"Journal of a Dissenter," 1996-2024
Probably unwisely, I've posted my lifelong "intellectual journal" online, here . It's a very long document that no one could or would...
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Oct 16, 202325 min read
Postliberalism: a dangerous “new” conservatism
[This article was published in The Philosophical Salon.] In Wilhelm von Humboldt’s book The Limits of State Action (1792), one of the...
Sep 6, 20238 min read
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Frederick Douglass, and the Left
[Published at Dissident Voice and other places.] Twitter conversations with public intellectuals are rarely worthy of note, but a recent...
May 18, 20239 min read
Love of freedom defines the political left, not the right
[This article was published at Sublation and other venues.] Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and...
Feb 3, 202321 min read
The righteous outrage of Norman Finkelstein
[A book review published at Common Dreams.] As I was reading Norman Finkelstein’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!:...
Jan 31, 202355 min read
The Book of Joe: A Satire of Capitalist Society
Here's an insanely long post. It's actually a "literary experiment" I wrote almost twenty years ago (as the following preface says, which...
Apr 8, 20229 min read
On stupidity and the excesses of wokeness
One of the first laws of human existence, or at least of existence in class societies (determined by anti-human institutions that mold...
Oct 10, 20219 min read
Resisting fascism (a book review)
[This review was published at H-Socialisms.] The elevation of Donald Trump onto the national political stage in 2016 provoked a heated...
Jul 10, 202115 min read
Against liberal "pluralism"
In the time of Trumpism, Michael Paul Rogin’s great book The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (1967) shouldn’t be as...
Apr 5, 202130 min read
The rise of right-wing libertarianism since the 1950s
Sometimes as I read books I like to simultaneously summarize them, to facilitate the intellectual digestion. And also to post my notes...
Sep 5, 20205 min read
The commodification of education
David Noble's essay "Digital Diploma Mills," written in the 1990s, is a brilliant and still timely critique of the automation and...
Aug 30, 202037 min read
Critical remarks on academia and philosophy
I was recently skimming old notes of mine and came across the following thoughts from a two-volume book on "humanism" I wanted to write...
Aug 27, 202021 min read
The remarkable perversity of idealism
Many years ago, when I was a simple boy who thought he ought to know a lot about Hegel, I took masses of notes on his philosophy. Below...
Aug 25, 20209 min read
Thou shalt not worship intellectuals
When I read old books or articles that are totally forgotten despite being brilliant, it saddens me. Siblings of Donald Trump publish...
Aug 21, 20209 min read
I wish stupidity were less common
This is going to be a whiny, self-pitying post. Just to warn you. The question is sometimes asked, "Why are stupid people frequently so...
Jul 30, 202016 min read
The heartbreak of staggering self-consciousness
Today I came across a copy of Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and was reminded of myself in my twenties, when I was...
Jun 8, 20207 min read
Appreciative and not-so-appreciative thoughts on cultural theory
[These notes, for what they're worth, are from, respectively, 2010 and 2018.] Reading Raymond Williams’ classic Marxism and Literature...
Jun 6, 202016 min read
Rambling reflections on Camille Paglia
I've been reading Camille Paglia's collection of essays Sex, Art, and American Culture (1992). I disagree with a lot of Paglia's...
Jul 27, 20195 min read
On the fight against misogyny
As a leftist, "I wish we could all just get along." Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe it would get boring pretty quickly. But a little less...
Jul 24, 201919 min read
A little misanthropy can be a healthy thing
This is from a letter Sigmund Freud wrote to his pastor friend Oskar Pfister: I do not break my head very much about good and evil, but I...
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