There have been a couple of news items recently that have led me to start conversations about how certain journalists are racist. I posted a few things on Facebook, and brought them up to people I know, thinking that of the people I know, they’re at least the sort who would acknowledge that these are [...]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ category
Two popular political delusions, or, the art of the possible
So it’s politics time again. This week, arguments at the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, the law that according to (most of) its proponents will solve the country’s health-care problems and according to its detractors represents socialism or tyranny or something like that. The Tea Party held a [...]
“Leverage everyone’s expertise”
Occupy out-wonks the wonks. Read Rortybomb’s interview with two drafters of the Occupy SEC comment letter on the Volcker rule. Links to the letter itself and more commentary at the link.
A few things I’ve been looking at
“Being a Maid”. Mormonism dealing with the internet. “The Aesthetics of Authority”. A Szymborska poem, complete with cat and link to an alternate translation. “Kim Jong Un Looking at Things”. Bonus video: All kinds of text and subtext at a UC town hall meeting about Occupy.
Social facts
Many philosophers make a distinction between natural and social. What is natural is given to us by nature or reality. What is social is somehow created by us, humans, albeit often through massively complicated and impersonal processes. In particular, philosophers speak of natural facts and social facts. Natural facts are facts that “carve nature at [...]
Let us give thanks
For occupations, decolonizations, new beginnings, openings, and also for the things that are fine just the way they are.
Class solidarity
“One perCENT! One perCENT!” “Why would you occupy Harvard, anyway? We have the most diverse student body in the world. What is there to protest?” “So, what’s the point of all this?” “You know, in principle, I think some of the things that you stand for, I mean, the things that I imagine you stand [...]
Notes from Downtown
Not too long after those marches we went to in DC that so effectively stopped the war in Iraq, a friend of mine said one of those sentences that got pasted on my brain like a bumper sticker*. “Chanting in unison,” he said, “makes me ambivalent about, oh, just about everything.” I had felt this [...]
Unreasonable demands
What if we make some demands? The “we” here is vague. Let’s say it’s those of us who are dissatisfied. For example, we could demand that the economy be harnessed to bring increased benefits to the majority, rather than the small minority at the top of the income ladder. Or that we organize our economic [...]
