(originally published 9/19/2017) Yeah, I know, I put in a cute comment about arendt‘s use of “Mr. Burns” — standard academic writing would have been “Burns” or “Ken Burns.” Apologies to arendt. At any rate, the truth of the matter is that one can learn far more from reading (books y’know), from Internet research, and… Read More A Vietnam War biblio

(originally published 12/30/2017) Book review: Naomi Klein, No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. Chicago: Haymarket, 2017. Naomi Klein wrote a book called “No Logo,” around the concept that capitalism is oppressive, and then two eye-opener books: The Shock Doctrine in 2008 and This Changes Everything in 2015.… Read More Book review: Naomi Klein, “No is Not Enough”

(originally published 12/02/2019 The subtitle of this book is “How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet.” Okay so why am I reviewing a book that was published in 2017? Mostly it’s because with the ascension of Bernie Sanders’ second campaign, the elites are getting desperate. And so Michael Bloomberg to the rescue! As… Read More Book review: Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, “Climate of Hope”

(Originally published 11/27/2020) Book review: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2018. This review is prompted by an interesting little headline from an article on Vice: “Penguin Random House Staff Confront Publisher About New Jordan Peterson Book.” The lead is interesting too: During a tense town… Read More Book Review: Jordan B. Peterson, “12 Rules for Life”

(originally published online 2/20/2021) In my previous diary, Wally wanted to discuss (among other authors) Robin DiAngelo, or so it was briefly hinted in the comments. So, toward that end, here’s a review of DiAngelo’s (2018) book “White Fragility: Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” As I read this book,… Read More Book review: Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility”

These are posts from the caucus99percent era — if I decide to delete them from caucus99percent, I will at least have them saved here. The Agenda of Public Control in America This division of my posts also includes book reviews: Robin diAngelo’s “White Fragility” Jordan Peterson, “12 Rules for Life” Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope,… Read More Posts from the caucus99percent era

You think you’re so clever and classless and free But you’re still f*cking peasants as far as I can see. – John Lennon I’m writing this because I received this message insinuating that (I’m not going to say from whom) that the point of the pandemic and/ or the vaccine was to “control” us. The… Read More The Agenda of Public Control in America

1: what is revolution? The standard meaning of the word “revolution” in the “literature on revolution” is given as: a revolution is a type of regime change, usually accompanied by some sort of popular movement. The standard meaning facilitates a narrowcasted, political-science study of revolutions: one can line up the various revolutions, English, American, French,… Read More revolution essay

Book review: Naomi Klein, No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. Chicago: Haymarket, 2017. Naomi Klein wrote a book called “No Logo,” around the concept that capitalism is oppressive, and then two eye-opener books: The Shock Doctrine in 2008 and This Changes Everything in 2015. Her most recent… Read More Book review: Naomi Klein, No is Not Enough

Published online 26 December 2006. Part one of a two-part series.  This diary will examine Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed in the context of American educational debate to show how difficult it is to teach according to a pedagogy that avoids “expedient purpose,” and about what the alternatives to NCLB are.  Here I will… Read More educational politics and the dialogic classroom