Contributions by:

Claire Snyder-Hall

“Real Housewives” and the Decline of Civic Virtue

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Why has support for progressive politics seemingly collapsed? While there are clearly many reasons, this essay focuses on the role commercial culture plays in the production of anti-progressive, anti-republican values. Using the “Real Housewives” franchise as an example, I argue that trash television shows undermine the possibility of collective action and government for the common…

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The King of the 1% v. The American Republic

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When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, at the start of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, like many people I was elated. At the time it seemed that the Republican Party, with its aggrandizement of economic elites and undisguised deployment of arbitrary power, had been completely discredited. In light of the…

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