Politics Archives - Page 99 of 105

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Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson, and America’s Fate

A response to Keval Bhatt

October 22, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In a stirring, passionate, and bracingly clear recent contribution to the ongoing Charlottesville thread in our “Power and Crisis” vertical, University of Virginia student Keval Bhatt accounts for his decision to join others in shrouding the famous, indeed iconic, statue of Thomas Jefferson on the grounds of the University. I ...

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Act One of Turkey’s Post-1980 Political Drama

The mysterious clearing of Turkey’s political stage

October 20, 2017 • by Phyllis Jeffrey

Given this depiction of the present, it would be surprising to learn that AKP’s first electoral victory happened somewhat by accident. In the uncut version of the post-1980 Turkish political drama, AKP is the second of two acts. It is Act One, not Act Two, that made the party’s hegemony ...

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Jefferson’s Two Bodies

Memory, protest, and democracy at the University of Virginia and beyond

October 19, 2017 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

The students who shrouded Jefferson pulled the memory of the author of the Declaration of Independence — that document so useful to Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others — into a larger series of conflicts over memorialization. These conflicts have tended focus on monuments to the ...

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Subverting the Symbols of White Supremacy

The wolf and the fox

October 17, 2017 • by Keval Bhatt

Fascism had always seemed to me a thing of the past. It was almost like a fairy-tale I was told -- a passive deterrent, an unreal warning -- while going through school. But school was not my education; my real education occurred as I entered the fight against fascism in ...

Democracy

Political Narratives and Authoritarian Consolidation in Turkey

Telling a different story about July 15

October 16, 2017 • by Ates Altinordu

Although more than a year has passed since the event, many details about the planning and implementation of the coup remain unknown. The “confessions” released to the public seem heavily filtered by the government, and a parliamentary commission charged with investigating the coup attempt has curiously neglected to question key ...

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Empire, Epidemics and Visions of Racial Apocalypse

The Precursors of Contemporary Xenophobia

September 21, 2017 • by Alexandre White

In the numerous violent clashes the book depicts, like the one in which Belgian soldiers stationed in consular offices in India massacre thousands of advancing migrants, murder is depicted in orgiastic fashion while officers recite the victories of great conquerors past to raise morale -- tales of crusading knights slaying ...

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The Political Landscape Post Charlottesville

Where Should Students and Academics Stand?

September 16, 2017 • by Elena Gagovska

I had thought that the scariest sight that weekend would be the images of the “Unite the Right” rally. Men can be scary enough on their own. Men with violent ideologies are simply terrifying. The white supremacist rally was toxically masculine, looked utterly fascist and sounded like a historical period ...

Politics

Near-Retirees at All Incomes Are Almost 1/3 Short of Target Retirement Savings

August Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

September 2, 2017 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

Low-, middle-, and high-income near retirees are almost one-third short of the savings they need to maintain their standard of living in retirement. ReLab's new report using just-released government data documents that the median level of retirement savings in IRAs and 401(k)-type plans among workers ages 55-64 is $15,000. When workers who do not ...

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Before Charlottesville There Was Jamestown

An Essay

August 28, 2017 • by Mindy Fullilove, Robert Fullilove, William Morrish and Robert Sember

Nearly 400 years of division have created an apartheid society: we need a new social infrastructure to carry us through the challenges of climate change, decaying physical infrastructure, rapidly evolving jobs, underperforming schools, uneven access to health care and lack of affordable housing. Our central task is to engage as ...

Before Charlottesville There Was Jamestown

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Loss Beyond Destruction

Charlottesville reveals the failures of loss

August 17, 2017 • by Jared Loggins

“Get out, get out,” the person screams, the space in between the bangs growing closer and closer together as the warning continued. The apartment building is on fire. My brother, my parents, and I are all home and luckily we are able to hear the warning. We gather some essential possessions ...

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Nuclear Crisis — Or Nuclear Theater?

Comparing the Cuban Missile

August 15, 2017 • by Richard D. Anderson

In the Cuban Missile Crisis, the sound judgment and self restraint of President John F. Kennedy, ably advised by his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, supposedly saved the world from the nuclear war advocated by hawks like Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay. But that triumphalist story is ...

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What Are the Costs of Libertarianism?

Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, Revisited

August 10, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking Press, 2017.) Democracy in Chains, historian Nancy MacLean's account of James McGill Buchanan and public choice economics, has caused an unusual stir in the few months since its publication. You may have followed the lengthy ...