Challenge your assumptions
This installation has particular resonance with the current crisis in American politics, where we seem to be interacting with labels instead of people.
Tag Archives: politics
The tax collector
It was just an ordinary cock-up, but it was the third one this year. After a while, it starts to feel personal.
The end of Reason
This is the end of rationalism, the death of the Age of Reason, brought to us by an overload of information. I’m not enjoying it particularly. Are you?
The Audible Sigh
Yesterday someone asked me if dogs go to heaven. Since the Bible doesn’t say anything about this, I don’t know. In fact, there are an almost infinite number of things to which I don’t know the answer, although in some cases I can make educated guesses. I was reminded of this while teaching on Tuesday, […]
Trumpery and fantasy
There’s something disconcerting about a presidential candidate whose wife has been photographed in the nude, who has himself been painted in the nude (albeit critically). A single election cycle ago, naked selfies of a political spouse would have doomed a candidate. However, one can’t be embarrassed if one feels no shame. Since that’s how many of us […]
Dirigo
The state of Maine’s population is about the size of the Buffalo-Niagara metropolitan district. What that meant in human terms was brought home during this weekend’s caucuses. Imagine the sense of duty behind volunteering as a poll watcher in one of the places that returned two votes. Did they take turns filling out their ballots […]
A breath of plein air
I’m not calling New York corrupt, but its election results are a foregone conclusion long before the voters even know who the candidates are. So I was excited to finally be voting in a place where the ballot matters. This weekend, I will participate in my first caucus ever. Having only a dim idea of […]
Commissions you never get anymore
As the nation argues about super-delegates, it’s worth remembering that the powerful have never ceded power voluntarily. From Charlemagne to the Reformation, the primus inter pares of the European nobility was the Holy Roman Emperor, securely Catholic and crowned by the Pope. Along came Martin Luther and his pesky ideas, which percolated among the German nobility […]
Entering the silly season
Daniel Dennett is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. In his Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, he offered these four steps to critical commentary, which ought to come in useful as we enter the next round of America’s quadrennial silly season: You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that […]
