Author Archives: Bernard Weiner

Is the future a Trump-led apartheid society?

When I was growing up in the Jim-Crow/apartheid Deep South in the 1950s—in Florida, the second state to secede from the Union—a constant refrain from a good share of white citizens was “the South shall rise again.” Some of those parroting that sentiment were only half-serious; their comment was more wish-fulfillment and resentment at their side having lost the Civil War. But, for many members of the Klan and White Citizens Councils, and their more “respectable” supporters and enablers, they were deadly serious about a future rising to restore their white privileges. Continue reading

‘Stop the world, I want to get off’: Trump and authoritarianism

All over the globe, including here in the U.S., there is a resurgence of muscular authoritarian politics. How that trend unfolds and is enforced varies country by country, but the core is recognizably neo-fascist, to a lesser or greater degree, often emerging from the extreme right wing. Continue reading

It’s the stupid, stupid

Barack Obama is not stupid and he says he doesn’t want his administration to do “stupid things” in foreign policy. So why, then, has he done a reckless, stupid thing by starting a new, two-theater war in the Middle East? And why does that war in Syria have to commence right now as an existential necessity? Continue reading

Capitalism in crisis: Who are the REAL “takers”?

Capitalism is in crisis across the globe. When both the president of the United States and the pope take out after its worst manifestations within days of each other, you know there’s an internal time bomb inside this dysfunctional economic system. Continue reading

Where’s ‘the revolution’?

So here we are in the Spring of 2013, nearly five months after Barack Obama’s re-election and the Senate added new liberal members, and not much has changed. And it doesn’t look like anything major will change. Continue reading

A modest proposal: Bring back the Inquisition!

American society is in such corrupted, chaotic shape that the only way out is to transform into a theocracy and reinstitute the Inquisition. Continue reading

The Water Is Wide: Building a revolution

I’ve been writing about political depression on the Left for years now, especially during the horrific CheneyBush decade but also in the distressing Obama years. I can’t tell you how many of my liberal friends have been fighting despondency (and I’m among that group) as the social/political/economic situation has gone from bad to worse to a bit better to worse again. Continue reading