A Ticket for the Rome Express

A Strategy for Democracy

In Budapest, and shortly before local elections, some of my friends now speak of the Istanbul Express. As readers know, in that enormous city, followers of the slightly left Republican People’s Party (CHP), of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a small nationalist grouping, “the Good Party,” united to ...
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A Call For A Global Focus On Community Values

A market for values is what the world Needs to reconcile democracy and capitalism, community and the individual

The weakening of democracy and community Liberal democracy is in retreat in several countries: Brazil, India, Hungary, Poland. It is also going through an identity crisis in the United States and United Kingdom. In Italy in the last year there has been a sharp increase in divisiveness on issues such as ...
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The Trump “Whistleblower” Situation Is Very Dangerous for Democracy and for the Democrats

Biden’s disingenuousness is no match for Trump

Do the recent revelations by investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most notably the Wall Street Journal represent an “inflection point,” exposing a level of malfeasance and criminality that can no longer be ignored? Perhaps. It is too early to tell. But the record of the past seems pretty ...
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Stormy Times in Argentina

A View from Buenos Aires

The core of this article was written a week before the results of the primary elections on August 11, which massively rejected the national economic and social policies implemented by current President Mauricio Macri, as demonstrated by the 15 point spread between the victorious Alberto Fernandez and Macri. These primary ...
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Elizabeth Warren at Washington Square Park

Warren wows the crowd

Thousands came to cheer when she spoke in Washington Square Park Monday night. Washington Square Park is a difficult place to hold a large rally, with its big fountain in the middle and lots of closed off spaces for special activities. But the Arch on the northern boundary makes a great backdrop. At ...
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The Political and Intellectual Entanglements of Post-Truth

A review of Steve Fuller’s Post-Truth: Knowledge as Power Game

Three years after the Oxford English Dictionary made the term "post-truth" the word of the year, we still live in a time in which, according to the definition, “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” As both Nicholas Baer and Maggie ...
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Why Warren’s Speech Was Terrific

She galvanized the crowd by speaking the language of radical civic republicanism

In the press release announcing the endorsement, Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell stated that: “We’re lucky to have two strong progressive candidates leading in this race. Senator Warren and Senator Sanders have both shaped the ideological terrain on which this campaign is being waged. They have proven an ...
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Warren is Not Too Late

Of course Jacobin prefers Sanders, but this does not make him the obvious candidate of the broad democratic left

Kilpatrick and Sunkara’s argument is complicated, and somewhat convoluted (they say “paradoxical”), and boils down to this: while Warren is passe because her vision is grounded in the failed promises of financial regulation under the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that can be traced back to the politics ...
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Lies, Fakes, and Deep Fakes

Deceptions and Scams in the Age of Trump

Following the speech three things happened: first, a video was almost immediately made and posted online; a video in which Pelosi’s delivery was slowed down and her tone changed to give the impression that she was either drunk or affected by a health disorder. Second, the next day President Trump tweeted a ...
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Is “Motherfucker” The Concept Political Science Now Needs?

An Immodest Proposal

Is “Motherfucker” the concept that political science now needs? The question is a serious one. And the answer, I suggest in all seriousness, is “yes.” Kind of. We live in troubled times. The June 16, 2018 cover of The Economist stated the trouble clearly: “How strongmen subvert democracy.” The September/October cover of Foreign Affairs also puts it well: “Autocracy Now.” But ...
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The Story of Indian Democracy Written in Blood and Betrayal

BJP thinks it is going to Indianize Kashmir. Instead, we will see, potentially, the Kashmirization of India.

The narrative supporting a radical move on Kashmir is familiar. Article 35(a) was a discriminatory provision and had to go. Article 370 was not a mechanism for integration but a legal tool for separatism. The Indian state, despite the horrendous violence it has used in the past, has never had ...
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