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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America – Part I

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Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America” is the single most important new book for progressives to read this year if they want to understand how we got to the dark moment of the present.  

As I noted in my recent column on the right-wing assault on public sector unions, MacLean takes us to the roots of the current crisis via an intellectual history of James McGill Buchanan, the thinker whose work, more than anyone else’s, informs the machinations of the Kochtopus, that shadowy network of interlinked billionaire-funded right-wing think tanks driving American politics.

If you want to know the central ideas behind the “dark money” that Jane Mayer’s seminal book addresses and the philosophical origins of the neoliberalism that Naomi Klein analyzes in her work, MacLean’s text is the key.  In it, we learn that Buchanan is the intellectual godfather of an intentionally dishonest, stealth movement by the right to “save capitalism from democracy—permanently.”   [Read more…]

Lessons from Naomi Klein: Learning How to Resist Trump’s Shock Politics – Part Two

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Last week, I discussed what I see as the first central lesson of Naomi Klein’s new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need—that Donald Trump represents nothing new in American politics but rather, is the logical extension of decades of terrible ideas and policies.  Today I’ll focus on the second key lesson of Klein’s work.

Neoliberal Incrementalism Brought to You by Democrats Is Not Enough:On this point, Klein is refreshingly clear-sighted: the window that is open for significant change is closing.  As she notes, “In short, climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests.  To admit that the climate crisis is real is to admit the end of the neoliberal project.”  But, she argues, too many on the left side of American politics just don’t get it.

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Learning How to Resist Trump’s Shock Politics: Lessons from Naomi Klein Part One

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Last week here at the San Diego Free Press, Sharon Carr provided a nice overview of Naomi Klein’s new book No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.  These next two weeks, I’d like to follow up Ms. Carr’s good work by underlining what I see to be the two central insights in Klein’s book and why they matter.  

In essence, Klein’s book is centered on two key points: 1) Despite all the drama and spectacle, Trump is nothing new; and 2) Neoliberal incrementalism is a dead end and we require bolder vision and practice to win the world we need.   This week, we’ll consider the first proposition.   [Read more…]

The War on Public Sector Unions is a War on Progressive Politics and Democracy Itself

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As the Trump circus keeps people focused on daily scandals along with assaults on immigrants, transgender folks, and a myriad of other battles, the right is busy trying to quietly win the long war.  Last week in my Labor Day column, I noted how the upcoming Janus v. AFSCME decision will help make it possible to gut public sector unions and the labor movement as a whole in order to change the power structure of the entire country and rig American politics in favor of the interests of the rich and our corporate oligarchy.  

While many progressives take comfort in the fact that Trump’s incompetence and perpetually dysfunctional administration have made big legislative accomplishments difficult even with Republican majorities in both houses, it is important not to forget what a big win getting a Supreme Court majority was for right-wing interests long term.  It sets the stage for a coming battle royal once the Janus decision hits.   [Read more…]

What Good is a Union in 2017?

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What is there to celebrate this Labor Day for the average American?  We live in troubled times and many of us in the United States are increasingly anxious or angry as we see the American Dream slipping away right before our eyes as the middle-class shrinks and the gap between the very rich and the rest of us continues to grow.

Of course things weren’t always so discouraging for working folks and, as recently as the middle of the twentieth century, what Robert Reich has called the “great compression” helped build the American middle class to its historic zenith as people saw their wages increase, their educational and economic opportunities expand, and their political power grow as the government responded to increasing pressure from below and employers felt the need to compromise with rather than put the screws to their workforces.  

While many people have a vague nostalgia for the times before the great unraveling of economic security for most Americans, many have forgotten what helped make the good old days for the middle class good: unions.     [Read more…]

Following the Lead of the Liars: How Conservatives Are Winning Their War on Reality

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Nothing about the Trump-driven spectacle of the last few weeks should be shocking if you have been paying the slightest amount of attention to American politics.  

It’s been an obvious fact for years that Trump is a racist and has done everything he can to stoke the ugliest aspects of the American political imagination.  It was disgustingly clear when he led a campaign designed to “other” the first African American president of the United States by absurdly questioning his citizenship, and it was also evident in his very productive use of our long history of anti-immigrant fervor and xenophobia during and after his campaign for the presidency.  

Thus Trump’s handling of Charlottesville and his pardoning of Joe Arpaio, the Bull Connor of our time, are simply the continuation of his long history of racism.  

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Higher Education and the American Political Imagination

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As I enter my thirtieth year as a professor at a public college of one kind or another, I’m used to the constant political fray that comes with being in the middle of funding battles, debates about education reform, and the culture wars, but this may be the first time in my long career that I have begun a new semester with the knowledge that a large number of Americans no longer see higher education as a public good.

Over the summer, the Pew Research Center released an interesting poll that helps explain where we are at this political and cultural moment in America. The survey revealed that most Republicans now believe that institutions of higher education have an adverse effect on the United States.   [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles #6: Beauty in the Age of the Anthropocene

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We live in a world of profound beauty and horror.  One can turn on the news and view famine, war, and terror attacks and then stroll down the street to the park and revel in a glorious summer day.  Of course, it must be said that this is evidence of our privilege as citizens of the first world nation where we live in relative comfort compared to our fellow humans and across the globe, millions of whom don’t have enough to eat or have been forced to flee their homes due to circumstances beyond their control.  

Here in San Diego, our own homeless are seen but then quickly ushered to the back side of the postcard.  No need to harsh our mellow with the thought that that kind of suffering is not an aberration but rather only the tip of the iceberg of human misery.     [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles #5: Two Conversations

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Two recent conversations that stayed with me for some reason.  

One was with a man who told me that he knew what it was like to feel so empty that the fragile construct that was him, his identity, could fall apart at any moment. He knew this, of course, because that is what happened to him.  He had a breakdown; he broke down and the pieces of him fell off, down on the ground all around him–inexplicable shards of what used to be that thing he called himself.  

It is remarkable when someone tells you such a thing.  I was struck by the courage of the confession and also by the rawness of the moment, the trembling intensity that accompanied the admission and the heightened anticipation of what I don’t know.     [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles #4: Crossing Coronado Ferry

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One of the great pleasures of San Diego in the summer is joining the gaggle of tourists and bike riders for the short trip across the bay from downtown to Coronado.  

Like Allen Ginsberg who, in his poem “A Supermarket in California,” touches on Walt Whitman’s book and feels absurd–but wanders through the aisles dreaming nonetheless—I stand in line with young couples holding hands and whole families grinning and gabbing in the midday sun and muse about that which connects us all without our knowing it.     [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles # 3: The Utopia of the Next Moment

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What would we do without wishful thinking?  

Not much apparently.  According to some of the most recent science on the way our brains work, the Zen Buddhists and psychoanalysts are up against it.  No matter how much we try to focus on the present, we’ll be pulled away by the Utopia of the next moment.  

So, it appears that we are, depending on how one looks at it all, artists painting the canvass of our imagined future.  Or perhaps, taking a darker view, we are collectively subject to the worst sorts of self-delusion, constantly lying to ourselves about our past and present to create a more attractive future.     [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles #2: The Wilderness of Silence

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Our noise is everywhere.  Just try to sit for a moment in your house and experience a moment without some kind of artificial noise, whether it be passing traffic, the sound of your neighbor’s television or stereo or the now nearly ever-present buzzing of somebody’s ear buds.  

But let’s say you want to head out beyond the sprawling reach of the homogenous exurban landscape, past even the glow of the Walmart on the edge of Small Town, Anywhere to what is left of the great American wilderness.  

Any peace there?

Apparently not, according to the most recent research on our never-ending din.   [Read more…]

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