Author Archives: stephenkmacksd

StephenKMackSD 2nd Edition Pierre Bourdieu By Richard Jenkins: ‘The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914’ by J. W. Burrow: StephenKMackSD

Political Dissident comments. Headline: Eric Adams: Filming NYPD at Unsafe Range ‘Won’t Be Tolerated’ https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/eric-adams-filming-nypd-at-close-range-wont-be-tolerated.html Eric Adams doesn’t define ‘unsafe range’, because in the police mentality, consonant with authoritarianism, hasn’t quite considered that his pronouncement will determined in a Court of … Continue reading →

Political Observer comments. I found this essay on 3 Quarks Daily: ‘Against De-Materialization: Tom Wolfe in the Age of *NFTs’ at Quillette and was scanning it and encountered this brief synopsis of ‘Bonfire’ The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) concentrates on the convergence … Continue reading →

Rootless Cosmopolitan comments. In the March 11, 2022 TLS Stephen Kotkin reviews four books: BREZHNEV The making of a statesmanTranslated by John Heath512pp. I. B. Tauris. £30. Susanne Schattenberg *************************** COLLAPSE The fall of the Soviet Union560pp. Yale University Press. … Continue reading →

Political Cynic comments. Headline: There are no good choices for the west on Ukraine Sub-headline: It should strengthen sanctions, though they may ruin Russia’s economy without changing its policy or regime https://www.ft.com/content/6ec8777e-e6b3-4be6-9e64-8cfaf71d1e18 Note that the cartoon, that tops the essay by … Continue reading →

Political Reporter comments. Here is the central conceit of Mr. Ganesh’s essay: its political actor/actors is ‘populism’ , so suggestive, yet so tantalizingly amorphous. Mr. Ganesh’s gift for the telling apercu, is repurposed into this World Historical Fiction: the diagnosis of ‘the liberal center’. … Continue reading →

Political Observer comments. I woke up last night, several times, to the sound of thunder overhead and the fact that it was raining in San Diego , after days of near summer temperatures … It is Friday March 4, 2022, … Continue reading →

Political Observer comments. The first four paragraphs of Mr. Douthat’s essay of March 2, 2022: Note that Mr. Douthat has ‘graduated’ from being that moralizing Catholic Scold, to being an expert in Foreign Policy, and in this case War. Yet Mr. Douthat … Continue reading →

The Reader of Mr. Ganesh’s impersonations of the world weary flaneur, searching for that something, that will address the void -his one true calling, recording for his readership, his thoughts on the surfaces of the World, not its deeper meanings, but those … Continue reading →

Political Observer comments. The Reader of Mr. Rachman latest essay has to marvel at his essay, it should be more rightly named War Propaganda, aimed the ‘home front’, that is, its privileged readership. Mr. Rachman can’t seem to contain his expression of Triumphalism, … Continue reading →