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POLITICS

James Buchanan

Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents

Europeans often ask, and Americans do not always explain, how it happens that this great office, the greatest in the world, unless we except the Papacy, to which any man can rise by his own merits, is not more frequently filled by great and striking men?

What’s Wrong with Animal Rights?

Originally an article in Harper’s, “What’s Wrong with Animal Rights?” demonstrates how Hearne’s attempts to explain animals end up being at least as much attempts to understand people.

Donald Trump: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

DONALD TRUMP: LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER [FULL TRANSCRIPT]

Oliver discusses Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and his career in business, outlining his campaign rhetoric, varying political positions and failed business ventures. He also says the Trump family name was changed at one point from the ancestral name “Drumpf”.

Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

POLICE: LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER [FULL TRANSCRIPT]

John Oliver chose to forgo the usual Last Week Tonight format in favor of spending his entire episode Sunday night talking about the police brutality that led to the anti-racism protests that followed the May 25 killing in Minneapolis of an unarmed black man, George Floyd.

Slavoj Žižek

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: BLACK LIVES MATTER & IDENTITY POLITICS [TRANSCRIPT]

Zizek discusses and links together several topics, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the ‘All Lives Matter’ response to it, identity politics, subjectivity and universalism, why white liberals are attracted to identity politics in general and the meaning of the ‘Plus’ in LGBT+.

Randolph Bourne: “War is the Health of the State”

Born some twenty years after Julien Benda, Randolph Bourne published his own attack on the betrayal of the intellectuals in the midst of World War I, a decade before Benda’s Betrayal appeared. He was a clerk avant la lettre, who played the part with splendid vehemence and political recklessness.

Noam-Chomsky: Requiem for the American Dream (2015)

NOAM CHOMSKY: MANUFACTURING CONSENT

One of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is what the great political economist Thorstein Veblen called “fabricating consumers.” If you can fabricate wants… make obtaining things that are just about within your reach the essence of life, they’re going to be trapped into becoming consumers.

GRAHAM WALLAS: NATIONALITY AND HUMANITY

Graham Wallas touched the cause of the trouble when he pointed out that political science today discusses institutions and ignores the nature of the men who make and live under them.

Croesus and Cassandra – by Carl Sagan

A vital aspect of global warming is the interface between the predictions and the policy responses. We humans have a rich tradition on the confrontation of prophecy and politics. and some of the most instructive lessons trace back to classical Greece

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