Critical Race Theory

                                     Sticks and stones may break my bones, but theory?

Empire of Dune: Indigeneity, U.S. Power and a Science Fiction Classic — ...

No Time | The Late Mark Fisher | Virtual Futures 2011

Neglected Ninth Amendment Rights

 

No human being is obligated to participate in the dehumanization of any other human being. Every human being has the right to refuse to kill or injure any other human being. Those who conscientiously object to war in any form exercise those rights. 

 

The exercise of those rights ought to come as natural to all of us as breathing--but, tragically, they do not. 

 

Conscientious Objectors set an example for their fellows: showing them how a free human being behaves. Those who lack the courage to step out in full human freedom may not say it, but they envy the Conscientious Objector's courage to be free. 

 

It is fear and servile conformity that prompts one human being to dehumanize another on behalf of the nation-state. Those who refuse to do so are true heroes. 

 

Do not hymn "the rocket's red glare/the bombs bursting in air" on July 4th or any other day. Instead salute those who have the courage to exercise the neglected Ninth Amendment rights to refuse to dehumanize and kill. 

Swarthmore College Peace Collection

                                             Check it out here.

Donald Rumsfeld Obituary: Rot in Hell

                                             Ben Burgis does the honors.

Summer 2021 issue of Dissent

 

The Summer 2021 issue of Dissent is coming out with an introduction that reads in part:

"The American political infotainment machine has turned the ethics of conviction into a source of profits. It’s Patreon politics, a trick that allows you to pretend that signaling membership in a group counts as real political work. The question is whether you think a system of commodified tribalization leaves us better off—and if not, what you can do to push against it." 

That's the right question to ask, but Dissent should have posed it at least three decades ago.

But perhaps I'm being a bit harsh. After all, as Kierkegaard sagely observed, life is lived forwards and only understood backwards.

So: Shall we continue to live forward in a system of commodified tribalization or shall we opt out in favor of other possibilities? And if the latter, what possibilities present themselves to us now? 

Think about it.