Top Ten

Clearly, Truthdig readers were there for it all over the last year, tuning in weekly for the reality checks Hedges was uniquely able to provide in his pieces. He fixed his sights on what many others in the media treated as the most glaring problem with which the U.S., if not the international community, was faced: President Donald Trump. But for Hedges, the current occupant of the Oval Office didn’t serve as a catch-all for the country’s political woes, nor did Trump’s considerable presence obstruct Hedges’ view of many other critical issues calling out for attention.--Truthdig

A "best of list" of stories worth reading (and reading again).


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RP Thomas

Pond reflection.

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Reporter

Hedges on Hersh.


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Goodbye, Bitch

Each New Year’s, my wife and I indulge one of our favorite traditions: the household purge. We scour our closets for stuff that’s just taking up space, quietly draining our home’s energy, and move it along. I can’t recommend it enough.

This year, America’s doing the same thing — and putting House Speaker Paul Ryan out on the curb.

For years, the ten-term Wisconsin Republican — who’s retiring as Democrats prepare to take over the House — enjoyed an improbable reputation as a “deficit hawk” and “deep thinker” about fiscal issues.--PC

A fond farewell.


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Two Populisms

Two very different “populisms” that have arisen in response to neoliberal capitalism in the West.--PS

Note the differences.

The whole deal.


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What it is...

Over the last eighteen years as I wrote for many progressive outlets, editors often asked me not to mention the word “neoliberalism,” because I was told readers wouldn’t comprehend the “jargon.” The situation is even worse with literary journals, my main territory, which are determined not to have anything to do with this vocabulary. This has begun to change recently, as the terminology has come into wider usage, though it remains shrouded in great mystery.--AS

A friend asked me to define neoliberalism over the weekend.  I gave it my best shot, but here's the real deal.

From CP.


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Gawd

Google is a menace to society.  The behemoth has my account all screwed up.  Have to create a new password every time I try to log on.

Why, I ask you?



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Shiny Gifts

My new used computer arrived today, along with a cash gift from a friend who simply has good timing.

Thanks new used computer, and thanks friend.  You both made my day.

Now, sorry for everyone else.  I'm about to start blogging again after a month of Sundays. 

You know you want it.  Even likely need it.

Haha...


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The Grand Theatre

The American political drama, or electoral theatre, is reinforced so aggressively because it is the most basic and effective distraction people have for their social malaise and misery. Voting is a reflection of binary models, it is really just exchange value. And voting makes everyone equal. And Americans have even taken to wearing little stickers that proclaim they voted. So electoral theatre as a shaming device. But voting becomes even more than just a threadbare symbol of equality, it takes on almost occult significance for many. It is one of the few rituals in bourgeois society that seems to encompass something almost magical. Voting is an affirmation of one’s existence, of one’s autonomy and even freedom. I can vote for whoever I choose. Well, off a menu of two.

But I have seen leftist writers proclaim lesser evilism is not to be debated. This is, apparently, because Trump is some sort of special category of evil. This is a hugely regressive and politically immature position. Firstly, voting is not going to solve shit. Full stop. No, the entire apparatus of elections and voting machines and voter suppression or corrupt counts is part of this grand theatre. And this emphasis also promotes a popular idea with the ruling class, that of individualism.--JS

This is an especially bright essay.  Highly recommended for truth seekers. People whose brains have transmogrified into nests of snakes are urged to read it as well.


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What Next?

Anthony DiMaggio lecture.

A shortened, accompanying text.


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Tom Clark, 77

I'm a little late with this, as with all else, but the poet Tom Clark died August 23 at age 77, three days after being struck by an auto near his home in Berkeley.

I didn't discover the info until I went to his blog, Beyond the Pale, and noticed that the last entry was written on August 18. I had a hunch and searched for the worst and immediately found this Times obit.

This was Clark's second run-in with a car on a busy street near his pad. Surviving the first accident, he complained about the uptick in traffic on his street. The first accident put him down for a month or more, and it is just damn weird and tragic that a similar accident ended his life.

I had a short and lively exchange of emails with Clark six years ago as Round Bend Press brought out a pair of poetry books by Charles and Bill Deemer. Clark wrote to tell me how much he liked the work.

"Those Deemer boys really know how to write," he said.

Indeed. And so did Tom Clark, RIP.

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Happy Birthday of Death

Sadly, as a nation, the U.S. doesn’t recall Cheney’s lies, or his role in planning the contemptible “Shock and Awe” saturation bombing campaign that destroyed a sovereign nation, which posed no threat to the United States, and left the world’s cradle of civilization in ruins. Conveniently, it doesn’t recall the over 500,000 deaths from war related causes, as reported by the Huffington Post in its 2017 updated article; nor does it recall that obliterating Iraq’s government created a sociopolitical vacuum that enabled the exponential growth of the CIA’s unique brand of Islamofascism and its resulting terrorism, which has culminated in war-torn Syria and Yemen.--LS

I've always wondered why I seem to be the only U.S. citizen outraged by this. I know I'm not alone, but damned if it doesn't feel like it most days.


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American Psychosis

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Ignore Him

Here’s a thought: What if the media just stopped covering Trump on a daily basis? Why must they dutifully replay every infuriating word from every canned, rigged, reality-TV campaign rally and faux news conference and then bemoan his total narcissism, his complete lack of empathy, his wedge-driving failure of leadership, his dog whistles for racists, his winks and nods to neo-Nazis, his total and unrelenting lack of human decency?--SK

I like this. 

And that's just one; there's much, much more to be had here.


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Guilty

DURHAM, NH—Blaming those with a differing worldview for sowing rampant discord in society, political scientists at the University of New Hampshire announced Wednesday they had traced the current polarization in American democracy to those fucking idiots on the other side of the aisle...

The rest of the story from The Onion.


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