Author Archives: stephenkmacksd

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About stephenkmacksd

Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer. 'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.' https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Almost Marx on The Financial Times ‘interview’ of Temer

Headline: Temer stays tough on Brazil economic reforms Sub-headline: Unpopular president to press on with agenda that has boosted currency and stock market Where else would the utterly corrupt Neo-Liberal Temer turn to but The Financial Times, or the WSJ, … Continue reading

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The Financial Times & the Israeli Settlements, Episode CCXXI of Lebensraum On The Installment Plan. A comment by Almost Marx

Here is a picture of this Financial Times news story, about the evacuation of the Amona settler outpost.Which forcibly moves the self-entitled Israeli settlers out of the area, so that 3,000 new housing units can be built, as the in-order-to  … Continue reading

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Robert Kaplan: America is ‘fated to lead’, a comment by Publius

I have spent the last three days reading Mr. Kaplan’s 24 page rambling screed , ‘The Coming Anarchy‘, at The Atlantic published  in 1994, just to become familiar with his writing, and found a font of American white male paranoia … Continue reading

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My reply @Larchmont

@Larchmont @Lund Larchmont, I do find your reading of the political present fascinating, in its own way. It offers the Trump Party line without its necessary political context. Both you and Mr. Ganesh write in a style that is a pastiche … Continue reading

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On the traps of Populism, as interpreted by Janan Ganesh: a comment by American Writer

Mr. Ganesh strikes a comic pose in his latest essay: He assumes the guise of that pearl clutching, porcine dowager Margaret Dumont, who is both attracted and repelled by the comic anarchy of The Marx Brothers. She is smitten with Groucho’s roguish banter … Continue reading

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Reply to @BLEX @FT

@BLEX @Benign Brodwicz The self-congratulation, indeed hubris of the religious apologist, meaning in this case the Christian branch of the benighted Abrahamic Tradition, is unsurprising! The only thing that saved Christianity from its own provincialism was a heavy infusion of the … Continue reading

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Our Man From Opus Dei defends Trump: A Francoist defends a Peronist, in an ‘As If’ World. A comment by Political Reporter

Headline: The Tempting of the Media For this reader of Mr. Douthat’s latest political intervention, I am strongly reminded of that 1977 American best seller, ‘The Totalitarian Temptation’ by  Jean-François Revel. This book, an exercise in verbose anti-communist polemics, was … Continue reading

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At The Financial Times: Julian Baggini reviews 3 books on ethics, a comment by Philosophical Apprentice

Headline: Painful truths: psychologists unpick the ethics of empathy Sub-headline: Why putting yourself in others’ shoes can sometimes be a poor moral guide The headline and the sub-headline are indicative of a publication that worships at the alter of  the … Continue reading

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Davos as interpreted by Gideon Rachman, Political Observer comments

The most important ‘meeting’ at Davos  was the one between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in 1929. See Peter E. Gordon’s book ‘Continental Divide’ for the particulars of this truly momentous meeting/debate, between the two most prominent German philosophers of … Continue reading

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Martin Wolf on ‘aggrieved nationalism’, a comment by Old Socialist

In Martin Wolf’s essay of Jan 17, 2017, he engages in the intellectual plunder of Benedict Anderson’s path-breaking  book ‘Imagined Communities’to frame his Ne0-Liberal hand-wringing. His seemingly perpetual state of mind and spirit. And the Tribalism that afflicts us, even … Continue reading

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