Politics Archives - Page 63 of 143

Feature

The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

Reflections on Imagination and Forgetting

December 7, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“We should remember with caution, even as we must proceed boldly.” This is the way I have already tried to succinctly summarize my approach to “gray memory” earlier this year. I know that memory holds great promise, as Milan Kundera once put it: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of ...

The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

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Racism, Thomas Farr, and the Legacies of George H. W. Bush

Bush was no Trump, but he helped pave the way for Trump

December 5, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Late last week Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina declared that he will vote against President Trump’s nomination of Thomas Farr to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals, effectively killing the nomination in the Senate. Scott is the first African-American from South Carolina to ever serve in the ...

Racism, Thomas Farr, and the Legacies of George H. W. Bush

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Bush Without Tears

Never attempt to define a person’s legacy based on a few incidents

December 3, 2018 • by John Lawrence

The presidency of George H.W. Bush is enjoying a nostalgic portrayal following the death of “41” on November 30. His is being called “the most successful one term presidency in history,” and that description may well endure given the obvious fact that, by definition, one term presidencies have invariably ended ...

Education

The Possibilities for New Ways of Living

What students help their professors learn about teaching the Anthropocene

December 3, 2018 • by Stephanie Wakefield

1. The Anthropocene designates Earth’s departure from the stable climates of the Holocene and its entrance into a more volatile and unknown operating space as glaciers melt, seas rise, and climates change. As I see it we are living in not only the Anthropocene but more specifically, as I’ve written from ...

The Possibilities for New Ways of Living

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What Will it Take to Save the Children of Yemen?

A march of backpacks against bombs

November 29, 2018 • by Jeremy Varon

I sifted through the children’s backpacks laid at the Isaiah Wall, across from the United Nations, looking for one labeled with the name of an 11 year-old boy. That’s the age of my son, and carrying it would help me feel closer to the lives we were mourning. I found ...

What Will it Take to Save the Children of Yemen?

Feature

How An Anti-LGBT Agenda Helped Secure Bolsonaro’s Election Victory

What does the election of a right-wing president mean for Brazilian democracy?

November 29, 2018 • by Gustavo Gomes da Costa Santos

This October, Brazilians went to the polls to choose a new president in the most polarized election since the end of military rule in 1985. In a highly fragmented election between 13 candidates, Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), a right-wing retired captain known for his homophobic, racist ...

How An Anti-LGBT Agenda Helped Secure Bolsonaro’s Election Victory

Feature

European Union Strikes Back at Populism

By renouncing the Law and Justice party, Poland could return to the EU fold

November 28, 2018 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has finally taken steps to comply with a European Court of Justice (ECJ) decree ordering it to reverse some of the judicial “reforms” that took effect in July. Under the offending legislation, the PiS had tried to force out disfavored Supreme Court justices ...

Blue Monday

Cindy Hyde-Smith, or Mississippi God Damn!

Why the history of white supremacy matters for the last Senate election of 2018

November 26, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On Tuesday November 27 -- tomorrow -- voters in Mississippi will go to the polls to choose their next U.S. Senator in a runoff election pitting incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, a far-right Republican and Trump supporter, against Mike Espy, a moderate Democrat who served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton ...

Cindy Hyde-Smith, or Mississippi God Damn!

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Smart Media Is a Pain

As machine intelligence advances, we encounter the painful limits of our social intelligence

November 22, 2018 • by Benjamin Peters

Public media discourse has been fairly agonizing. All sides seem beset by mobs of malicious morons: waves of fake news pounding against their believers, crafty hackers seeding chains of disinformation, the trollish alt-right cooptation of identity politics, and even a populous turnout at the US midterm elections that, no matter your political leanings, likely ...

Feature

Making America Good Again

A few notes of thanks as Purple Wednesday closes a two-year run

November 21, 2018 • by Claire Potter

As I wrote that day, The message of The Poseidon Adventure was that we must not give in to despair, even in our darkest hour. In order to save our own lives, we must come to terms with, and fight back against, the new reality. The challenges faced by those on The Poseidon are ...

Feature

What Should American Progressives Learn from the Midterms?

Victories in Congress and at the state and local level could pave the way for a progressive groundswell in 2020

November 21, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

Politics is a struggle for power -- over ideas and interests -- and after this year’s midterm elections two things remain clear. First, voter suppression and intimidation, racism, and corporate money continue to infect American politics like a virus. Second, despite those obstacles, America is a much more progressive country ...

What Should American Progressives Learn from the Midterms?

Democracy

Not from the Left, Nor from the Center – But From Below

By mobilizing at the grassroots, Democrats successfully outflanked the GOP by crafting resistance into a coherent agenda

November 20, 2018 • by Sidney Tarrow

But these were only the most visible -- and the most national -- expressions of a wave of movements. Much of the energy that produced the Democratic victories of November 2018 rose up beneath the radar of the national press. As Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol wrote in a New Republic article ...