The Trump “Whistleblower” Situation Is Very Dangerous for Democracy and for the Democrats

Biden’s disingenuousness is no match for Trump

Do the recent revelations by investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most notably the Wall Street Journal represent an “inflection point,” exposing a level of malfeasance and criminality that can no longer be ignored? Perhaps. It is too early to tell. But the record of the past seems pretty ...
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Futures

Exiles on 12th Street, Episode Five

The future can sometimes seem daunting and frightening, but it can also feel like an unwritten adventure. As children, we played in a world of infinite possibilities, in which imagination—not predestination—ruled the day. In the fifth episode of Exiles on 12th Street, we explore possibilities the future may hold. From ...
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Stormy Times in Argentina

A View from Buenos Aires

The core of this article was written a week before the results of the primary elections on August 11, which massively rejected the national economic and social policies implemented by current President Mauricio Macri, as demonstrated by the 15 point spread between the victorious Alberto Fernandez and Macri. These primary ...
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I Want to Run for Office. Thank You, AOC.

A letter to Alexandira Ocasio-Cortez

Your Spanish is like mine; acquired in the streets, it sounds like it was put through a strainer, and I love it. You weren’t supposed to run for office. Mother from La Isla and dad from the South Bronx. Born in a place where zip code determines your destiny. Bearing a long, hyphenated ...
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Elizabeth Warren at Washington Square Park

Warren wows the crowd

Thousands came to cheer when she spoke in Washington Square Park Monday night. Washington Square Park is a difficult place to hold a large rally, with its big fountain in the middle and lots of closed off spaces for special activities. But the Arch on the northern boundary makes a great backdrop. At ...
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The Art of Change Opera 0.1

An ongoing libretto

The following is the opera’s libretto, conceived and developed by the philosopher and writer Chiara Bottici. In accordance with the spirit of the Centennial and of The New School’s legacy, it will be an ongoing and open libretto: we invite all readers to suggest changes, to propose quotations from their ...
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The Return of “Capitalism”

And the limits of economics

As Democratic presidential hopefuls find themselves responding to the questions “are you a socialist?” and “are you a capitalist?,” it is useful to remember that for most of the post-War era, the word capitalism was taboo in economics, the discipline whose very role is to provide rigorous analysis of … ...
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More Precious Than Gold

How a Carbon-based Cryptocurrency Might Save Our Planet

Today, we are existentially threatened by our own waste production: atmospheric carbon. But what if we took a cue both from nature and endless generations of farmers, and re-labeled our carbon waste as central, as fertile; as the font of all value in the system? For eons, farmers have known ...
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The Problem with “Neoliberalism”

Neoliberalism is polarizing the 2019 elections. Does it capture Argentina’s predicament?

I argue neoliberalism has become a shorthand whose usage does more harm than good. There are three (non-exhaustive) reasons why it is a problematic frame to understand Argentina’s predicament. First, neoliberalism is a concept that over-simplifies multi-causal processes into a narrative frame presented as a coherent whole. It creates an “us ...
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Fleabag, Let Things Get Lost

Wonder, confusion, and why film needs more of it.

I want to talk about wonder in film. Wonder isn’t some starry-eyed luxury. It’s tantamount to messy, confused, vulnerable searching where all the possibilities of one’s world are up in the air, and one’s bearing is anxious. Wonder peeks out in mainstream film, but filmmakers should follow it and see ...
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The Political and Intellectual Entanglements of Post-Truth

A review of Steve Fuller’s Post-Truth: Knowledge as Power Game

Three years after the Oxford English Dictionary made the term "post-truth" the word of the year, we still live in a time in which, according to the definition, “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” As both Nicholas Baer and Maggie ...
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