Trump, Impeachment, and the Question of Democratic Legitimacy

To allow Trump to continue to act as if he has legitimacy is simply to continue to legitimate him and his party

Trump declares boldly and angrily that he is President because he won the election; that as President he is entitled to disparage long-standing governmental norms, break the law, declare national emergencies on a whim, assault the civil rights and liberties of immigrants, minorities, and women, and treat his critics, in ...
Read More

Ghosts, Trauma and Travel Fever in Psychoanalysis

A reflection on working with the transgenerational transmission of trauma

Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis, published by the Relational Perspectives Book Series, delves into the overwhelming feelings related to mourning. Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, it features accounts of the unpredictable effects of trauma that emerge within clinical work, often unexpectedly, in ways ...
Read More
Ghosts, Trauma and Travel Fever in Psychoanalysis

When Child Welfare Intrusion Makes Reproductive Freedom an Illusion

Mothers entangled in the ACS do not fully enjoy this freedom

Among the most fundamental liberties owed to all women is reproductive freedom -- the right to plan a family and parent children without government intrusion. Mothers entangled in the child protective system do not fully enjoy this right. Every aspect of their mothering is infantilized by people claiming to serve ...
Read More
When Child Welfare Intrusion Makes Reproductive Freedom an Illusion

#OnArrive — But Where Are We?

Unpacking the electoral performance of Europe’s nationalist right

The last time citizens of European Union member states displayed enthusiasm for the European Parliamentary elections was in 1979 when turnout was 61.9 percent. 1979 was the year that the elections began and the year that the Union consisted of only nine members. In the five Parliamentary elections that have ...
Read More

On Capitalism

The worst there Is, except for all the others

Winston Churchill’s famous comment on democracy as a political system applies equally to free enterprise capitalism as an economic system. No other economic form provides the incentives to economic innovation and creativity, relates the desires of the consumer to the efforts of the producer, encourages the voluntary savings and investment ...
Read More
On Capitalism

Speculating on Chaos in Financialized Capitalism

Speculations, Spectacles, Spectres

Across the channel, during the upheaval caused by the gilets jaunes movement, media and government have condemned protestors’ actions for the continuing chaos they have brought upon France’s city centers. Back in autumn, some weeks before the eruption of the gilet jaunes protests, President Macron used his Armistice Speech to focus on the ...
Read More

White Men Running (For President)

The DNC’s nostalgic embrace of familiar, and obsolete, white male leadership

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one's own fantasy.”  Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and its Discontents.” In this 2020 Democratic primary reality TV season, Biden, O’Rourke, Buttigieg, and Sanders all seem to be performing different facets of a kind of idealized white male type. ...
Read More
White Men Running (For President)

In Praise of Clicktivism

On the Ethics and Efficacy of Digital Activism

In April 2019 thirty-thousand workers from Stop & Shop, a New England-based grocery chain, went on strike to protest cuts to their wages and benefits. After eleven days of direct action, representatives from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union reached a settlement with the billion-dollar chain on April ...
Read More
In Praise of Clicktivism

Raising the Age in New York City

The Story Thus Far

Last Oct. 1, New York State’s “Raise the Age” (RTA) provisions took effect for 16-year-olds statewide. Designed to end the presumptive criminal prosecution and confinement of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, RTA brought New York into line with 48 other states. Only North Carolina persists in making 16 the default ...
Read More
Raising the Age in New York City

Enveloped in Suspicion

Physical mail is becoming obsolete as communication moves online

Envelopes are one of those banal objects of everyday life we seldom think much about. They are, however, an ancient  -- and at one time controversial  --  privacy technology. Envelopes render their contents secret. Today, once sealed inside a simple paper envelope, all kinds of messages  --  bills, birthday greetings, college ...
Read More
Enveloped in Suspicion