Trump’s parting electoral tantrum puts the exclamation mark on the fundamental flaw of democracy that his presidency has revealed: that a poorly informed electorate can willingly choose its own demise (even as it recites platitudes to the contrary). Two institutions are most implicated in this flaw: public education and the mass media. In well functioning […]
Posts Tagged ‘Donald Trump’
“I am become Death…”
Posted in Politics, tagged Bhagavad Gita, democracy, Donald Trump, media, public education, public media, public sphere, Trumpism on November 12, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
Truth, media trust, and the election
Posted in Media ecology, tagged disinformation, Donald Trump, fact-checking, information war, Interregnum, media coverage of U.S. politics, media ecologies, media hygiene, mediasphere, misinformation, post-truth, QAnon, Qult, U.S. politics on November 9, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
This article is cross-posted from the media ecologies blog e2mc. While last week’s election has resulted in the announcement of a new president and vice-president, with leaders of many countries around the world recognizing those results (and with global markets rallying their apparent support), the current Trump administration has not recognized them. As with the […]
Well, here we go…
Posted in Politics, tagged 2020 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump, electoral, Joe Biden, media coverage of U.S. politics, media ecology, negative visualization, political conflict, premortem, Stoicism on November 2, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
Cross-posted from e2mc. Note that this post takes the Stoic strategy of preparing for the worst, so as to be pleasantly surprised when the worst fails to come to pass. Deep breath, Americanos. Let’s brace ourselves for what may be the messiest, most litigious and disruptive Interregnum in U.S. history. (“Interregnum” = the 79 day interval between […]
The secret ballot “id”: affect & electoral politics
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged 2020 election, affect, affective politics, Donald Trump, electoral politics, emotional politics, id, Joe Biden, political id, presidential debates, secret ballot, U.S. cultural politics on October 23, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
Last night’s presidential debate was, in many ways, superfluous: if a U.S. citizen had not already made up their mind who they will vote for (or not already voted), it’s because they haven’t been paying attention. But there is one factor pollsters and predictors of every stripe have not gotten good at accounting for, which […]
The Qanization of the world
Posted in Cultural politics, Media ecology, Spirit matter, tagged 8chan, AI, Anomalies, artificial intelligence, China, conspiracies, conspiracy culture, conspiracy entrepreneurs, conspiracy theories, conspiratistics, conspiratology, conspirituality, Donald Trump, evil, Falun Gong, Instagram influencers, internet cultures, LARPs, machine intelligence, pastel QAnon, QAnon, redemptive societies, satanic cult, surveillance capitalism, wellness QAnon on October 18, 2020 | 3 Comments »
As I’ve been preparing to cover QAnon in my media course (and trying to keep up with it, since it’s really been ramping up ahead of the election), I’ve seriously begun to think of it is a work of evil genius. Let me explain why. For starters, it’s worth reminding ourselves that QAnon was designated […]
The new media regime
Posted in Media ecology, tagged Alex Jones, Anomalies, conspiracies, climate justice movement, Cold War 2.0, conspiracy culture, conspiracy entrepreneurs, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, Facebook, futurism, global media studies, global weirdness, Google, illiberalism, media ecology, media politics, media regimes, QAnon, surveillance capitalism, Trump-Like Derangement Syndrome on July 30, 2020 | 1 Comment »
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope hypothesis on the “new media regime” and some open questions that follow from it. Two groups are faring best these days under the current (new) media regime.* The first is surveillance capitalists, who have developed ways to monetize and harvest new data technologies directly for the accumulation of wealth. (That covers the […]
I am a conservative
Posted in Manifestos & auguries, tagged Anthropocene, community values, conservatism, Donald Trump, elections, family values, pro-life, values-based on November 2, 2018 | 2 Comments »
I am a pro-life, values-based conservative. I wish and act to conserve the conditions that have allowed human life to flourish on this planet for the past 12,000 years, conditions whose continuance today is threatened. I wish and act to conserve the values — of cooperation, respect, and physical and emotional sustenance — that have […]
Latour’s terrestrial project
Posted in Climate change, Philosophy, tagged Bruno Latour, climate denialism, cosmopolitics, Donald Trump, Down to Earth, ecopolitics, political ecology on October 28, 2018 | 2 Comments »
Review of Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018. Down to Earth is in significant part a restatement of Bruno Latour’s theorizing over the last few decades, made more incisive in the light of Trumpism (and other illiberal populisms) and brought to bear specifically on the moment of […]
“We interrupt this programming…”
Posted in Politics, tagged Aleksandar Hemon, catastrophe, CIA, classified documents, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, hope, Inauguration Day, ontological destruction, Politics, William Connolly, X-Files on January 19, 2017 | 12 Comments »
Not that this blog has been very active recently, but with Inauguration Day upon us, a little reflection on our situation seems warranted… So, here’s where I see us. If a Clinton-led Democratic administration would have brought to power a coalition of neoliberal plutocrats and social and environmental progressives (with the balance probably tilting towards […]
In search of silver linings
Posted in Manifestos & auguries, Politics, tagged 2016 elections, alt-right, ClimateJustice, Donald Trump, Dugin, future of the university, Garrison Keillor, global environmental catastrophe, liberalism, meme magic, memetic warfare, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, post-cinema, progressivism, Republicans, Tom Frank, Trump on November 10, 2016 | 8 Comments »
So, Donald Trump will be president of the United States and both Congress and Senate will be dominated by Republicans. Environmentalists and social justice activists, almost universally, find this idea horrifying. But there are silver linings to be found amidst the wreckage. Let’s explore a few of them.
Some mean temperatures…
Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, tagged climate denialism, Donald Trump, global warming, weather on January 29, 2014 | Leave a Comment »
Not that readers of this blog need to be reminded of this, but some of our friends might (if you have friends like Donald Trump)… Generalizing about global climate change from a cold snap is like predicting who will win the world series based on a single ball or strike in pre-season. The two things […]