The World Turned Upside Down

Source: TomDispatch Like Gregor Samsa, the never-to-be-forgotten character in Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” we awoke on January 7th to discover that we, too, were “a giant…… Read more “The United States Is Visibly In An Early Stage of Disintegration by Tom Engelhardt”

LISTEN This podcast talks about the competing histories fighting for dominance in the minds of Americans; the mythologized and romanticized history as represented by the “patriotic” framing…… Read more “Myths Are Written By The Victors, History By The Scholars”

On Jan. 6, a violent mob invaded the U.S. Capitol, injuring more than 140 police officers and bludgeoning one officer to death. Their goal was to prevent a joint…… Read more “Howard Thurman’s “Fascist Masquerade” by Peter Eisenstadt”

The film covers the ever growing vegan movement and how it’s best for the animals, human health, and the planet.

(See Alfred Howard site  & 14 Days of the Universe in Incandescent Bloom ) I love America Let me repeat this I love America I love hair…… Read more “Poet’s Nook: “I Love America” by Alfred Howard”

This is Hell! · Depths of despair: The long shadow of COVID under capitalism.     Cultural theorist Lynn Parramore on the deep social effects of economic…… Read more “Depths of Despair: The Long Shadow of COVID Under Capitalism”

Source: ScheerPost The death spiral of the American Empire will not be halted with civility. It will not be halted with the 42 executive orders signed by…… Read more “Chris Hedges: The Oligarchy Knows Class Warfare Is the Real Fight”

dear white america i’ve left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system revolving too near a black hole. i’ve left in search of a new…… Read more “Poet’s Nook: “Dear White America” by “Danez Smith”

Report: Pandemic Super Bowl 2021

John Henryism – a strategy for coping with prolonged exposure to stresses such as social discrimination by expending high levels of effort which results in accumulating physiological…… Read more “Musings”

Acclaimed journalist and op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Charles M. Blow, walks “The Tight Rope” with Dr. Cornel West and professor Tricia Rose. He shares…… Read more “Charles Blow – The Devil You Know”

LISTEN Know the devil..

John Murillo’s new book, Impossible stories: On the Space and Time of Black Destructive Creation, dissects Black time and space in order to better understand the nature…… Read more “John Murillo III – Impossible Stories:On the Space and Time of Black Destructive Creation”

Source: Brain Pickings “Throughout our lives, we come to inhabit the seven layers of identity, often interpolating between them and constantly changing within each. And yet somehow, despite this ever-shifting seedbed of personhood, we manage to think of ourselves as concrete selves – our selves. Hardly any perplexity of human existence is more fascinating than the continuity of personal identity – the question of what makes you and your childhood self the “same” person, despite a lifetime of change, from your cells to your values. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert captured this paradox perfectly: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” Two millennia before modern psychologists came to tussle with this puzzlement, the great Greek historian and writer Plutarch examined it more lucidly than anyone before or since. In a brilliant thought experiment known as The Ship of Theseus, or Theseus’s paradox, outlined (though not for the first or last time) in his biographical masterwork “Plutarch’s Lives” (free ebook/|public library), Plutarch asks: If the ship on which Theseus sailed has been so heavily repaired and nearly every part replaced, is it still the same ship – and, if not, at what point did it stop being the same ship? He writes: “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same. In this wonderful animation, the visual educators at TED-Ed – who have previously explored how you know you exist by way of Descartes and the nature of reality by way of Plato -examine the famous thought experiment and how it illuminates the perennial question of who we are: Which you is “who”? The person you are today? Five years ago? Who you’ll be in fifty years? And when is “am”? This week? Today? This hour? This second? And which aspect of you is “I”? Are you your physical body? Your thoughts and feelings? Your actions?   Complement with Hannah Arendt on being vs. appearing and where our thinking ego resides, then revisit other illuminating TED-Ed animations exploring what depression actually feels like, why some people are left-handed, how melancholy enhances creativity, and why playing music benefits your brain more than any other activity.”    

When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the…… Read more “Poet’s Nook: “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman”

LISTEN What were the underlying fears and motivations for the insurrection beyond the Big Lie of a stolen election? The bedrock of white supremacy that has driven…… Read more “The Coup Klux Klan and the January 6 Insurrection”

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  Source: Indica The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe…… Read more “America’s Been Coup’d”

Source: Salon What do we see in the images of Wednesday’s bloody and lethal attack by Trump’s terrorist mob on the Capitol Building and American democracy? There is the…… Read more “America the Undead by Chauncey DeVega”

Source: Foreign Policy In Focus By mid-February 2021, American deaths from COVID-19 may well surpass the country’s 405,400 deaths during the Second World War. By around mid-May,…… Read more “America Has Entered The Weimar Era by Walden Bello”

Chris Hedges talks to moral philosopher Dr. Cornel West about what we can learn about America’s existential crisis after witnessing enraged supporters of Donald Trump storming the…… Read more “Cornel West & Chris Hedges on America’s Existential Crisis”

Source: FrankSchaefferBlog America’s problem is not political. It is religious fanaticism. Until America addresses our White evangelical delusion problem we will not have a functioning democracy. Evangelical…… Read more “Frank Schaeffer:The Capitol Invasion Was Not About Politics But Religion”

  You idiots better burn those fucking MAGA hats! Trump took your money, took a dump on democratic insitutions then punched you in the mouth telling you…… Read more “The Media Created a Monster. Now They Want to Wash Their Hands”

Source: Common Dreams The threat of fascism will hardly disappear when Donald Trump moves out of the White House in two weeks. On Capitol Hill, the Republicans…… Read more “Norman Solomon: In 2021, the Best Way to Fight Neofascist Republicans Is to Fight Neoliberal Democrats”

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Augusta Savage, Portrait Head of John Henry, ca. 1940. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The John Axelrod Collection See How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black…… Read more “Being a Black Male In America”

LISTEN  Harriet Washington is an award-winning science writer and medical ethicist. She’s the author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History Of Medical Experimentation On Black Americans From…… Read more “Race And The Roots Of Vaccine Skepticism w/Harriet Washington”