Untangling the Electability Grift
In the 2020 Democratic primaries issues don’t matter. All that matters is beating Trump. This electability narrative is a grift. We’re all being hustled.
Continue readingIn Dark Times is very much aware of the political power of art and the history of its use as a powerful propaganda tool. We are also aware of G.W.F. Hegel’s disparaging remarks about “picture thinking,” offered as a scathing critique of the empirically-minded dimwit who is incapable of thinking in concepts. Nevertheless, as the old saw teaches, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Ergo, In Dark Times presents In Dark Times Comix.
Read moreIn the days immediately following the 2016 presidential election, we observed that people seemed to be saying these words repetitively – “clearly, we’re living in dark times.”
Read moreIn the 2020 Democratic primaries issues don’t matter. All that matters is beating Trump. This electability narrative is a grift. We’re all being hustled.
Continue readingSocrates: Picture American voters dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern. Conceive them as having their arms, legs, and necks fettered, so that they remain in one spot, able to look forward only. Conceive of their chains secured tightly to…
Continue readingIn the customer-centric era we’ve become a bunch of Karens. Unfortunately, Karen’s customer-centric politics is absolutely devastating for democracy.
Continue readingAmerican politics is a multi-billion dollar industry. Let’s examine how the election industry works to cut the electorate out of the political process.
Continue readingGoldilocks trespasses in the bears’ cottage. She eats their food, breaks a chair, and sleeps in one of their beds. The bears come home and find her, and Goldilocks runs off. The story doesn’t go anywhere, just like liberal centrist politics.
Continue readingWhat does it take to shape resistance into an effective counter-hegemonic practice?
Continue readingWhat we get here, with Scott’s “paper-thin” account of hegemony, is an illuminating way of understanding Gramsci’s trenches.
Continue readingThe agonistic democracy Rodney King, therefore, would instead be heard to utter an alternative lament, something like “Can we all just NOT get along?”
Continue readingAfter liberal post-politics, what shared understanding of political action might lead to a viable center-left counter-hegemonic social and political project?
Continue readingPolitical liberalism finds fascism abhorrent but neoliberalism is a fascist generator. Welcome to progressive neoliberalism: not the anti-fascism you’re looking for.
Continue readingIt has also been a significant feature of neoliberal hegemony that the liberal wing of the dominant class has also been systematically misled–not about its subordination, but rather about its class dominance.
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