( Tomdispatch.com ) – For the last decade and a half, I’ve been teaching ethics to undergraduates. Now — admittedly, a little late to the party — I’ve started seriously questioning my own ethics. I’ve begun to wonder just what it means to be a participant, however minor, in the pyramid scheme that higher education […]
The Fires This Time: A Climate View from California
( Tomdispatch.com) – In San Francisco, we’re finally starting to put away our masks. With 74% of the city’s residents over 12 fully vaccinated, for the first time in more than a year we’re enjoying walking, shopping, and eating out, our faces naked. So I was startled when my partner reminded me that we need […]
Social Security Versus National Security: Whose Entitlement Really Makes Us Safer?
( Tomdispatch.com) – “Biden’s doing better than I thought he would.” “Yeah. Vaccinations, infrastructure, acknowledging racism in policing. A lot of pieces of the Green New Deal, without calling it that. The child subsidies. It’s kind of amazing.” “But on the military–” “Yeah, same old, same old.” As my friends and I have noticed, President […]
Can Biden-Harris make a Counter-Revolution against Reaganism and Restore Dignity to Work?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – A year ago, just a few weeks before San Francisco locked itself down for the pandemic, I fell deeply in love with a 50-year-old. The object of my desire was a wooden floor loom in the window of my local thrift shop. Friends knowledgeable on such matters examined photos I took […]
Time to Roll up our Sleeves and Fix this: Trump left us with Heightened Climate, Nuclear Danger
( Tomdispatch.com) – If you live in California, you’re likely to be consumed on occasion by thoughts of fire. That’s not surprising, given that, in last year alone, actual fires consumed over four and a quarter million acres of the state, taking with them 10,488 structures, 33 human lives, and who knows how many animals. […]
The Rubble of Empire: Doctrines of Disaster and Dreams of Security as the Biden Years Begin
( Tomdispatch.com ) – How can you tell when your empire is crumbling? Some signs are actually visible from my own front window here in San Francisco. Directly across the street, I can see a collection of tarps and poles (along with one of my own garbage cans) that were used to construct a makeshift […]
It’s almost 20 Years since 9/11; Can we finally End our Constant, Disastrous Wars?
( Tomdispatch.com) – It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other […]
In a Looking-Glass World, Our Work is Just beginning
By Rebecca Gordon | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – In the chaos of this moment, it seems likely that Joe Biden will just squeeze into the presidency and that he’ll certainly win the popular vote, Donald Trump’s Mussolini-like behavior and election night false claim of victory notwithstanding. Somehow, it all brings another moment in my life […]
Their Germs and Guns, our Steel: Canvassers Risk it All for America
( Tomdispatch.com ) – “Look, folks, the air quality is in the red zone today. The EPA says that means people with lung or heart issues should avoid prolonged activity outdoors.” That was J.R. de Vera, one of two directors of UNITE-HERE!’s independent expenditure campaign to elect Biden and Harris in Reno, Nevada. UNITE-HERE! is […]
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