Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Arun Gupta:
Bonus links: “Sorry, Bernie, We Need Radical Change” (this article does a good job summarizing the seemingly non-replicable quirks that led to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary election victory, but succumbs to reliance on self-defeating populist demonizations) and Crowds and Party
Link to an article by Zola Carr:
Bonus links: “Are We Governed By Secondary Psychopaths?” and “The War Inside Your Head” and “Mental Health and Neoliberalism” and “Are the Young People That Shrinks Label as Disruptive Really Anarchists With a Healthy Resistance to Oppressive Authority?” and “Social Service or Social Change?”
Link to an article by Victoria Law:
“Captive Audience: How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send an Email”
This article buries at the end the official rationale for banning conventional mail (smuggling in drugs). But it also provides a simple explanation of new methods by which prisoners and their friends and families are exploited by the prison-industrial complex.
Bonus links: “9 Surprising Industries Profiting Handsomely from America’s Insane Prison System” and “This System Is a Moral Horror” and …And the Poor Get Prison
“what do democratic socialists effectively want? The rightist reproach against them is that, beneath their innocent-sounding concrete proposals to raise taxes, make healthcare better, etc, there is a dark project to destroy capitalism and its freedoms. My fear is exactly the opposite one: that beneath their concrete welfare state proposals there is nothing, no great project, just a vague idea of more social justice. The idea is simply that, through electoral pressure, the centre of gravity will move back to the left.
But is, in the (not so) long term, this enough? Do the challenges that we face, from global warming to refugees, from digital control to biogenetic manipulations, not require nothing less than a global reorganisation of our societies?”
Slavoj Žižek – “The US Establishment Thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Too Radical – With an Impending Climate Disaster, the Worry Is She Isn’t Radical Enough”
Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:
In his article “Are We Governed By Secondary Psychopaths?” Gary Olson suggests that political leaders in the West are psychopaths/sociopaths. While well-intentioned, Olson’s article can be rejected as based on dubious theory. Namely, the concept of “psychopathy” or “sociopathy” is premised on a DSM-style psychological theory of deviation from normalcy. This is a contested and highly politicized topic. For instance, Lacanian psychoanalysis rejects the concept of “normalcy”, instead positing that there are only different ways interacting with the world but none of them can objectively be called normal or abnormal. (For what it’s worth, Lacanians recognize psychosis and neurosis, and address ethics and duty in a very different framework — see Ethics of the Real). Second, Olson’s attack on politicians for what amounts to hypocrisy (he calls them secondary psychopaths) can be seen as medicalizing political questions to bracket out and essentially de-politicize the central political questions that underlie his analysis through an appeal to expert medical authority (much akin to appeals to “expert” economists or teachers). For example, Domenico Losurdo‘s Liberalism: A Counter-History provides a very convincing alternative theory, namely that political liberalism is a politics of exclusion that devotes its energies to drawing lines between the community of the free and those excluded from those same freedoms — this theory is very similar to what Jacques Rancière calls the “part of no part”. Losurdo explains this as not simple hypocrisy in the sense of being an “error” in practical application but rather consistency with an outwardly-denied exclusionary tenet of political liberalism. From that perspective, Olson’s claims suggest that anyone who subscribes to political liberalism is a sociopath, a notion that is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds. Olson is making an unfortunate ploy here to sidestep questions of politics and surreptitiously insert his ideological framework through a disingenuously “neutral” medical (psychological) framework — a form of “university discourse”.
Link to an article by Jason Hirthler:
“Russiagate and the Men with Glass Eyes”
Bonus links: “Clinging to Collusion” and “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies” and “Mueller Investigation Seeks to Implicate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in ‘Russian Interference'” and “Be Careful What You Ask For: Wasting Time with Manafort, Cohen, and Russiagate” and “Leaked NSA Report Is Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ Case” and “Demonization of Russia in a New Cold War Era” and “Remembering Alger Hiss in the Age of Russia-Gate” and “How the Department of Homeland Security Created a Deceptive Tale of Russia Hacking US Voter Sites” and “Hey Intercept, Something is Very Wrong with Reality Winner and the NSA Leak” (plus combative interview) and “Someone Finally Connected the Dots: Russiagate is Helping Trump” (“this massive belief that Russia is some sort of existential threat to western society, is entirely the result of failed western elites needing a scapegoat for their own failures.”) and “Money Still Rules US Politics” and “A Look Back at Clapper’s Jan. 2017 ‘Assessment’ on Russia-gate” and “Iraq’s WMDs Found…In Russia” (with delicious irony: “Surely no reputable newspaper would give front page coverage to unproven allegations made by political operatives working against the Party and personages currently in power, right? Doing so could be perceived as taking sides in an internecine political battle to undo the democratic will of at least a bit more than a quarter of eligible voters.”) and “Finally Time for DNC Email Evidence” and “Why Russiagate Will Never Go Away” and “Russiagate and the Dry Rot in American Journalism” and “RussiaGate as Organised Distraction” and “From Russia, with Panic” and “The Unanswered Questions in the Latest Russian ‘Meddling’ Allegations” and “Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers” and “On The Media Of ‘Russiagate’ And Related Fake Stories” and “The So Far Non-Existent Vulkan Leaks” and “The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate” and “Leaked Files Reveal the Steele Dossier Was Discredited in 2017 — But Sold to the Public Anyway”
Link to an article by Alfie Bown:
“Video Games Are Political. Here’s How They Can Be Progressive”
Bonus link: “Socialism at Play”
“There is an even greater problem with the underlying premise of those who proclaim the ‘death of truth’: they talk as if before (say, until the 1980s), in spite of all the manipulations and distortions, truth did somehow prevail, and that the ‘death of truth’ is a relatively recent phenomenon. Already a quick overview tells us that this was not the case. How many violations of human rights and humanitarian catastrophes remained invisible, from the Vietnam War to the invasion of Iraq? Just remember the times of Reagan, Nixon, Bush… The difference was not that the past was more ‘truthful’ but that ideological hegemony was much stronger, so that, instead of today’s greater melee of local ‘truths,’ one ‘truth’ (or, rather, one big Lie) basically prevailed. In the West, this was the liberal-democratic Truth (with a Leftist or Rightist twist). What is happening today is that, with the populist wave which unsettled the political establishment, the Truth/Lie that has served as an ideological foundation for this establishment is also falling apart. And the ultimate reason for this disintegration is not the rise of postmodern relativism but the failure of the ruling establishment, which is no longer able to maintain its ideological hegemony.”
Slavoj Žižek, “Three Variations on Trump: Chaos, Europe, and Fake News”
Bonus links: “Fake News: How to Watch the News, Episode 03” and “The World Is Returning to Pluralism After American Hegemony, Says German Philosopher” and “Why the Democratic and Republican Establishments Can’t Stop Insurgents” and “Centrists Are Pining for a Golden Age that Never Was”
Link to a report by Estelle Sommeiller & Mark Price:
“The New Gilded Age: Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area, and County”