politics
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Decluttering Awareness: Nagarjuna and Emptiness
Nāgārjuna’s thinkering dives into emptiness to abandon how we cling to rigid views, which just messes with our understanding of reality. He shows that everything arises through dependence and encourages us to let go of fixed beliefs, which can lead… Continue reading
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Whispering New Directions
The text explores the concept of the practical spirit, emphasizing three modes: contemplative, scientific, and operative. It critiques the dominance of operationalism in modern society, linking it to systemic dehumanization. I advocatesfor “transistance” to navigate beyond established orientations and connect… Continue reading
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The Limits of Jaspersian Patience
Philosophical faith and dialogue might seem hopelessly inadequate. “Playing the long game” can also feel inadequate when people are being threatened, disappeared, or killed. Here I attempt to outline why Jaspers was no fool about this. Continue reading
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Anti-Reason in Our Times: The Renaissance of White Supremacy
Karl Jaspers warns in “Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time” (1952) of the unphilosophical spirit that favors comforting myths over uncomfortable truths. Contemporary white supremacist movements exemplify this “anti-reason,” exhibiting ideological rigidity and rejecting dialogue. Through the Browning’s work, “The… Continue reading
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Heresy in the Guise of Tradition: A Queer Prodigal Son Reflects on MAGA Traditionalism
Pope Leo XIV’s election signifies a pivotal moment in the Church, yet reactionary American Catholics criticize him as insufficiently traditional. They embody a heresy that distorts Gospel values, prioritizing power over compassion. This discourse urges a return to true Catholic… Continue reading
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Philosophical Faith in the World: Neither Sinner nor Consumer
Karl Jaspers small text provides us in 2025 with a manual of quiet defiance. For queer and other marginalized thinkers, educators, counselors, and all who remain exposed in the neoliberal storm winds, Jaspers offers us Way to reassert the soft power… Continue reading
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Neoliberalism: The Operating System of the Society of Control
Neoliberalism, emerging as a reaction against Keynesian policies, transforms social life through market logic, individual responsibility, and state facilitation of capital. It prioritizes deregulation, privatization, and austerity, reframing citizens as entrepreneurial actors. In Texas, neoliberal policies since the 1990s have… Continue reading
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The Current Empire
Unlike classical empires, the Current Empire no longer needs grand narratives of conquest. Instead, it extends its reach through bureaucratic normalization, algorithmic feedback loops, religious-nationalist fervor, and the hollowing of democratic discourse. Continue reading
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Reversion, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Toward Tranquility in the Current Empire
Looking Back Almost twenty years ago, I began troubling the word peace. Like many of us, I had long imagined peace as the cessation of violence, the arrival of stillness, the mutual exhale after the fire. But something in the… Continue reading
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From Republic to Serfdom: Misreading Rome in America’s Rural Imagination
Introduction The recent interview with Ammon Bundy in The Salt Lake Tribune highlights a recurring theme among certain rural conservatives: the belief that the expansion of government welfare signals the decline of a once-great republic. Bundy’s assertion that the U.S.… Continue reading
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NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION… WELL, MAYBE SOME OF US DO.
GETTING BACK INTO PUBLIC THINKERING† Since finishing my dissertation, I have not written nearly as much even in my journals as I used to do. I think the break is over now, however. The last few weeks have gotten me… Continue reading
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Carnival Storm Drain, or the Outflow of Transistance
transistance does not flood-into our thinkering as the eradication of nihilism–shorting-out the negating power–but rather flows-out as a transformative process towards a broader, more inclusive engagement with reality. Continue reading
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What Would Malcolm X Say About Gaza and Black Resistance in the US Today? | Truthout
Sawyer discusses how Malcolm X’s political theory helps us understand the connection between Gazans and African Americans. Continue reading
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Unionized Auto Workers Are Taking on a Three-Headed Behemoth of Big Capital | Truthout
…there’s another sense in which the UAW’s fight is everyone else’s fight. In taking on the Big Three automakers, auto workers are quite literally confronting a three-headed behemoth whose leadership and governance are closely embedded and directly interlocked within a… Continue reading
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Targeting for erasure
The Christofascists are building up to lead a violent program against QUILTBAG Folx. Continue reading
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The fast fascist creep
It amazes me that 80 years on from the end of World War II, I still must share with my students to show them quotes like this. Look! It is happening around them and they do NOT pay attention… The… Continue reading
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More pollution for less pollution?
Rocks unearthed here [in Indonesia] contain traces of nickel, a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries. Extracting it, refining it and readying it for export is a gargantuan task. More than $1 billion has been sunk into the processing facility,… Continue reading
CALL ME MAGGIE 