One year ago, at a conference held in Chicago on Independent Left Politics, the International Socialist Organization’s Lance Selfa observed that the United States’ corporate and imperial Democratic Party had recurrently demonstrated a remarkable capacity to seemingly “reinvent itself” by coopting once-insurgent social forces and identities. Selfa cited the party’s development of Black Democratic political [...]

Counterpunch, May 9, 2017 Some time ago, the environmentalist “Break Free” movement planned a number of protest actions around the world during the first two weeks of May. The protests have a simple and basic message: burning fossil fuels is unsafe and those resources must be left in the ground. “Break Free’s” timing, it turns [...]

All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall – Pink Floyd Recently on a trip to San Diego State University, a left political scientist raised with me an interesting question regarding the age demographics of Bernie Sanders’ most fervent supporters. The Sandernista enthusiasm of Bernie’s younger backers made more sense to the political [...]

Counterpunch, May 2, 2016 “The 2016 presidential election,” Diana Johnstone recently wrote, “is shaping up as a contest between the two most hated people in America.” Bernie Sanders has called it quits. That’s what it means when your campaign says, as Bernie’s did two nights ago, that it looks forward to going to the Democratic [...]

ZNet, 2/7/2016 (this essay is placed out of chronological order with others). Indoctrination works in countless seemingly innocuous and small but cumulatively significant ways. Here’s an example from the long Obama-mad and now Bernie Sanders-backing college town of Iowa City, where downtown lampposts were recently draped with large banners of local University of Iowa academics. One [...]

Counterpunch, April 22, 2016 Never underestimate the global myopia and indifference that lurks beneath the surface of the United States’ supposedly Leftist higher educational system. Between August of 2005 and May of 2006, I worked as a visiting professor of American History at a Midwestern public university. The U.S. was into the third year of [...]

Counterpunch, April 20, 2016 Progressives at home and abroad are happy about how far “left” the campaign debates and rhetoric have gone in this year’s Democratic Party presidential primary race. But five harsh realities suggest that such enthusiasm should be qualified. First, the debates and rhetoric have been nowhere nearly as radical as required in [...]

Counterpunch, April 12, 2016 He Said, She Said The recent “not qualified” spat between the progressive Democrat Bernie Sanders and the neoliberal Democrat Hillary Clinton reminds me of something you often see in National Hockey League games. Time and again, a hockey player is sent to the penalty box for responding roughly to a nasty [...]

Counterpunch, April 8, 2016 It’s understandable that United States progressives have been caught up in the national quadrennial electoral extravaganza this year. This is no ordinary election season. On the right side of the two party system we have the bizarre, possibly dangerous Donald Trump phenomenon and a potential Republican meltdown at the GOP’s national [...]

Counterpunch, April 6, 2016 A Rap Sheet Fades Behind the Extravaganza I wonder if anyone is enjoying the current endless quadrennial presidential electoral extravaganza more than Barack Obama. With the United States’ corporate-managed media and politics culture fixated on Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, the Republican National Committee, Ted Cruz, and even sometimes the nominal socialist [...]