CounterPunch, 12.19.2022 All I’ve got left, writing-wise, for 2022 is six reflections on one of the smartest things I’ve heard this year: Noam Chomsky’s recent comment to the effect that humanity today is up against four apocalyptic “horsemen”: ecocide, pandemicide, potentially nuclear war, and fascism: 1. Please note the gender of horsemen. Patriarchy runs richly through each [...]
The Paul Street Report, 12. 12.2022 Last week a fellow communist and anti-fascist sent me the self-described “anarchist” Noam Chomsky’s latest Truthout interview by C.J. Polychroniou. “Maybe,” she added, “if you named your book This Neofascism Could Maybe Happen Here Sometime in the Future it would sell to the ‘progressive’ crowd.” The first thing that grabbed me was the interview’s [...]
CounterPunch, 12.9.2022 Did you know that Adolph Hitler named his special personal World War II train Amerika? I ran across this interesting fact while leafing through the British historian Martin Gilbert’s massive history of the Second World War. Some might find this strange, given the fact that Hitler’s Third Reich was formally at war with the United States [...]
The Paul Street Report, 12.5.2022 The Handmaid Court of Their Dreams One year and four days ago, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, a case sent to the Court with the purpose of undoing women’s half-century constitutional right to an abortion. Dobbs was the case that women-hating Christian fascists had been viciously [...]
CounterPunch, 12.2.2022 Trump is a symptom and not a cause…This is a problem that goes well beyond one person. — Ian Bassin Yes, Donald Trump’s chances of being the Republicans’ 2024 presidential candidate have taken a hit. On top of and related to all his, um, legal problems, there’s the defeats suffered by numerous candidates [...]
The Paul Steet Report, 11.28.2022 “There But for a Different Social History Go I” Middle-class liberals who can’t fathom how a white working-class person might fall for the racist and indeed fascist “great replacement theory” never worked like I did as a red-shirt packaging line employee at the Iowa City Procter & Gamble (P&G) plant in the [...]
The Paul Street Report, 11.21.2022 It’s the worst time of the sports year for me – the time when too many eyes and radio talk shows are focused on the vicious, hyper-violent brain-crushing and body-maiming blood sport that is US American football. It’s also the moment when we are furthest out from spring training for the beautiful, [...]
CounterPunch, 11.23.2022 Liberals and some progressives are feeling smug and self-satisfied over the mid-term elections. How grotesque. Yes, there was no red wave. The at least non-fascist major capitalist party, the Democrats, will keep the US Senate for two more years. MAGA candidates backed by the malignant narcissi-fascist Donald Trump did badly, something that is [...]
The Paul Street Report, 11.17.2022 Dear Readers: I have made numerous small corrections to last Thursday’s post. It appears that I put up a second draft when I needed to post a third one. Please see the corrected version here. Here, as a follow up to last Tuesday’s Paul Street Report (“Purple Haze: Seventeen Takes on the Mid-Terms”) are [...]
The Paul Street Report, 11.14.2022 It was so nice NOT to be writing about contemporary United States politics – an ugly topic, to say the least – last week. I will be making more and more of a habit of focusing on other subjects going forward. But the mid-term elections were hard to avoid, and I [...]