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Death & Resurrection of the Human: The Rising of the Logos’s World-Constituting Song
[For Nietzsche t]he Overman or post-human animal is he who freed himself from those forms of sham religion known as Nature, Reason, Man and Morality. Only this audacious animal can peer into the abyss of the Real and find in the death of God the birth of a new species of humanity. As with Christian
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My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?
The specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair. — Soren Kierkegaard God’s ways are not our ways, and it’s a good thing, too. How otherwise could we call this Friday ‘Good’? The logic of the cross makes no sense by any kind of normal human reckoning. It is a logic that is
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From 9/11 to Brussels: Negation of the Negation
It is perfectly possible to imagine a future for the capitalist system in which its built-in atheism becomes, so to speak, official–in which, belatedly taking its cue from Nietzsche, it may throw off its mauvaise foi and dispense with a moral superstructure which is not only increasingly superfluous in practice but embarrassingly at odds with its own
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Angry White Guys
Thoughtful piece by a very politically correct woman who lived with and loved the kind of redneck—Abe—that supports Trump. Best part in the closing paragraphs here: On the other hand, political scientist Richard M. Skinner pointed out that many voters don’t choose their candidates based on ideological positions but instead partially because they don’t have an ideological framework. I’m
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Ides of March
Last night Democrats in Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio decided that they wanted to take what they think of as the safe bet, and their votes for HRC were so many daggers that killed Bernie's revolution. A few thoughts going forward: I see cultural identity issues as more central to our politics now than economic ones. This is
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Dying Traditions
NPR ran a story several years ago about the Islenos of St. Bernard Parish in New Orleans. They are people the Spaniards brought over from the Canary Islands in pre-Napoleonic times to settle and defend this northeastern outpost of their American empire. The report was essentially an elegy to a dying traditional American subculture. It is now
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Is It Over for Sanders?
Probably. Things can change, but it doesn't look good. I'd argue that a real evaluation of Sanders's performance should be restricted to how he does in blue and purple states because those are the ones that will matter in November. He has to prove he can win not just by edging Clinton out, but by overwhelming her in
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The Sacred Polity & the Loss of Our Better Angels
Some years ago, I read about Glenn Beck's complaining about the deportment of the athletes during the singing of the Star Spangled Banner before the Super Bowl: "Was anybody else offended by…can you put your hand on your heart?" Beck said. "It's the national anthem!" He said he had shushed his son and told him
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The Trump Phenomenon
Over and over again, when asked to explain what they like about him, Trump supporters exclaim, “He knows what I’m thinking!” And what these people are thinking is that he’s making it safe for them to be “politically incorrect” again, giving sanction to publicly express their resentment toward people who don’t look and act like them. There are
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De-legitimating the Right’s Freedom-Fighter Fantasy
Interesting article by Paul Rosenberg in today's Salon about how and why Conservatives play constitutional hardball not as a tactic of last resort, but as guerrilla warfare tactics that are their fundamental m.o. in day-to-day politics. The phrase "constitutional hardball" comes from Mark Tushnet, who wrote an article in 2004 with the same title. Rosenberg quotes Tushnet