@patrickiber
Co-editor, Dissent Magazine. I teach history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Write books about Cold War culture and propaganda. Have written for the set of all publications that are not members of themselves
You can have all the structural conditions in the world and you still usually need one doofus in the middle who fails to grasp his predicament for things to really go topsy-turvy. Happy Saturday!
If you are looking for serious progressive FP folks the group to cultivate is Duss's shop at CIP, imo, I don't think the DSA IC or Quincy represents the party base at all
I mean one of @mikeduncan.bsky.social's big takeaways from years of writing the Revolutions pod is that the Great Man Theory of Historical Change is overrated but the Great Idiot Theory holds considerable explanatory power
where are the Herberts Marcuse of 2026
Bretts McGurk
Last clarification, by "we" in "we built" I don't just mean the U.S., I meant a broad set of international actors, and that is who should be doing the re-building for the future
Agreed, and would add that it's not just electing Democrats (although that's obviously required) but making clear that institutional change is necessary, not just electoral change
Agreed
I would accept the punishment as just
Yes, by "hope" I meant "design" - but absolutely, it's going to require the next U.S. leader, whenever that comes, to be enlightened about the limits of U.S. power, and for the limitations of Trump's approach to have become sadly clear to the world to an even greater degree than they are now
I don't know how to do this, to be clear. But just as I believe it is important to rethink U.S. domestic institutions we've got to use this moment to rethink what features we want in an international system and work towards them, starting now
Obviously this is going to require the U.S. to turn down the imperialism dials by a lot, but there's also going to need to be better international mechanisms for dealing with repressive states so you don't get a Fox News grandpa who decides "only I can fix it".
We built the United Nations, with all its flaws, with the hope of never having World War II again and we're going to have to build a new set of multilateral institutions with the hope of never having Donald J. Trump again
Hell yeah
That's true in some areas, and I think a major improvement over where things stood 10 years ago.
this argument is moot
How on earth did this happen
I know, that's what I'm asking about. I don't think it's going to come from federal funding in the US, and if it did go directly to the parties, the Dems wouldn't use it to create the people who could staff an AOC cabinet. So we are left with private philanthropy, which is a mixed bag
In the German system parties are attached to the institutions that will generate experts. But in the U.S. we have a different party structure with two big balloon coalitions, even if we have similar factions underneath the hood. What do you think needs to be done here to develop left expertise?
Paulo, would you believe that this guy is not very interested in anything that one might classify as a historical irony?
Hmm. Review-writing in process, otherwise I would
Guys did you know, and I quote, "[Crushing the communist left] has been particularly difficult given the proven ability, on the part of the communists, to address the most serious problems facing the working and oppressed masses of the world."
I keep seeing people with this book on stack-of-books reading lists and I hope you know that you figure out that it is trash quickly and don't assign it to your students except as a cautionary tale
After reading a really excellent book yesterday I am now reading a really terrible one, but at least I get to play the fun game of watching the citations to figure out if my own work will be a) ignored or b) denounced. We'll find out!
I believe that!
Page proofs of AJA Woods's book "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West"; the cover art is a picture of Theodor Adorno with devil horns and a tail crudely drawn on
This book is ~~wild~~, I really did not expect the answer to this question to begin with sixty pages on Lyndon LaRouche
I haven't been in touch in twenty-five years, so this isn't a deep personal loss for me, but I do have pleasant memories of a kind person who loved the outdoors, and it does hit differently.
I lived in an anarchist, vegan co-op in college with one of the women killed in the avalanche, Caroline Sekar. May she rest in peace www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/u...
Carmel Offie called, he’s looking for his lobsters
Harrington, in 1998: "Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign, I suggest, may well be the first political movement of the 1990s as well as a significant step toward the possibility of a black president."