Here are my thoughts on the US election, and on the challenges it presents us, in four parts. 1. The informational catastrophe, and the sadness of it For all the reasons to be dismayed about these elections, there’s one that saddens me most. It’s that all the people (me among them) who’ve given their professional […]
Posts Tagged ‘Trump’
No surprises
Posted in Blog stuff, Climate change, Politics, tagged 01-06-21, Capitol, climate denialism, disinformation, far right, fascism, hope, image war, information war, insurrection, January 6 2021, meme magic, QAnon, right-wing media, Trump, Trump-Like Derangement Syndrome, Trumpism, Trumplan, U.S. Capitol, Washington D.C. on January 7, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
I am an academic who researches, writes, and teaches about the human relationship with the ecological environment within which we live and on which we depend. I recognize that that relationship is deeply troubled, and I want to be working on untroubling it. Politics — the shaping and implementation of policy to steer collective and […]
Thought exercise (democracy & reality)
Posted in Manifestos & auguries, tagged democracy, tipping points, Trump on September 11, 2020 | 1 Comment »
See how far you follow my line of thinking here: (1) Democracy (institutional and not just majoritarian/representational) is better than the alternatives. Let’s live with it (and defend it). (2) Democracy as practiced in the U.S. today is partial, compromised, and somewhat muzzled, but still better than the alternatives. Let’s fix it up. (3) Democracy, […]
Denial, incompetence, & depravity
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged circular economy, climate denialism, climate science, ClimateJustice, eco-religion, National Climate Assessment, Paul Krugman, religious conversion, Republican Party, scientific consensus, Trump on November 28, 2018 | 3 Comments »
For many, President Trump’s babbling and incoherent responses to last week’s National Climate Assessment (“I’m too smart to believe it, just look at our air and water and what those other countries are doing…”), following on from his even less coherent responses to California’s wildfire tragedies (“They should rake more, like the Finns”), merely reconfirm that […]
On civility
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged body politic, civics, civillity, communicative discourse, illiberalism, incivility, left politics, Politics, post-truth, Trump on July 13, 2018 | 3 Comments »
Some say the problem in today’s political world is the lack of civility. Others say the problem is civility itself, or the pretense of it (and use of it as a bludgeon), when what is called for is outrage. It seems to me that there is no universal “civility.” Civility is a matter of fitting […]
Trump vs. the world
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged Nicaragua, Paris climate accord, Trump, U.S. politics on June 2, 2017 | 2 Comments »
Trump’s speech on his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord included so many questionable statements, it’s hard to know where to start. Fortunately, others have. Among the better fact-checks are the Washington Post’s (this one and this one), FactCheck.org’s, NPR’s, PolitiFact’s, and the Huffington Post’s. Foreign Policy’s summary (which comes from a partisan source, but […]
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.