Treason, Accents, and Outdoor Play

Past Present Episode 140

In this episode, Natalia, Neil, and Niki debate the definition of treason, the significance of linguistic accents, and a new practice of prescribing outdoor play. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: President Trump’s behavior at his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin has earned him the epithet of ...
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Treason, Accents, and Outdoor Play

The Class of ’74: Congress after Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship

An excerpt from John A. Lawrence’s latest book

“A Different Kind of Congress” The Class [of ‘74] brought more than support for reform to archaic House [of Representatives] procedures: it brought generational change, a merging of the external activism of the streets -- the campus, civil rights, and anti-war movements, the battles for women’s rights and consumer protection, the ...
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The Class of ’74: Congress after Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship

Of Summits, Blowhards, and Hard Blowing

Thoughts on Trump, treason, and defending democracy

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In the wake of Donald Trump’s recent Helsinki “summit” with Vladimir Putin, which followed quickly on the heels of Trump’s disastrous meeting with EU leaders in Brussels, talk of “treason” is in the air. To ...
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Of Summits, Blowhards, and Hard Blowing

Justice Through Solidarity

Bernice Yeung’s In a Day’s Work

Bernice Yeung exposes the sexual harassment and rape endemic to isolated fields, offices, and homes. Despite poverty, undocumented status, and economic desperation, women farmworkers, janitors, and domestic workers have mustered the courage to overcome shame and speak out against abuse. Yeung chronicles their personal journeys. Nonetheless, it is easy to ...
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Justice Through Solidarity

Families Belong Together

2000 people gathered across from White House on June 30

On June 30, almost two thousand people gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House to denounce President Trump’s "zero tolerance policy" for immigrants seeking to escape violence in Mexico and Central America. The policy led to children being taken away from their parents when families reached the border, ...
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Families Belong Together

Disturbing our Dogmatic Slumber

The welcome provocations of Aleinikoff and Zamore

The international approach to refugees and asylum seekers needs to be radically altered, just one of the themes taken up by Arc of Protection: Toward a New International Refugee Regime by Alex Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore. The book is both thought-provoking and engaging and I very much welcome its renewed stress on ...
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Disturbing our Dogmatic Slumber

A Democratic Tea Party?

An incoming wave of ideological hardliners

The surprise defeat of NY Rep. Joe Crowley by non-traditional, anti-establishment newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has fueled extensive speculation about worrisome chasms opening within the Democratic Party as it struggles to reclaim a House majority. As with the victories of other newcomers in a number of races around the country, some speculate ...
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A Democratic Tea Party?

On Opposing Fascism with a Reality TV Face

“Politics as a vocation,” the social condition and Donald Trump

I am waiting, ever more impatiently, for my fellow citizens to wake up, to confront that it is happening here and now, that fascism with a reality TV face is upon us. Even though the situation appears ridiculous and often comic, it’s ominous. I am not ready to declare that “The ...
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On Opposing Fascism with a Reality TV Face

Playground Ambiguities

Unequal childhoods and imaginative play in an era of financialized capitalism

Rising up from a grassy knoll on the edge of the City of London, the naturalist wooden playground structure at Tower Hill Garden both blends into the park space and jolts the senses, lying as it does at the core of global finance. In dominant social imaginaries, nothing and no one could ...
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Playground Ambiguities

The Sculpture in the Stone

Preparing for adulthood the new old-fashioned way

William James’s Hard-Won Development Between Childhood and Fame How do we come of age? The Pew Research Center reports a steady increase over the last five decades in the number of young adults, aged 25 to 35, living with their parents. The percentage of young people “nesting” at home has almost doubled since ...
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The Sculpture in the Stone

I-dentity

Is trusted love ever an option?

Integrating Relational Psychoanalysis and EMDR: Embodied Experience and Clinical Practice provides contemporary theoretical and clinical links between Relational Psychoanalysis, attachment theory, neuroscience, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). The author, Hemda Arad, delineates the ways psychoanalysis and EMDR can complement each other through a presentation of fundamental concepts and an ...
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I-dentity

So You Want To Be POTUS?

Avoid the disasters that long presidential campaigns produce

Checking my Instagram a few evenings ago, I saw that Senator Elizabeth Warren was live. I clicked. In a grainy video, I saw her striding out onto a marble plaza talking to an aide, her blunt cut blond hair swinging slightly as she strode into the darkness. The sound of ...
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So You Want To Be POTUS?