Tim Libretti is a professor of U.S. literature and culture at a state university in Chicago. A long-time progressive voice, he has published many academic and journalistic articles on culture, class, race, gender, and politics, for which he has received awards from the Working Class Studies Association, the International Labor Communications Association, the National Federation of Press Women, and the Illinois Woman's Press Association.
Calling the events of January 6 a coup denies the historical character of U.S. governmental institutions and once again threatens to distort if not entirely disarm the understanding of racial injustice in America that needs to inform racial transformation to achieve a just America.
In the aftermath of the violent assault on the nation’s Capitol, all I heard on the cable news shows was how well-educated Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are. Cruz attended Princeton University and graduated from Harvard Law School. Hawley earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University before completing his law degree at Yale. Brian…
All of us in the nation, indeed on the planet, witnessed the largely white mobs storming the U.S. capitol building last week. This shameful episode, what many have termed an attempted coup, is yet another reminder in a long stream of reminders in recent history, for those with short memories, of the prevalent, indeed dominant,…
Watching the senate, under the callous and inhumane rule of Mitch McConnell, fail to respond sufficiently and urgently to the dire suffering and needs of out-of-work Americans, largely denying their reality, brought to mind a scene from American author William Dean Howells’ 1890 novel A Hazard of New Fortunes. Howells narrates in the novel the…
“Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions.†This phrase has accompanied many a report on how to improve and reform public education in America and, of course, policy statements from education associations that support the work of teachers. To a large degree, the phrase is not just pithy but also has the ring of truth….
Over the past four years, Americans have gotten a potent dose of autocracy, witnessing Trump’s repeated violations of basic democratic norms, climaxing in his still ongoing plot to overturn last November’s presidential election. And we need to stress that the autocratic urge in U.S. society is not a solo endeavor on Trump’s part. The assault…
Donald Trump and his administration are on an execution spree, rushing to expedite as many state-sponsored murders of federal prisoners as they can before his term ends on January 20. Between last December 10 and the end of his term, Trump has scheduled five executions, bringing his total since last July to 13. Since Trump…
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A Pandemic Nurse’s Diary, by Nurse T with Timothy Sheard. New York: Hardball Press, 2020. 143 pp. Reading A Pandemic Nurse’s Diary, particularly against prevalent media representations of healthcare workers’ experiences during this pandemic, brought to mind for me the opening words of the sketch by the U.S. radical writer Jesús Colón, “Something to Read, 
Haaland and Buttigieg, as just two examples from Biden’s Cabinet choices, aren’t looking for apologies necessarily; when they speak, they are diagnosing what holds us all back so we can move beyond these past and persistent repressions to give full life, to create an optimal society and economy, for all Americans.
Americans have been living under a political system arguably best characterized as a tyranny of the minority for some time. Certainly, for the past four years the nation has suffered the insidious rule of a president who lost the popular vote by 3 million tallies in the 2016 election, just as the nation was hornswoggled…
Writing in 1782, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine exclaimed, “We are now really another people.†What Paine meant, in part, was that the new republican form of government required a new and different kind of person, a new kind of citizen. People were used to being subjects of the Crown, ruled…
President-elect Joe Biden campaigned aspirationally on a vision of uniting a country many see as severely, if not hopelessly, divided. After all, while Biden amassed over 80 million votes, the most votes ever tallied by any candidate in a presidential election in U.S. history, Trump hauled in the second-most votes ever, finding the support of…
President-Elect Joe Biden has reportedly expressed concerns about the many possible criminal prosecutions of Trump distracting from his presidential mission. Just as Barack Obama declined to pursue prosecution against the Bush-Cheney regime for its outright lies about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, leading us into a prolonged and unnecessary war with Iraq, costing…
While we can repeat over and over again that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States and will be sworn into this highest office in our land next January 20, for many Americans and even media pundits, it is difficult to say the verdict is in. Nervousness persists, and it is intensely palpable….
In the early evening of last November 5, two days after the election when mail-in votes were in the process of being counted and the tide seemed to be turning in Joe Biden’s favor, Donald Trump took to the airwaves to throw a tantrum, baselessly wah-wah-ing about election fraud like an infant upset simply because…
In October 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and opened fire on the praying congregants while shouting anti-Semitic slurs, murdering 11. Even as he entered the hospital after having been shot by police, to be treated by Jewish doctors, he was still yelling, “I…
Hopefully our now soon-to-be former President, also known as Individual-1 in a court filing against Trump’s former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen by the Southern District of New York in 2018, will soon enough find himself housed in a prison and clothed in an orange jumpsuit. Trump was accused of a crime in this filing and has…
While reports from Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Moody’s all link a Biden presidency to a healthier economy and more powerful recovery, Donald Trump continues to peddle lies that the economy will collapse under Biden, stoking fears that people’s 401Ks will evaporate. He persists in these lies despite inheriting an economic recovery from Biden…
Donald Trump has been gutting the federal government since he took office, whether by leaving many vacant positions unfilled or simply underfunding and eliminating positions in crucial agencies such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The latter efforts greatly hobbled the CDC’s ability to respond and take measures to prevent the spread of the…
Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues have demonstrated a dangerous habit of thought when it comes to seeking solutions to the most urgent and life-threatening problems facing Americans and the nation as a whole. What is that habit of thought? They tend to think in stark and narrow either/or terms when it comes to devising…
Yesterday Senate Majority Leader Mitch MCconnell announced he will be bringing to vote in the Senate this week two stand-alone COVID-19 relief packages. On Tuesday, he will put to vote a Paycheck Protection Program bill to help small businesses, and on Wednesday he will bring back the same $500 billion stimulus package Democrats rejected last…
Last Friday the Supreme Court indicated that on November 30 it will hear arguments in the Trump administration’s appeal regarding its efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the census numbers used to calculate the apportionment of congressional districts. Last September a federal appeals court in Manhattan rejected the Trump administration’s bid to…
Last Monday the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a case brought by Kim Davis, a former country clerk who, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case legalizing same-sex marriage, who refused to issue certificates for such marriages because of her religious objections to…
Donald Trump continues to attempt to scare Americans into voting for him, painting a doom-and-gloom portrait of a collapsing U.S. economy should they elect Joe Biden president this November. Wall Street and big bank economists, however, paint a very different picture. According to their vision, not just a Biden victory, but a Biden victory accompanied…
As the coronavirus sweeps through the White House, infecting Donald Trump, advisor Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, three Republican senators, and more, the bombshell report on Trump’s tax returns The New York Times dropped in late September already seems to be receding from the news cycle. Updates on Trump’s health status dominate the headlines and television…
Walking down Main Street, couples, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, cannot be legally denied the right to hold hands, share a hug, or kiss–if Main Street is part of the public square, that is. Move Main Street onto private property, in our America that as a general rule gives precedence to property rights…
A 19th-century German philosopher once asserted that the educators must be educated, the point being what was passing for knowledge and learning in the world seemed, based on the state of the world and its lack of universal well-being, perhaps more than arguably was not serving us well. If we were to stop and reflect…
Rage has, no doubt, been a powerful political force in U.S. history. Dr. Carolyn Anderson demonstrates this fact most fully and compellingly in her book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, in which she analytically chronicles how white racist rage has implicitly informed social policy throughout U.S. history to disable African Americans,…
The stories we tell ourselves, especially the ones we tend to repeat over and over and that circulate throughout our political and cultural discourses, matter. They impact us. They carve neural pathways, so to speak, in our collective cultural mindset, in our political nervous system. They set expectations for us about the future, map out…
American romantic poet, philosopher, and diplomat once referred to the U.S. Constitution, in an address to the Reform Club of New York in 1888, as “a machine that would go of itself.†More precisely, in using this phrase, he meant to diagnose a dangerous complacency infecting American political life, one born of the misguided belief…
Polling indicates that Americans still give Donald Trump an edge over Joe Biden when it comes to their faith in either candidate to manage the economy. While it’s true that, according to a late-August Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating on the economy has dipped 14% since March, putting him in negative territory with 47% approving…
The American people, polls indicate, have not been buying the bill of goods Donald Trump has been selling in his strenuous attempts to represent himself as the “law and order†candidate. They seem to understand Trump is the creator of chaos and the one disrespecting and defying the nation’s laws at every turn, not Biden….
If you were able to subject yourself to viewing any portion of the Republican National Convention, you surely must have noticed that the image of Donald Trump’s administration portrayed by the loud array of speakers, often Trump’s own family members, was to anyone even casually observant of U.S. politics the past four years, largely at…
The narrative Trump and his Republican allies have been weaving about his managing of the U.S. economy is that he had presided over, if not himself built, the strongest economy in the nation’s history and that it was only slowed by the coronavirus outbreak, which was not his fault. He can’t be held responsible for…
Donald Trump has repeatedly declared himself the “law and order†candidate, wearing this mantle proudly. At last week’s Republican National Convention, the array of speakers trumpeted this slogan again and again as the dominant chord of Trump’s otherwise ill-defined policy platform. “Law and order†isn’t just the definitive slogan on Trump’s candidacy; it’s deployed as…
Is Trump the 2020 candidate who best represents the American working class? Did the Democratic Party fail to encompass working-class interests, issues, and people at last week’s convention? What does the working class think? Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen seems to think the working class heard nothing of interest from the Democrats and their convention…
Recently prosecutors handling the charges against Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of aiding and abetting billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in his years-long systematic sexual abuse and trafficking of young girls, denied the request of Maxwell’s lawyers to turn over the names of her accusers. Why? These women have lived in fear of the power and…
Republicans continue to block legislation to provide relief to tens of millions of Americans as well as the state and local governments that provide services and employment to them. Their hand-wringing, it seems, is rooted in the worry that providing relief, such as extending enhanced unemployment benefits, will eliminate any incentive, or coercion, for people…
We often define culture as a “way of life.†Implicit in this definition is the notion that culture should support and value human life. It makes sense, right? A “way of life†promises, in its very language, to support living, not promote dying. And yet, as I have written about on multiple occasions (here, here,…
As is now widely known, the Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton recently proposed legislation that would deny federal funding to schools that in any way used the The New York Times controversial 1619 project in its curriculum. This series in The New York Times, of course, explores the history of the United States through the…
The Black Lives Matter movement, in demanding that we reconsider how Black lives have been valued, or rather de-valued, in U.S. culture, society, and political economy, essentially asks us as well to interrogate our entire system of economic and cultural values. On what basis do we in our socio-economic system and culture assign different values…
When Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor last Thursday to address the widespread sexism at work in the halls of Congress and deeply embedded in American culture and society, she had to suspect her remarks would garner some media attention. After all, Republican Representative Ted Yoho, while walking with fellow Representative Roger Williams…
Are the majority of Americans lazy and averse to work? Would they prefer not to work and to enjoy a free ride from the government? How we answer this question, or how congressional leaders answer it, has a lot to do with what is really life-or-death legislation coming out of Washington, particularly with regards to…
This unfortunate and hopefully soon-expiring moment in U.S. history, Donald Trump’s presidency, has been anything but subtle in summoning the worst energies, impulses, and dimensions embedded in the nation’s history and still animating contemporary culture and politics. If it hadn’t been clear during his 2016 campaign when he characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals,…
The Lincoln Project republicans came out in full force last December, declaring in a New York Times op-ed their mission of defeating both Trump this November as well as Trumpism, meaning they are seeking to erase the republican majority in the senate. This majority, in their view, has enabled Trump and promises similarly damaging leadership….
I always find it worthwhile to try to understand those with whom I most disagree and to decipher the experiences and psychologies animating their belief systems. It helps me understand why the world is the way it is and why it’s not the way I’d like it to be. And also what I need to…
As many have pointed out, making Black lives matter is a precursor to making all lives matter. To make all lives matter, we have to address the ways certain lives, particularly those of people of color in the United States, have been devalued. Put another way, we can’t create a culture and society that values…
Many Americans have been compelled by the recent mass protests to seek a fuller understanding of United States history and particularly the African American experience in that history, up to and including ongoing racism, discrimination, and violence against people of color. Black bookstores in particular are being flooded with orders for literary works that portray…
When Donald Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavannaugh to the Supreme Court bench, hopes certainly dimmed substantially for a court majority that would vigorously protect, much less expand, basic civil liberties, especially for women, LGBTQIA people, people of color, and immigrants. Worries abounded, with good reason, that the court might function effectively as…
Amidst the recent mass nationwide uprisings, dominated by the sentiments of the Black Lives Matter movement, an effective reincarnation of the Civil Rights Movement, the Trump administration has continued its efforts to deny transgender people civil rights, denying them equal protections under the law. Let’s look at just two recent examples of the Trump administration…
Recent polling indicates that an overwhelming number of Americans, close to 75%, support the protests, inspired by George Floyd’s murder, against racism and police brutality.  This approval, polls reveal, stretches across party lines and racial lines. The polls, of course, don’t reveal in any precise way the psychological dynamics at work in the American mentality…
When a reporter asked Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a news conference last Tuesday what he thought about Donald Trump’s threat to use armed forces to suppress the mass protests occurring in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and in response to unceasing state violence against African Americans,…
Last May, the conservative group Michigan United for Liberty organized protests in the state capitol against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders. While the group, composed of roughly 8,000 members, had already formalized its complaint against the orders in a law suit, the protest provided a forum for a defiant public expression against what the group…
When I first heard on the radio that retired United States Marine Corps General had issued a statement critical of Donald Trump’s threat to deploy the U.S. military to suppress the nation-wide mass protests against racism and racial violence, I wasn’t only underwhelmed, I was frustrated. Especially upon hearing this excerpt: “Donald Trump is the…
CNN political commentator Van Jones recently issued a stark challenge to, and indeed indictment of, supposedly well-meaning White America, speaking in the wake of the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and in the midst of mass uprisings and protests responding to the never-ending violence against African Americans. He states most directly that…
We’re all in this together. Is anybody else tired of hearing this mantra? I mean, in many ways I love it both as an aspirational sentiment, encapsulating the vision of a cooperative, humane, and compassionate social way of being, and as a statement that captures an undeniable, matter-of-fact aspect of our reality: we are absolutely…
While Donald Trump has been involved in a dispute with Twitter, speciously and ignorantly crying that the social media company violated his First Amendment rights, uprisings and mass actions protesting the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor—and the pervasive devaluing of Black lives generally–have mounted. The simultaneity of these events may be just…
Writing for CNN, Matt Egan recently reported, “US credit card debt suddenly reversed course in March and fell by the largest percentage in more than 30 years. At the same time, savings rates climbed to levels unseen since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.†Good news? Seemingly so. Americans appear to be behaving in…
Last May 15, the House passed a sweeping $3 trillion relief package that would provide another round of stimulus checks for Americans, extend unemployment benefits, broaden the social safety net, and, of great importance, provide relief funding to states. States, of course, and local governments for that matter, are taking a huge hit. Not only…
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has fit right in with the Trump administration, treating her government position as opportunity to enrich herself and serve her own narrow ideological interests at taxpayer expense. Given her role in supporting (or not) the public school systems on which the majority of American families depend to educate their children, she…
Like millions of other viewers, I have been riveted to each episode thus far of ESPN’s The Last Dance. This ten-part documentary charts the Chicago Bulls’ rise to dominance in the 1990s, a decade in which Michael Jordan willed the Bulls to six NBA titles, only to have the team dismantled by the organization’s petty,…
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently announced his opposition to any kind of relief packages for states, advising instead that states pursue the route of declaring bankruptcy. Since current federal law, for good reason, prohibits states from declaring bankruptcy, McConnell likewise voiced his support for altering the law itself. By many accounts, McConnell will…
One on level, the coronavirus pandemic holds out the potential to shift America’s dominant cultural mentality to finally re-think—indeed come to terms with—how our political, economic, and moral systems value the work on which our lives most depend. Presumably, the pandemic conditions are making clear to us Americans what kinds of work are most essential,…
In his 1980 campaign against incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan famously asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?†The powerful question gave voters clear and focused direction in assessing how well the federal government was supporting and working to improve the everyday lives of Americans. What if we asked…
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced strong opposition to providing any federal relief funding to assist state and local governments losing revenues hand-over-fist and facing mountains of unforeseen expenditures due to the coronavirus pandemic. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s embattled Secretary of Education, has been engaged in ongoing litigation because of her efforts to reverse…
The inspirational mantras we hear multiple times a day remind us repeatedly that “we’re all in this together†and “we’ll get through this together.†It’s such a powerful and commonplace expression these days, seemingly rolling off the tongues of every commentator, commercial spokesperson, and social media user, that one would almost think Hillary Clinton had,…
I was out driving in Chicago the other day, and as I stopped for a red light near the corner of Lawrence Avenue and Pulaski Road, I found myself idling in front of the Admiral Theater. It’s a strip club. Above the entryway to the “gentleman’s†club, I noticed chiseled in stone a quote from…
The impatient discussion about when America can “re-open†for business has not only often proceeded, on the Republican side, with willful ignorance of informed medical perspectives, but it has also tended to pose a dangerously ignorant and unimaginative false choice to Americans: either save lives or save our economy and way of life. Republican Representative…
Last Tuesday, former President Barack Obama gave his much-anticipated endorsement of his former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy. The endorsement was expected, of course, despite the wait Obama imposed, which seemed likely attributable to his preference to time his speech in the wake of Bernie Sanders’ own endorsement of Biden, creating a crescendo effect….
Americans enduring unemployment have typically, in the culture of the U.S. political economy, not been responded to with sympathy but rather with disdain, judgment, and blame. And this has been true, we see, even when the nation has faced conditions of great economic austerity, begging the question, how can we blame people for not working…
Nearly one third of Americans who rent their homes, or 13. 4 million people, did not pay their rent between April 1 and April 5 this month. Requests from homeowners to delay making their monthly mortgage payments surged by over 2,000 percent between March 16 and March 30. And we know why, of course. Many…
One can find in the media many important analyses and accounts of the way the coronavirus pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the myriad inequities plaguing U.S. society. The most opulent among us can shelter in place and not have to worry about their next paycheck, about being evicted, about having enough food. They don’t have…
A friend of mine who runs his own small law firm texted me the other day after the financial relief package aimed at helping small businesses stalled in the Senate. Worried over his dwindling ability to keep and compensate his employees, he blamed the Democrats and declared he’s voting for Trump. The Democrats showed themselves,…
Noted nineteenth-century American writer Henry David Thoreau, opens his 1849 essay “Resistance to Civil Government,†one of the most famous political essays of all time, with the immortal lines: “I heartily accept the motto,–“That government is best which governs least;†and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried…
“It’s like suddenly they realized we are here contributing,†Nancy Silva told The New York Times. Silva, a 43-old undocumented immigrant who has been picking fruit on American farms for most of her life while constantly evading immigration authorities, made this statement in response to the federal government deeming her and other farmworkers “essential employees.â€Â …
As coverage of the coronavirus streams 24-7 on the airways, updating cases and casualties as well as policy shifts and other breaking developments, it is understandable Americans might find their attention riveted to day to day events linked to the pandemic, making it hard to even think about larger political contexts or issues raised by…
Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed an impatience to send Americans back to work and re-open all the businesses currently closed. “We can’t let the cure be worse than the problem,†he has said repeatedly. With this new favorite mantra of his, he is pitting saving people’s lives against saving the economy, coming down in favor…
When Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker tried to purchase the protective gear necessary for healthcare workers in his state, the problem wasn’t necessarily that the inventories of the equipment he sought didn’t exist. Rather, the obstacle he faced was that the companies warehousing these supplies were sitting on them, letting a bidding war play out between…
Some of the most recent weeks in American history alert us, if we’re paying the least bit of attention, to the fact that sexism is alive and well, indeed robustly thriving, in U.S. culture and society. Last March 11 brought a moment of victory and also frustration in the struggle for women’s rights, for human…
The economic culture in the United States still largely holds to the belief that private industry, guided by the pursuit of private interests and the profit motive, leads to the most efficient and effective economy. Conservatives, of course, cling to this belief on steroids, as is evident in their hallmark platform calling for small government,…
Wise people always remind us to never let a good crisis go to waste. Wise people with evil inclinations have, of course, taken this sage advice to heart, often exploiting crises, sometimes even arguably manufacturing them, in order to achieve nefarious ends. Naomi Klein, for example, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise…
As primary election day, March 17, approaches in Illinois, I have been doing some canvassing for a candidate running to keep her seat as a state representative, Lindsey LaPointe. I have known Lindsey for a few years as someone who is active in our neighborhoods (before she took over as state rep), always present around…
We hear these days about the importance of the African American vote within the Democratic base, and rightly so. This base has played a key role in the Democratic primaries and, according to all indications, will play a key role in determining the Democratic presidential candidate. Democratic candidates would also be wise as well as…
Ronald Reagan notoriously once asked, “Where would this country be without this great land of ours?†As ridiculous as Reagan sounded asking that question, the question has taken on a renewed seriousness given Donald Trump’s assault on the American land itself and thus, by extension, we Americans who depend on a safe and well-managed environment…
It’s easy to sell people on lower taxes and to encourage people to hate paying taxes. Few politicians, even those who promise to provide health care, better public education, student debt relief, and so on, rarely explain in detail what Americans are getting in return for the investments their taxes fund or the bills they…
Arguing to center LGBTQ people in contemporary discussions about, and activism for, civil rights, certainly risks igniting an inflammatory comparative oppressions debate about which groups are most marginalized and under assault in U.S. society. Racism is alive and well in America. Voter suppression efforts, particularly against African Americans, are just the tip of the iceberg…
In his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Trump celebrated the putative success of the economy he claims to have built, doing so in historic terms: “I am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been,†he boasted. And yet, at the same time,…
I know facts have a hard time surviving and garnering any credibility in Trump’s truth-free political swamp, but let’s give asserting a few facts at the outset here the old college try. FACT:  Homelessness in the U.S. has increased for the third year in a row under Trump’s rule. FACT:  Despite low unemployment rates, poverty…
In his State of the Union Address, Trump took a swipe at what he called “failing government schools.†Most of us use the term “public school†or talk about “public education,†as we refer to institutions set up by, for, and of the people. Trump, of course, is talking about public schools, but his choice…
The drama of the impeachment of the nation’s president, reports indicate, simply has not captured the interest or concern of the American audience. Apparently the melodrama of daytime soap operas attracts their attention more than the antics of a corrupt president and administration actively undermining the nation’s security for personal gain at the expense of…
Recently Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters for The Washington Post Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig published their assessment of Donald Trump’s presidency to date, seeking to step out of the news cycle and “assess the reverberations†of his administration throughout the nation. Titled A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, the book layers scene…
In his classic American novel of 1925 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald crafts the character Meyer Wolfsheim, a Jewish gangster who wears human molars as cufflinks. He is one of the title character’s “gonnegtions†who also happened to have fixed the 1919 World Series and, in doing so, in Fitzgerald’s worlds, “played with the…
On this day of the 2020 Women’s March, masses of people across the nation will gather and march to call for recognizing the human rights of women as a necessary element of a truly just and equal society for all. Especially in this context, it is worthwhile to highlight efforts within the Democratic Party to…
The wealthy often complain when sane and reasonable minds point out the dangers and reality of the obscenely class-stratified nature of U.S. society. These complaints often find expression in such phrases as the following: “There go those radical leftists playing the class struggle card again.†“These radical leftists just want to punish success in America. 
When Josh Jacobs was drafted by the Oakland Raiders in the first round of the 2019 NFL draft, he received a signing bonus of $6.7 million. The story of the star running back from the University of Alabama quickly circulated, featured in the headlines in major media outlets such as USA Today, NBC News, ESPN,…
What is the story of the U.S. economy? Not unlike the proverbial elephant subject to scrutiny by a band of blind men, the nation’s economy is subject to multiple narrative descriptions depending on which component of the beast, whether our economy or an elephant, the blind man massages. Some media pundits have argued that the…
Who would think of making a comedic drama about the Holocaust, one the most tragic and horrific events in world history, resulting in the genocide of six million Jewish people, as well as other groups, such as gay people and Gypsies? Well, you may recall that Roberto Benigni’s 1997 film Life is Beautiful takes on…
In the last Democratic debate, candidates challenged the narrative that record-setting stock market performance and historically low unemployment rates signal the success of Trump’s economy. They countered describing how this economy is failing most Americans. Despite low unemployment, wage stagnation means people work multiple jobs. The high cost of housing and healthcare are leaving people…
When Democratic primary candidates were asked last Thursday about the economic policy platforms of their campaigns in light of the fact that Trump’s economy has yielded record-setting stock market performances, historically low unemployment rates, and significant GDP numbers, Andrew Yang’s answer interestingly sounded more like a medical doctor diagnosing America’s collectively failing health than an…
The Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations merited certain rights of personhood. The decision in this case became crystallized in the notorious phrase, “Corporations are people.†This year’s events insistently raise the question of which Americans enjoy the basic rights of personhood in America. How are we doing when it comes…
