Blue Monday Archives - Page 5 of 6

Blue Monday

God Bless the Child?

Reflections on Families Belong Together, Trumpism, and the politics of resistance

July 2, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington While recent primaries have furnished some reason for modest hopefulness (see for example my piece last week on the primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), in a broader sense recent political developments have further darkened the already dark ...

Blue Monday

It’s Happening Here and Now

Thoughts on the recent immigration detentions and William E. Connolly’s ‘Aspirational Fascism’

June 25, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Donald Trump has occupied the Oval Office for the past year and a half. It has been a particularly dark time for Americans who care about freedom, human rights, and democracy. During this period a ...

Blue Monday

Bucharest Reflections on Political Corruption

Romanian Echoes of Trump

June 18, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Everything is political. But not everything is political in the same way. In liberal democracies the law is the outcome of contests of power and political negotiations that are uneven and yet constrained by constitutional procedures; ...

Bucharest Reflections on Political Corruption

Blue Monday

Thinking Politically in the Age of Trump

Introduction to #AgainstTrump: Notes from Year One

June 11, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A note from the author: This seems like a good time to follow up Jeffrey Goldfarb’s column of last week by posting the Introduction to my new Public Seminar book, #AgainstTrump: Notes from Year One, which is available from Public Seminar as a free download here. "I merely took the energy it takes to pout, ...

Thinking Politically in the Age of Trump

Blue Monday

Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue

Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century

June 4, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue: Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century I am writing this while drinking my second cup of strong cappuccino on the veranda of Bon Pain, a wonderful small French patisserie in ...

Blue Monday

Prague in Spring

A riff on jazz, dissent and democracy in dark times

May 28, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington I started writing this in Prague, on May 20, which is my birthday, while sitting across the street from Villa Lana, the home of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which for the past twenty-five years ...

Blue Monday

Why There Can Be No Democratic Left Without an Energetic Left

Some thoughts on disagreement

May 21, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington A number of pieces have come across my screen in the past week commenting, critically, on the way "the radical left" has responded to Trump. One, published in the Washington Post, announced boldly that "The Far Left ...

Why There Can Be No Democratic Left Without an Energetic Left

Blue Monday

Democracy Now

Thoughts on losing, winning, and politics

May 14, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In my last two “Blue Monday” columns I reflected on the theme of “consonance and dissonance” and politics. More concretely, I suggested that it is very important, especially on the broad democratic left, to promote ...

Blue Monday

Primary Contests

Further thoughts on consonance and dissonance

May 7, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In the coming week, millions of Americans will go to the polls on May 8 to determine which candidates will run in the upcoming November general election. The November election is particularly important given the ...

Blue Monday

Consonance, Dissonance, Harmony

Itinerary of some thoughts on thinking politically

April 30, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington This is my fourteenth “Blue Monday” column. In but a few weeks, I have already written over forty thousand words in this virtual space. It’s not as if I don’t have a life. The column is not ...

Blue Monday

Between Past and Future

Thinking about life and death

April 23, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington I attended an interesting talk yesterday. Being a young scholar, the speaker was (of course) using PowerPoint. At one moment in the talk he referenced a “recent argument” that he would engage. As he did ...

Blue Monday

Damascus Blues

On the bombing of Syria

April 16, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington As promised by our Bloviator-in-Chief, we bombed Syria last Friday, inauspiciously the 13th of April. It was not the first time the United States has bombed Syria. The US has been conducting a low-intensity air war against ISIS, in ...