Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Hope in Uncertain Times


Life is a blur because I am so busy. I hate this level of bizzy-ness, but bow to its pressures.

It is such a strange time that I wish I had more time to explore it.

What is happening?

Truth has lost all mooring in the era of fake news and scandal politics.

Are we witnessing the birth of fascism or the revolt against it?

I cannot tell.

My students are talking about demonstrations and their confusion.

I love those millennials because they are the most tolerant among us.

But teaching them is, frankly, a pain in the ass because their attention is so hard to maintain.

But they are curious and worried and hopeful all at once.

They want to know what is going on. I wish I could tell them.

I said that the Internet is revolutionary. It empowers the audience as never before. Populism though is a vulnerable expression of the popular will.

Populism is vulnerable to the conductor's propaganda and vulnerable also to what Althusser described as the state's "repressive apparatuses."

[ On the latter note: Thankfully the state of AZ has decided not to extend its repressive apparatuses unduly to its citizens who elect to free assemble but we know that the demonstation of independennce is too often met with repression  see my post here]

My students are worried. What is happening they ask? I told my students we are in a fertile moment when democracy can be re-enlivened but we also are situated in risky times wherein unpredictable synergies can result in dangerous undertows and whirlpools that drown efforts to realize happiness, liberty, justice, and equality.

I hope that reason and prudentialism toward the future will over-rule the id's impulses in this time of rapid change and uncertainty.

My students' goodness give me hope.



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