Who Benefits from the Myth of Pro-War Consensus?
The consensus thesis allows pundits to settle into the comfortable role of brave prophet standing alone against the warmongering tide.
The consensus thesis allows pundits to settle into the comfortable role of brave prophet standing alone against the warmongering tide.
A string of pseudo-populist conservative movements have reverted to the same agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. Why should we expect anything different?
No one has the stomach to burn out the tongues of blasphemers anymore, even if some remain too ornery to admit it. Perhaps breaking free of liberalism is harder than it looks.
Since the Great Recession, Karl Polanyi has become a totem for social democracy. But as a new biography of him suggests, Polanyi himself is an uneasy fit as spokesman for any specific social order.
Technological innovation has been key to American military policy since 9/11, but it has by no means been the only driver of change. We might better view these years as a story of the U.S. national security apparatus gradually breaking free of the restraints imposed on it in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. It is also a story of the military and intelligence wings of this apparatus becoming increasingly intertwined and indistinguishable from one another.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber Melville House, 2011, 554 pp. As recently as a year ago, the anthropologist David Graeber was well respected within his academic discipline but little-known outside of it. His sole brush with public …