Politics Archives - Page 88 of 105

Blue Monday

New Blood Brings New Energy to the Democratic Party

Defeating Trump Politically Part 2

February 20, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

“I really like the new crop of young people who were just elected to Congress. They now need to stop acting like young people. It’s time to do that.”--Aaron Sorkin, self-important screenwriter of television shows about politics “What . . . really distinguishes this generation . . . is its determination ...

Blue Monday

Defeating Trumpism Politically, Part 1

Trump’s ‘national emergency’ over a border wall

February 18, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I started writing my Blue Monday column a little over a year ago. I’ve been so gratified by the many regular readers the column has attracted, and the comments, and criticisms, the column has elicited. The column began as an effort to weave together my passions for politics and music. Over ...

Democracy

Towards a World Wide Committee of Democratic Correspondence

Democracy Seminar 2.0

February 15, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Such a grand imagination informs the making of Democracy Seminar 2.0, the revival of an initially clandestine New School seminar of the 1980s and early 1990s that provided a place for Eastern European dissidents to reimagine their world. As was the case in the earlier seminar, we are now following ...

Blue Monday

The Attacks on Ilhan Omar Must Stop

Why criticizing AIPAC is not anti-Semitism

February 11, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Ilhan Omar, the recently-elected Democratic Congressperson who represents Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, has come under fire for her recent comments about AIPAC, the American-Israel Political Action Committee. The Times headline puts it well: “Pelosi and Democratic Leaders Condemn Omar Statements as Anti-Semitic.” It is important to be clear about the comments that ...

Democracy

Authoritarian Parasitism in Turkey and Beyond

Erdogan and the rise of strongman politics

February 6, 2019 • by Utku Balaban

What makes this phenomenon perplexing is the fact that these governments come into power in countries that are anything but similar. For instance, the United States has a long-lasting political system backed by its strong institutions and semi-holy texts such as its Constitution. Hungary reframed its entire political regime after ...

Authoritarian Parasitism in Turkey and Beyond

Feature

After the ‘American Dream’?

How Mexico Responds to U.S. Deportations

February 6, 2019 • by Guadalupe Chavez

“Fixing” the “illegal” immigration “problem” has been at the forefront of Donald Trump’s rhetoric from the first weeks he took office until today. Despite Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, undocumented persons across the U.S. are taking to the streets in protest, demanding that politicians uphold their rights, and seeking sanctuary ...

Blue Monday

Mitch McConnell and the “For the People Act of 2019”

Thoughts on power grabbing and democracy

February 4, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This is the Democrat plan to restore democracy? A brand new week of paid vacation for every federal employee who’d like to hover around while you cast your ballot? A Washington-based, tax-subsidized clearinghouse for political campaign funding? A power grab. It’s smelling more and more like exactly what it is. Thus ...

Mitch McConnell and the “For the People Act of 2019”

Democracy

On Media Mess and Its Alternatives

Islands of Totalitarianism and Democracy continued

February 1, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

When people meet in their differences, as equals, develop a capacity to meet and talk in the presence of each other, and develop a capacity to act together in concert, they constitute political power, an island of democracy. For Hannah Arendt, in fact, this is political power in contrast to ...

Blue Monday

To Hell With Maduro and With Trump

Thoughts on Socialism, Venezuela, and Freedom

January 28, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Venezuelan system has been in crisis for some time. This crisis, like all crises, is no doubt overdetermined. It has global, regional, and domestic dimensions. And its primary victims are the ordinary people of Venezuela. If you have any doubts, I recommend a look at Amnesty International’s 2018 report, ...

The Right

How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait

And why you should care that it is

January 24, 2019 • by Claire Potter

I watched it through, aware of the retweet widget turning over rapidly. It was going viral. Because I did not really understand what the video meant to the thousands sharing it, I clicked on the response widget on the far left to look at comments. I learned Sandmann and Phillips’ names; ...

How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait

Blue Monday

Thoughts on Martin Luther King, Jr., Birmingham, and Fractious Unity

Lessons from the civil rights movement for today’s political debates

January 21, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues.” - Duke Ellington Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a classic of American political thought and of American literature more generally. I’ve taught it countless times in my almost four decades of teaching political ...

Thoughts on Martin Luther King, Jr., Birmingham, and Fractious Unity

Democracy

From “Islands of Democracy” to “Islands of Totalitarianism”

Notes on my conversation with Daniel Dayan about the disturbing events in France and the United States, and beyond

January 18, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We met in our favorite Parisian workplace, La Caféothèque, and then caught up with each other elsewhere over a lunch and a dinner. We’re working on our ongoing collaborative writing project, now influenced by recent events in France and the United States. We disussed papers he is developing on a theory ...