Long before Donald Trump seized his spurious, self-canceling political moment as the imagined defender and champion of the “hardworking Americans” maligned as “deplorables” and “garbage” by out-of-touch, elitist Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we have grappled as a nation with the complexities and contradictions of the relationship between “class” and “race,” and between “working class” and “white trash.” The Precarious Position of the Working Class American From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, the collapse of the… Read more
July 23, 2019
From Working Class to White Trash: Risk, Responsibility, Causation, and Brokenness in the United States
July 23, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
July 22, 2019
Bartoleme and the Meme Spelling Machine
July 22, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
Bartoleme fell into a meme With a Nicolas Cage theme. In which Weird Nic went after The wise Philosoraptor. Whilst The Most Interesting Man Unspooled his dark plan, To build a spelling machine That would secretly wipe clean Our memories of all words Tied to fish, reptiles, and birds. Leaving just the indignity Of soporific benignity A dream world so silly Cheered on by Wonk Willy. In which Weird Nic grew large,… Read more
July 21, 2019
‘Send Her Back:’ Limitations of a Language Lens on Racism
July 21, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
The underlying dynamics that cause & perpetuate racism are incredibly complicated, requiring honesty & introspection. Instead, we default to rote images of the individual as autonomous agent, actor, and author of her life’s drama. We default to conflated behavioral-linguistic perspectives on social change. and raising questions about the value of a “language lens” on racism. Read more
July 20, 2019
Thirteen Ways to Think About the Election of Donald Trump
July 20, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings _____ I wrote this essay in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. Reading it nearly 3 years later reminds… Read more
July 19, 2019
Wolf at the Door: Antonin Scalia and the Death of American Law
July 19, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
Note: I wrote this essay a number of years ago, but am mindful of its relevance as we consider the Antonin Scalia legacy in the aftermath of his death, a task that remains especially vital as more than three years Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have reshaped the entire federal judiciary in his image (including, of course, the Supreme Court). Yesterday, Donald Trump also announced his intention to nominate Scalia’s son Eugene, also an attorney, to replace Alexander Acosta as… Read more
July 18, 2019
“The Left Ruins Everything It Touches:” A Peek Inside the Weird, Sputtering Brain of Dennis Prager
July 18, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
Despite his wannabe symphony orchestra conducting pretensions, Dennis Prager is one of the more discordant and less thoughtful of the morality police on the right. Which is to say he is – at his best, when hitting the high notes – an unsophisticated scold. But Prager is worth tracking anyway. He has for two decades been a fixture of the Salem Media Group’s low-rent network of right-wing, Christian print, radio, and digital content properties (Salem owns a slew of radio… Read more
July 17, 2019
Welcome to Bizarro World: Ayn Rand, Donald Trump, and the Assault on Public Institutions
July 17, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
Well, since we’ve been chatting about Peter Thiel … In July 2017, The New York Times published a fascinating essay about the cult-like worship of Ayn Rand among Silicon Valley tech bros such as Peter Thiel and Travis Kalanick, and of Donald Trump administration insiders such as Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, and Trump himself. In a much-read and discussed December 2016 LinkedIn post, hedge fund impresario Ray Dalio concisely (and presciently) characterized what we might expect the “traumatic” impact on politics… Read more
July 16, 2019
Return to Oz: Peter Thiel’s Retro Futurism and the Perils of Limitlessless Self-Love
July 16, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
Early in 2017, the redowdable Maureen Dowd interviewed Peter Thiel (for the “Fashion and Style” section of the New York Times). Technology blog Gizmodo printed an orgy of quotes from the interview and gushed about its subject. Both Maureen Dowd and Peter Thiel are currently back in the spotlight for stirring up shit – Dowd for sponsoring the recent lunch where Nancy Pelosi ate her own maladaptive children (the wayward women of “the Squad”) and Thiel for his keynote at the National Conservatism conference in… Read more
July 14, 2019
Serving God and Mammon: The Rise and Influence of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society
July 14, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
The Creation Project excavates Western history using the conceptual tools of complexity science. The contemporary story that foregrounds this archeological dig emphasizes the philosophical and political influence in the past five decades of a reactionary slice of American Catholicism. In this period, the ideas, organizations, and personalities of impresarios ranging from Antonin Scalia to Robert George to Leonard Leo to Steve Bannon have driven wedge politics and moved the political landscape decisively to the right. This focus on “radical traditionalist”… Read more
July 12, 2019
Culture War Catholicism and American Conservative Politics
July 12, 2019 By Peter Hammond Schwartz
Conversations on religious influences in American public life in the Trump era typically focus on white evangelical Protestant support for Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist wing of the Republican Party. The impact of Israeli-aligned Jewish political organizations and conservative Jewish political donors such as Sheldon Adelson is also well-known. However, the rise and organizational strength of American conservatism is, in fact, a remarkable 50-year saga of intellectual and theological penetration of the halls of power by a hard-right slice of… Read more
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