Political Power

Is the United States trending towards a second civil war? Several political pundits have suggested that the intensifying political divide and the heightened civil unrest in the nation indicate the potential for the outbreak of a civil war. In September, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said the political climate reminded him of when he was covering Lebanon’s second civil war. Even social media technologists who admit responsibility for exacerbating today’s political divide, suggest that a civil war is on the horizon.

Large portions of the public agree. A Rasmussen Reports poll taken two years ago — arguably when the…

If political stability is not won through elections, how is political power actually secured?

Tools for Interpreting the Crisis

In this prolonged moment of political instability, it’s more helpful than ever to engage with the work of Italian, Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci. While in prison under Mussolini’s fascist regime, Gramsci wrote the Prison Notebooks, a series of essays written between 1929 and 1935 that sought to understand the causes and consequences of political instability.

Though political crises are typically thought of as aberrations, as something that has diverged from the norm in ways that create unnecessary chaos, Gramsci shows us how crisis is…

Throughout the past few years, I’ve seen the same nickel-size stickers popping up around New York City. In the middle of these colorful, star-shaped stickers is a two-word message; “healin it.” When I’m able to spot them, I know that my friend Nora has been hard at work in her one-woman campaign to get people to stop saying “killing it” — as in “wow, you’re killing it at work!” — and instead replace it with “healing it”.

It’s been over a year since the South Korean film Parasite (2019) made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to garner international attention and acclaim, including the Oscar for best movie of the year. For all of the hype, there has been relatively little effort to seriously engage with the content of the story. While fictional, Parasite provides a lens into understanding critical aspects of our society today, including the prevalence of deception and lies.

Before getting into the film, I want to state that I don’t believe that people are less honest today than in…

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we’ve been hearing a lot about Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. For the past few weeks, he’s been interviewed dozens of times and has offered opinion pieces advising the public on how their governments should mobilize to mitigate the spread of the virus. His 2015 TED talk, in which he predicted that an airborne flu-like virus would wreak havoc around the globe, has been watched 28 million times. He’s also committed $250 million of his own foundation’s money to facilitate the discovery of a Covid-19 vaccine.

These actions have increasingly turned Gates into a…

Whenever I hear the term “neo-Marxist” it’s a clear sign that the person talking, or writing doesn’t fully understand Marxism. Modern-day Marxists never use the combining form “neo” to describe themselves. That’s because to distinguish the Marxist thinking of today from that of the past misrepresents what Marxism is.

So, what is Marxism?

Marxism is a scientific method that uses a dialectical materialist approach to understand society and life in general. …

If you’ve only known of Theodor Seuss Geisel for his work in producing some of the most popular children’s novels of all time under the pen name Dr. Seuss, then, like me, you might have idolized him for his strong moral compass. Even a half-century later, his books continue to offer important lessons for children and adults. Yet, when we understand the context in which he wrote, his contributions are even more extraordinary.

In the 1950s, as American consumerism became synonymous with patriotism, Geisel wrote How the Grinch Stole Christmas! criticizing the materialism of the Christmas season. During WWII, he…

Recently, I was at a series of “healing workshops” with a diverse group of ten teenagers. At one point they were all handed printed portraits of themselves. What happened next shocked me and the other adults in the room. Each of them looked at their portrait for two seconds and then quickly turned it over as if they were caught doing something shameful. When I walked around and told them how stunning the photos were, they either sheepishly said ‘thanks’ or decided to correct my naivety by pointing out all of the things that they didn’t like about themselves.

I…