Essays

The following is a riposte to an editorial published in the New York Times by Ruth Franklin which can be read here. Prosecuting Judge, Ruth Franklin Opening Statement This court has had a busy season, and the next few weeks promise to be even busier. Last week we dealt with the case of the biographer…

Epidemics expose a great deal about who we are. They always have. Old orders die.  New ideas take shape. “There is something deep here connected to what is the real truth about who we really are, not what we are told about ourselves,” says social movement scholar Marina Sitrin. “Yes, we are afraid. Yes, we…

The human species has reached a critical tipping point which poses an existential choice. If the species is not to be a victim of its own technological success and destroy itself in nuclear war or due to the effects of climate change, it is faced with the collective task of accomplishing a qualitative leap in…

Stockholm syndrome is the term for desperate captives who, in extreme cases, begin to or really do identify with the culprits endangering them. Call it perversity squared but the syndrome is understandable in extended survival quests. One cannot imagine a better explanation as to why many movement veterans lavished grateful praise on the insidious Yuppified…