“Donald Trump embodies all three ideologies: his claims to truth are nothing but assertions of power, his values are all material values, and he appears to care about nothing so much as reproducing as many copies of himself, or at least of his name, as possible.”
Read More“I dislike being thought of as a white writer.”
Read More“Most nonblack Americans are descended from people who came to the country in the waves of immigration that began after the Civil War. Nevertheless, in taking on the benefits of citizenship, they took on its responsibilities as well.”
Read More“The system of neoslavery, which persisted into the early years of World War II, explains more about contemporary American life, white and black, than antebellum slavery. Neoslavery was even more brutal.”
Read More“Man has the right and the privilege to declare himself to be in disagreement with every natural occurrence, including the biological healing that time brings about . . . . The moral power to resist contains the protest, the revolt against reality, which is rational only as long as it is moral. The moral person demands annulment of time—in the particular case under question, by nailing the criminal to his deed. Thereby, and through a moral turning-back of the clock, the latter can join his victim as a fellow human being.”—Jean Améry
Read MoreWhen it comes to public institutions in a pluralistic society, the appearance of fairness and impartiality is actually more important than actual fairness and impartiality.
Read More“No one really surrenders an illusion in the face of a fact. We prefer the illusion to the fact. The more facts you invoke, in fact, the stronger the illusion becomes. All faith is immune to all facts to the contrary, or else we would not have such hearty faiths and such oft-resisted facts.”
Read More“Some measure of neglect and even forgetting is the necessary condition for civic health. To say this is not to advocate amnesia. A nation has first to have remembered something before it can begin to forget it.”
Read More“Those who insist on the importance of preserving memory are, often enough, deliberately anti-messianic. We should, they believe, preserve historical memory not as source of hope or comfort, but as warning. This is how fragile our civilization can be.”
Read More“Big-data algorithms can predict our behaviors with startling accuracy. Social media sites use the data they’ve collected about us to determine, with about 80 percent accuracy, who is about to get divorced, who is coming down with the flu, who is pregnant, and who may consider a change in sexual orientation—before we know ourselves.”
Read MoreCultural appropriation is the only way we can begin to understand each other’s worlds.
Read More“I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great and demoniac beauty, and scorn ‘man’—but I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet out of a man of letters, it is this plebeian love of mine for the human, living, and commonplace.”
Read More“Though Stalinism was a perversion of an ideal of equality that began in the Enlightenment, Nazism had no ideals, beyond rampant tribalism, to pervert at all. Under Stalin, at the latest, communism turned totalitarian. But unless you believe states of mind have no meaning, there’s a world of difference between a person who began by fighting for equality and solidarity and one who began from a racist worldview. That’s why Tony Judt was willing to meet with one, but wouldn’t share a table with the other.”
Read MoreWhen English Canadians made fun of Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s thick Québécois accent, his popularity in Québec soared. You’re only helping Trump when you pick on him for petty shit like this.
Read MoreYou’ve saved so many, Dr. Peterson. Now it’s time to save yourself. I, for one, am rooting for you. Big time. Good luck with your recovery!
Read More“Will progressive intellectuals continue to talk of reading Heidegger against Heidegger when they read the Black Notebooks passage declaring that the Allies’ refusal to allow him to return to teaching was ‘a greater brutality than any of Hitler’s’?”
Read More“Something is always wrong with the art world, and the something that is wrong is always money.”
Read MoreWhen the children of the rich and powerful have to use the same public schools as everyone else, they have a way of making sure that those schools work well.
Read MoreKing was an exceptionally courageous dude made of tough stuff. And he didn’t scare easy.
Read More“There is no greater pleasure in a working life than being inducted into a new kind of shoptalk, with the ooze of expertise cheaply earned in a few afternoons of listening.”
Read More
