15. March 2017
The populist “revolt” globally crippling liberal democracy; rejecting reason and science in policymaking and governance; and rejecting globalism, tolerance, and diversity is a major regression of the Enlightenment goal of steadily improving society and governance.
26. February 2017
How to see anything correctly about social organization and quality of governance requires a new paradigm. What that paradigm is and how it will work is what The Action Manual is all about. he recognizes that we need a new social ethos and set of public values. It emphasizes that public citizens (a large majority of Americans) need to assert themselves against the private ones.
25. November 2016
Philosopher, Richard Rorty, in 1998 described with great prescience the elements which have led to the populist "uprising" which has electrified our American political sphere. (See the commentary on the book by New York Time's critic, Jennifer Senior, dated November 21, 2016. http://nyti.ms/2fjlHdk) The "little people" have been misunderstood and/or ignored by the political elite, progressives, and the "rational" political analysts who have promulgated strategies which indeed would have 9or...
13. November 2016
Not very many people thought it would happen – the "little people" actually upsetting the traditional political process especially as manifested in the Trump election to the US presidency. Rational, fair-minded, and intellectually honest people can't stand Trump personally and are chagrined at the level of support he has garnered among American voters. The political elite, for different reasons, feel as if they have lost serious control of the political-economic process which they have...
08. November 2016
Political analyst, Frank Luntz, in a op-ed column in the New York Times on November 8, 2016 (http://nyti.ms/2fdplFU) pleas for a return to a more civilized American society where people find a common ground and move forward together. Like so many people and pundits, Luntz diagnosis a major ill of American society and states what should be done about it but has no plan or program. The unfortunate reality is that no one has articulated a theoretically-sound and practical plan to address this...
06. November 2016
So-called "pirate" parties have sprouted up in nearly every developed nation in the world. These parties are looking for a more inclusive and transparent government, a balance between the interests of the elite group and everyone else, and implicitly, some respect for the status and contributions of being a so-called "little person." These parties have a great deal in common with the American "Tea Party," the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump supporters, and populists all over the world who feel...
03. October 2016
We can thank Bernie Sanders for making the “s” word (i. e., socialism) into a term relatively acceptable for mainstream dialogue. And we can give credit to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) folks for popularizing a sort of class consciousness (i.e., the1%/99%), a concept which has been consistently suppressed by a controlling elite class or made mostly invisible to most middle and lower class Americans for generations. While their tactics vary, at a minimum Sander’s supporters and OWS share...
01. October 2016
New York Times columnist Roger Cohen articulates why Americans are in an "Age of Distrust."(See link below.) He knows that many Americans see the current system as rigged in favor of a political elite. Their role as participants in a democracy is bogus. The political elite no longer has the trust of the general public but that distrust has evolved now into revulsion and opposition, even if that opposition is irrational and counterproductive. This is true, not only in America, but in much of the...
01. October 2016
Nearly every sentient human being has been exposed to the quirks, defects, limitations, and ugly personality traits of Donald Trump. By all reasonable measures he is one of the most unfit persons in the world to be elected president of the world's greatest nation. Nevertheless, he is supported by millions of Americans and has a good chance to be elected. This concept sounds as crazy as anything but only because most people are acting and thinking on a literal level. They can't understand how...