From the start of Armenia’s independence in 1991, Turkey took a hostile position toward its erstwhile victim of genocide. That hostility remains.
Tag: Politics
Armenia and Azerbaijan: That Other War
The radical simplifications that flow from nationalism shrink the possibilities to understand the other.
Morrison and Davis: Radicalizing Autobiography
Don’t question Angela Davis’ manuscript, Toni Morrison warned her publishing colleagues. Davis was not “Jane Fonda” but, rather, “Jean d’Arc.”
Homeland Security Theater
These new DHS-funded graphic novels want to train citizens to be critical readers of all kinds of information, except their own propaganda.
Small Nations, Big Feelings
In the 1930s, Americans fell in love with Czechoslovakia and Spain; today, it’s Ukraine. What happens when one finds a “second mother country”?
How to Undocument a Narrative
For decades, undocumented Americans have been asked to tell their stories, in the hopes that this would galvanize political change. Did it work?
“Content” Erases Wall Between Fact & Fiction
“We’ve never had a period like this in modern American history,” lamented Governor DeSantis in April 2020, one with “such little new content.”
Public Thinker: Lara Putnam Wants You to Knock on Your Neighbor’s Door
“Campaigns matter in part because of who meets whom, about the social networks that are shaped by that campaign as well as shaping it.”
B-Sides: J. G. Farrell’s “Troubles”
His characters—in 1919 Ireland, 1857 India, and 1940 Singapore—intuit that the world is about to collapse. But they can do nothing to save it.
Marshall Sahlins’s “Original Affluent Society” 50 Years Later
Capitalism seeks wealth to meet desires. But foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but wanting less.
Xenophobia Powers the United States
Since 1892, the United States has deported more immigrants (over 57 million) than any other nation.
Succeeding through Failure: Andrew Lakoff on Preparing for Emergencies
“What is the range of available measures to address our catastrophic future?”
Private Pain, Public Disinvestment: Talking Student Debt with Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
“Individual Americans thought they were the only ones who could not afford to send their kids to college.”
COVID: The Pandemic Without Honor?
“I don’t believe there was any conspiracy inside government to kill people off,” a health official explains. “From what I saw there was no plan.”
Hiding in Plain Sight: Talking Aquifer Depletion with Lucas Bessire
“The everyday ways that people challenge environmental destruction can be quite powerful.”
How to Be a Prophet?
The US Religious Right wins elections, but advances nationalism and white supremacy. Why, then, should the Religious Left seek to emulate them?
Portrait of the Global Migrant Crisis
COVID-19 highlights how the global order is built on, and excels in, closing the path of migrants unjustly.
What to Do About Freedom?
Once, radical artists and thinkers shook up conservatives. Now, it’s the right gleefully transgressing a “moralizing” left. What happened?
Hindu Nationalism: A Movement, Not a Mandate
Most authoritarian populists in power across the world are politicians, at the helm of parties that have won elections. Modi is more than that.
Can Saving Soccer Save the World?
Despite its massive commercialization, the world of football has never been about making a profit.