Category: Big thoughts
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Not Your Grandfather’s GOP
One thing that gets lost in the 24-hr news cycle of political reporting is a longer view of political developments—not just for today, this week, or this election cycle, but over a span of decades. One of the most significant political developments over the past half century has been the…
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Declarations of Independence and Interdependence
When in the course of human events certain social constructs outgrow their original purposes, and instead serve to undermine the public good in myriad ways, it becomes necessary for natural people to reclaim their power usurped by such constructs. Corporations were originally created to enable various types of large-scale, collective…
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Unpublished notes from a reluctant class warrior
As I try to collect my thoughts & find the time to publish something current, I just found this piece I wrote in early fall that for some reason I never published. In the hopes that late is better than never (& since class war has not disappeared in the…
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Don’t Be a Sucker! Viralize this!
I don’t often recommend “educational films” made by the US military. But this one — “Don’t Be a Sucker,” from 1947 — is brilliant, and essential viewing for all Americans in 2010. (And it’s only 17 minutes long!) Its purpose was to warn Americans against falling prey to simplistic appeals…
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“Peak Oil”: Framing problem?
Someone forwarded a link to this movie tonight: “A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.” Looks interesting, & I’ll check it out, but I’ve gotta say that the trailer contains some questionable assumptions. Seems to follow typical “peak oil” framing: Oil is running out & that nothing can quite replace what…
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The Rules Are No Game: Time to End Corporate Rule
Anthony Wilden, with whom I studied communication theory and systems theory in college, wrote a book called The Rules Are No Game. The phrase has long stuck with me as a terse encapsulation of the idea that all systems—from computer operating systems to sporting events to political systems—operate according to…
freelansing in Seattle 