Aug 12, 2009 0
Shortly after Caroline Kennedy withdrew her name from consideration for the vacancy in the U.S. Senate created by Sen. Hillary Clinton’s resignation, Nate Silver published a brief and provocative piece entitled “Did Caroline Ever Really Want It?” in which he analyzes Kennedy’s withdrawal in a simple and radical way: as though she were a person.
Dec 19, 2008 0
Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation has whipped up a significant amount of anger on the left. This anger is quite justified. Warren is a man who stands for the opposite of the political inclusiveness that Obama claims to be aiming for. Yet Obama’s selection is totally in keeping with the theory that has driven Obama’s whole campaign. This theory — let’s call it the Separated Parents Theory of American Politics — states that what was wrong with the last eight years of American politics — and American politics more broadly since 1968 — has been a Vietnam-fueled family squabble among liberals and conservatives. Against the Separated Parents Theory of American Politics, I present the Bad Policy Theory of American Politics. The problem with Warren is his politics. His delivering the invocation doesn’t matter because he is not being appointed to Obama’s cabinet. His invocation does matter because it suggests that Obama and those who believe in his narrative of family strife overestimate the importance of tone in their critique of the last eight years and underestimate the importance of Democratic complicity in the most horrific policies we have embraced.
Nov 2, 2008 0
The left continues to argue with the right about what is and is not the case, what does and what does not get at the thing itself, when the proper thing to do, should we want to effect progressive change through calculated strategy, is to eschew the entire discourse of “the real” and its impostors in favor of a more properly progressive materialist lexicon.
