Episode 1439
On prison education / Daniel Fernandez
Feb 23 2022
I think we have to just really be laser focused on the pro-democratic project. That doesn't mean that we ignore the harms that this authoritarian incursion has put upon our society, our government, et cetera. I think there are many things that probably need to be unwound, right? Either fully or partially in terms of autocratic state capacity. But I also think that it is not going to be just enough to undo because the systems and the structures that we've been living in have not delivered for people for decades. We've been in a sort of cost of living crisis for decades. People have been struggling with healthcare, the cost of education, the cost of housing for decades. And so simply undoing what Trump has done is not going to be enough to actually create the society, the democracy, and the economy that we need and we deserve. And frankly, in my opinion, it's not going to be enough to win an election, right? I don't think people are looking for just the opposite of what we're experiencing right now. I think people are looking for policy makers who truly listen. Who truly understand and who truly are putting forth their best effort to address the concerns of regular people and put power back in the hands of regular people. So just as the administration and its allies have really kind of laced our political institutions with an authoritarian administration, such as retooling the IRS to be used for surveillance as opposed to in tax enforcement. A pro-democracy coalition has to do the same thing. And so a big question I think for all of us and all of your listeners is what are the different ways in which we can kind of weave in a pro-democracy bias into our state institutions? This is not to be clear about partisanship. This is about democracy. How do we make sure that our democratic institutions are sort of fundamentally oriented towards helping people, helping society, and building that trust back in the public sector?
Rakeem Mabud speaks with This Is Hell! about her new essay for Common Wealth that she co-wrote with Melanie Brusseler titled “The Power Grab: The Authoritarian Coalition’s Strategy of Power Consolidation”.
Rakeen is an expert on how economic trends impact people’s everyday lives. She was most recently the Chief Economist at Groundwork Collaborative, and has also held roles in the US Treasury Department, Roosevelt Institute and Time’s Up. She holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and a BA from Wellesley College.
We will have new installments of Rotten History and Hangover Cure. We will... read more
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Feb 3 2022
Posted by Matthew Boedy
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the wooden stake that is the hammer. Very difficult to use.
It snuck up on us one day while we were listening to Pete Seeger and reading the diary of Anne Frank, and listening to Bessie Smith and reading Edward Said, and listening to Chumbawamba and reading Frantz Fanon. The agents of rot swarmed in. They came at night. They used the silence and darkness to conceal their purpose and their protocols.
Or, maybe it was obvious. You were listening to Martin Luther King, Jr. inspiring you to action against the smug, violent, comfortable bosses, leaders, and owners. The FBI and the Ku Klux Klan could be plainly seen hovering around him, making threats that had nowhere to go but into execution. And then he was killed. Everyone was getting assassinated except the people who really needed assassinating. They were cruisin’ for an assassinatin’. They were clammoratin’ for an assassinatin’. They were dunning for a gunning. But they never got it. Only the decent people did, plus John F. Kennedy.
Rachel Carson, Joe Hill, W.E.B. du Bois, Jacques Cousteau, Virginia Wolfe, Malcolm X, Eugene V. Debs, Shirley Chisholm, Fanny Lou Hamer, Ho Chi Minh, did they all live in vain? Were they all killed by werewolves? The current thinking is that they were. Were they all killed by the same werewolf? Current theories say, “probably.” Does that mean they all live on as werewolves now? Yes. E.O. Wilson recently became a werewolf, in case you missed it.
What exactly is a werewolf? A lot of ignorant people will try to tell you. On a podcast called “Supernatural,” a not-very-persuasive voice named Ashley Flowers tried and did a crap job. She began by asserting that “we always cast extremely attractive men to play them in movies, like Michael J Fox, Hugh Jackman, and Taylor Lautner.”
Okay, Michael J. Fox was in Teen Wolf. Taylor Lautner was in that Twilight garbage. Hugh Jackman? Is she mistaking Wolverine for a werewolf because of his suggestive facial hair? No, right, he was a werewolf in Van Helsing. I didn’t remember that either.
The writer of that first clause, “We always cast extremely attractive men to play them in movies,” must have a pop culture memory the depth of Zambonied fruit leather. The original actor to play the Universal pictures wolfman was Lon Chaney, Jr., not a glamorous ingenu by any measure. Actually, downright... read more
Feb 3 2022
Jan 31 2022