The concept of the Middle Way is thousands of years old — making it a piece of deep insight that has stood the test of time. It refers to a worldview or consistent practice of hewing towards the more moderate approach, tactic, behavior, or course of action.
Project 2025, led by former Trump official Paul Dans and key conservative figures within The Heritage Foundation, sets forth an ambitious conservative and Christian nationalist vision aimed at fundamentally transforming the role of the federal government. Leonard Leo, a prominent conservative known for his influence on the U.S. Supreme Court‘s composition, is among the project’s […]
Strong economic messages of the Keynesian buttressing of the middle class that is Bidenomics were everywhere in evidence at last night’s State of the Union address, Biden’s third since taking office in 2021. In SOTU 2024 he spoke about stabbing trickle-down economics in its gasping heart as a repeated failure to the American people. Instead […]
One of two major parties in our American first-past-the-post voting system of dual-party reality, the Republican Party, has evolved (or devolved…) into a full-throated authoritarian movement seeking to overthrow our democracy, The Constitution, and the rule of law in order to establish a fascist regime in the United States. It’s been a not-so-secret fever dream […]
The Snow Revolution was a series of popular protests beginning in Moscow in 2011, demanding the reinstatement of free elections, the ability to form opposition parties, and the end of massive state corruption. The protests were sparked by claims of electoral fraud in the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections and were further fueled by Vladimir Putin‘s […]
Trickle down economics is known by a number of names: supply side economics, Reaganomics, voodoo economics, deregulation, Libertarianism, Mudsill Theory, horse and sparrow theory, and the Trump tax cuts, to name a few. It has been espoused by everyone from Ayn Rand to Milton Friedman to Alan Greenspan to Gordon Gecko. Trickle down economics involves […]
I’ve been reading Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom and it’s synthesizing a few things together for me in new ways — prime among them the realization that collective narcissism is the shared root ideology of both Christian nationalism and Nazism. First off, I’d recommend it: Next, I’d like to thank it for reminding me about […]
Mythology has it that “reckless Democratic spending” is to blame for the ballooning of the national debt — though the historical record shows otherwise. In fact, the conservatives‘ beloved demi-god Ronald Reagan was the first President to skyrocket the debt, thanks to some bunk ideas from an old cocktail napkin that linger to this day […]
Inequality is the difference in measures of economic well-being between individuals in a group, among groups in a population, or among countries. Also known as economic inequality; inclusive of both income inequality and wealth inequality. In the United States, the data broadly shows shared economic growth and prosperity in the post-WWII period until the 1970s, […]
Or: How Milton Friedman destroyed Western civilization, the neolliberalism story. An economic ideology first theorized in the 40s and 50s by scholars, it was brought to popular attention in the 1970s by the works of economist Milton Friedman and novelist Ayn Rand among others. It grew in popularity and became widely adopted in U.S. economic […]
It feels like the 1930s all over again — and with good reason. The rise of American fascists and right-wing extremism around the world has been a known trend for decades, and America’s past flirtations with fascism had been largely swept under the rug by the then anti-semites who tried to put a stop to […]
Unthinking is a kind of militant stance against thinking, for oneself and others. It goes beyond a simple distaste for or preference against thinking, and on into something of a dedication, mission, or serious zeal for anti-intellectualism. As well, the Unthinking mentality includes a sort of reverence for instinctiveness and impulsiveness, and a distaste or […]
In the 1930s and 40s we had the New Deal (thanks, FDR!). In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting legal limits on the maximum number of hours worked and the minimum wages allowed. Child labor was outlawed, and union laws allowed collective bargaining — resulting in much-needed wage growth and improved conditions […]
There are a lot of Silicon Valley engineers guzzling soylent in dark holes who ought to get out more and read a book that has lots of words in it and hasn’t been published by O’Reilly. More people should stop and ask themselves if they even truly believe they’re “creating value,” or just furiously constructing […]
Critical thinking is a disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. It involves questioning ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. It requires curiosity, skepticism, and humility to […]