Many years ago, I read an article by Irwin Deutscher titled, “Words and Deeds: Social Science and Social Policy.” It was his 1965 presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), published in 1966 in the journal, Social Problems. Deutscher was alluding to the fact that most of the data collected … More Words and Deeds: Entanglements of Hope and Doom
The tension in America has hardly lessened by the fact that Trump is now a “lame duck” president wallowing in his infantile denial of failure, unwilling to cooperate in the American tradition of a peaceful transition of power. Instead, he continues to rally his ‘base’ with foolishly tweeted feeble claims of, “I won!” or that … More Moral Fraud: Liberty, Responsibility, and Mutual Aid
I hear a lot of talk these days of “returning to normal,” after “this coronavirus thing blows over,”—as if nothing else has changed. We will not return to normal; what we thought of as normal is gone, if it ever existed. Nor will we arrive at some “new normal,” either bad or good. Change is … More No New Normal Now
Obsessive self-importance may be the new normal, and it is not pretty. We have all seen over-inflated egos expressed, from the poorest streets of our cities and dying towns to the elevated offices of CEOs and the White House itself. Likely as not, we have all tried to demonstrate our own self-importance. Why is something … More Self-Importance Is the New Normal
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 