The institutional practice of allocating power within a society, which generally includes the assignment and exercise of authority [legitimate power] by various means, including violence.
Over 20,000 scientists from 184 countries have now signed on to the second warning by scientists to humanity to dial down its profligate destruction of the ecosystems and environments upon which we all depend. In a short paper, World scientists’ warning to humanity: A second notice, the writers of the second warning (the first was in 1992 … More Scientists’ Second Warning to Humanity
Looking forward into the future is no easy task. It is hard to decide what to believe will happen next, and nearly impossible to predict a few years or decades down the line. So many variables, so many viewpoints, so many things are just not the same as we had expected them to turn out … More Dystopia, Utopia, or Drift?
It is so easy to ridicule a buffoon. I have done so more than once in various blog posts on this site. I referred to Trump as an empty clown suit because of the vacuous nature of his essentially false and tragically comic-book persona. He could easily pass for Batman’s “The Joker.” But really, isn’t … More Why Trump Does Not Matter, and Why He Does
A power outage is not that uncommon on the high plains of New Mexico near the City of Santa Fe. In a rural or “rural residential” area, the redundancy of the power grid is reduced to nothing in some spots. In more densely populated areas, if a transformer blows out, alternate routes for electricity to … More Power Out, Pause, Power Up
Resist we must. But what will that get us, really? Well, catharsis yes. However, that is clearly not enough. Will resistance bring a slower unraveling of American Democracy? Maybe, maybe not. The deep entanglement of political institutions with the increasingly monopolistic “technosphere” is so extensive that only resistance that borders on revolution might make a … More Beyond Resistance: Replacement and Restoration for Resilience
I just read Chris Hedges’ report in Truthdig of his recent telephone conversation with Ralph Nader. I regularly read numerous sources of information on the politics of Trumpery and the failure of the Democratic Party to respond effectively to the crises facing the nation as Dem’s obsess over the latest Trumpist Travesty, as if wavering … More Can Hope Overcome Reality?
The “Deep State” is deeper than you think. I first ran across the concept when I read an essay by former senior analyst for congress, Mike Lofgren on Bill Moyers’ website, posted in 2014. Lofgren was apparently the first to use the term. He spent many years working for Congress, the last sixteen as a … More The Deeper Deep State
Yesterday, I read an article in the Scientific American discussing a key dilemma that stymies climate action. No standards exist that could provide firm measures of how much carbon emissions reduction is necessary by what date to avoid the worst climate chaos. The article asked the difficult question of how much CO2 we must remove … More Civility and the Climate Impacts of Denialism
MSNBC, CNN and the network nightly news anchors and commentators for weeks could not stop talking about all the politicians, men of power and celebrities who have groped, assaulted, or raped women over the years. It had started awhile back in Hollywood with Bill Cosby’s now all but forgotten drugging and raping many women over … More Media, Abuse, and Groping for Dollars
Here we go again. In the latest revelations, widespread tax cheating and secret offshore financial manipulations hide massive amounts of wealth, both ill-gotten and ordinary corporate profits. The International Association of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has released “The Paradise Papers,” millions of documents that provide new devastating evidence of the history and current efforts of the … More Paradise for Plutocrats and the Crimes of Oligarchy
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 