feb. 26, 2008, a $9-million underground seed vault began operating deep in the permafrost on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, just 810 miles from the North Pole. This high-tech Noah’s Ark for the world’s food varieties was intended to assure that, even in a worst-case scenario, our irreplaceable heritage of food seeds would remain safely frozen.

Less than 10 years after it opened, the facility flooded. The seeds are safe; the water only entered a passageway. Still, as vast areas of permafrost melt, the breach raises serious questions about the security of the seeds, and whether a centralized seed bank is really the best way to safeguard the world’s food supply.

Meanwhile, a much…

View original post 813 more words

A Saturday in May…

Clay Forsberg

A few years ago, when visiting my daughter in Los Angeles, I was on a walk through West L.A. when I ran across a homeless man collecting cans and bottles from a dumpster. I stopped and we talked for about for fifteen minutes.

We talked about a lot things; the weather, the BP oil spill and eventually the economy. His take on the economy was that he thought things were getting worse, rather than better – as what we’d been hearing from the news media. “How did you come up with that?”  I asked him.

“Well I see more cheap brand cans in the garbage than I used to. Even last year when things were supposedly worse, people still drank Coke and Budweiser. But now it’s changed.”  It’s Shasta and Natural Light.

His astute observation was definitely not a perspective I wouldn’t have gotten through my normal channels. But it made sense –…

View original post 2,733 more words

N is for: Not today, Not in the mood, Not

when you’re NOT in the mood ~ just take a cranky break. sometimes we need one. learning about chōka is a plus and made me less cranky.

I was curious about how it related to Tanka. So I looked it up and went down the internet rabbit hole — also good for cranky mitigation, https://www.google.com/search?q=choka+vs+tanka

if you want kin, you must plant kin ...

Tonight I am cranky. Tired and cranky. The day started mostly well. But bad news has a way of forcing any glimmer of hope and happiness to gutter and fade. This will pass. I know it will. But for now, all I want to say is, No.

No. No. No. No. No.

And also: Damn it.

__________

Mixing of cultures
dipping toes in the water
Learning who we are,
learning how we are alike
past the differences
that poke at us, cloud our view
We have now, just now
to listen with eyes open.
We have only now —
this half-spent moment, this breath.
to listen, finally hear.

I keep trying to poke at different things with these chōka . I’m too fussy right now to have a real opinion about this one. It doesn’t do what I wanted it to, but it’s done, and that’s got to be enough of…

View original post 76 more words