Monthly Archives

August 2023

August 14, 2023
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Deep into the 21st century, America is more racially, ethnically and religiously diverse than any moment in its 247-year history. The rising cohort of younger millennials and Gen Z — the nation’s best-educated generations ever, which seems to coincide with their embrace of diversity, tolerance and progressive ideas — is showing up at the voting booth. Sorry Sarah Palin, but this is “the real America” now, and the millions clinging to the older hierarchies around race, gender and Christian hegemony are not handling it well. If democracy means this true majority winning elections, then they hate democracy. If the real America is this young and diverse, then they hate America. [https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/us-conservatives-embrace-authoritarianism-anti-democracy-20230813.html]

Will Bunch
August 10, 2023
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You see, if somebody robs a store, it's a crime and the state is all set and ready to nab the criminal. But if somebody steals from the commons and from the future, it's seen as an entrepreneurial activity and the state cheers and gives them tax concessions rather than arresting them. We badly need an expanded concept of justice and fairness that takes mortgaging the future into account. [The Real World of Technology, CBC Enterprises, 1990. https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Franklin_Ursula_The_Real_World_of_Technology_1990.pdf]

Ursula M. Franklin
August 6, 2023
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I used to be part of this dilettante conservative intellectual class until I realized that while my colleagues and I fashioned ourselves as thought leaders for the right, we were really just puppets for decrepit, out-of-touch oligarchs. Republican billionaires created the hellish state of our current politics. Some of them, like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, are outright fascists who want to create dictatorship. Some are Christian supremacist theocrats. But many are just delusional rich kids.

Matthew Sheffield
August 4, 2023
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Thirty years ago, a different future was available. Gradual climate policies could have slowly steered our economy towards gently declining carbon pollution levels. The costs to most Americans would have been imperceptible. But that future was stolen from us. It was stolen by powerful, carbon-polluting interests who blocked policy reforms at every turn to preserve their short-term profits. They locked each of us into an economy where fossil fuel consumption continues to be a necessity, not a choice.

Matto Mildenberger
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