Photo: Joe Biden; source: WikiCommons. Joe Biden went to Pittsburgh on August 31 to make a campaign speech condemning the violence Donald Trump incites. That was the immediate reason for speaking out, but it was also an occasion to speak up for a better America, one that most citizens can affirm and from which no one should feel excluded. The operative term is “should.” Biden’s speech is an …
On August 4, 2020, 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut’s port blew up, destroying the city’s main commercial hub and damaging large areas of the Lebanese capital. The blast killed more than 170 people, wounded more than 6,000, left nearly 300,000 homeless, and caused damage worth $10-15 billion. Lebanon has been crippled by long-running crises for decades. The country endured a devastating 15-year civil war and …
In politics timing is everything. All intelligent political criticism proceeds from this premise. Unintelligent criticism not so much. The next three months will be crucial for the fate of democracy in the U.S. And the outcome of the November election will determine whether the American system of government can furnish even minimally decent and effective responses to the pressing challenges of COVID-19 and racial and economic injustice. As …
Hungary’s new Trianon memorial “Memorial of National Unity,” Budapest, Hungary, August 2020. Photo by author. As problematic monuments are being brought down in recent anti-racist protests around the world, Hungary, in contrast, saw the completion of a deeply flawed and tone-deaf memorial. Built for the centennial of the Trianon Peace Treaty, the “Memorial of National Unity” in front of the Hungarian Parliament has a minimalist style echoing that …
Protest actions in Minsk (Belarus), August 16, 2020 (Source: WikiCommons) A contest over the legitimacy of an election and the illegitimacy of an autocrat is currently playing out on the streets of Minsk and throughout Belarus. I have no particular expertise about Belarus and nothing profound to say about this conflict. Belarus’s longtime President Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator who rose to power on the basis of nationalist …
Reflections on the first appearance of the Biden – Harris team “Biden gave the best speech of his life!” “Kamala is killing it!” “The two speeches, of Biden and Harris, affectively expressed compassion and warmth, as they made sharp political points.” These were my Facebook responses to the coming out of the Biden – Harris team. Although I generally don’t use Facebook to express such judgments, I couldn’t constrain …
The Democracy Seminar, our worldwide committee of democratic correspondence, has moved to Zoom. Before the pandemic, last October, we held a conference in New York (see here for a report). We were scheduled to meet again this month in Wroclaw, Poland, but the meeting had to be postponed. In April, the seminar conveners—from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey and the United States—discussed how we should proceed, and decided that …
There is a dangerous method to Trump’s racist madness Donald Trump is doubling down on his racism and xenophobia. This is widely acknowledged, and condemned, by many commentators. It is viewed, correctly in my judgment, as both a resort to the rhetoric with which Trump is most comfortable, racist and xenophobe that he is, and as a campaign strategy. Trump’s approach may seem bound to fail. It is …
From the Kitchen Table to the Kitchen Cabinet A paper prepared as the keynote address at the BISLA virtual conference “The World After the Pandemic,” May 29, 2020. Between 1973 and 1989, I intensively studied public life behind “The Iron Curtain.” I researched and wrote my dissertation on student theater in Poland. In the late 70s and the 80s, I observed the emergence of an autonomous cultural and …
