Two Hearty Cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The congressional primary win is a bright spot for democrats amongst the slew of recent political losses

This morning as I drank my coffee I watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on TV, listened to her speak, and read with pleasure the numerous reports of her primary victory over incumbent and party boss Joe Crowley in New York City’s 14th Congressional District. I was exultant. And I am exultant still. So much ...
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Two Hearty Cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

It’s Happening Here and Now

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

"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 ...
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It’s Happening Here and Now

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The role of the pro-government media in Turkey, Part III

In two previous posts on the political scene in Turkey (I and II), I explained and discussed the success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Erdogan through their adoption of a type of post-truth politics that has enabled them to remain in power since 2002. Building upon ...
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Populism Through Uprooted Truths

Bucharest Reflections on Political Corruption

Romanian Echoes of Trump

"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; ...
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Bucharest Reflections on Political Corruption

CFP: Remaking American Political History

June 6-7, 2019 Purdue University West Lafayette, IN

American political history is thriving. Over the past two decades, an interdisciplinary examination of American political history has produced scholarship that explores the expansive spheres in which Americans engage in politics and relate to one another and the state. Now is the time to build on momentum in the field ...
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CFP: Remaking American Political History

Thinking Politically in the Age of Trump

Introduction to #AgainstTrump: Notes from Year One

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, ...
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Thinking Politically in the Age of Trump

Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue

Bucharest Reflections on the 20th Century

"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 ...
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Memory, Forgetting, and the Bluest Kind of Blue

Prague in Spring

A riff on jazz, dissent and democracy in dark times

"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 ...
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Prague in Spring

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Satire and the Abuse of Anti-Bullying Rhetoric

The White House Correspondents Dinner at the end of last month sent social media and the commentariat alight once again, reporting a scandal where the only scandal is how easy it is for persons across the political spectrum to be scandalized by what is, in fact, the healthy efflorescence of ...
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Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Austrian Politics

Black and Blue

In December 2017, Austria got its new government, a coalition between the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), headed by the charismatic 31-year-old college dropout Sebastian Kurz, the world’s youngest head of state, and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) — European ally to France’s Front national and official partner of Putin’s party United ...
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Austrian Politics

Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

Reflections on the 1984 Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance

When did coalitional organizing between feminists and conservative women become impossible? I’m not sure, but as a feminist there is one place and time that I remember vividly: Indianapolis in the spring of 1984. There, led by Mayor William Hudnut, III Republican politician Beulah Coughenour and local movement conservatives, that city ...
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Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?