Imagination always lags behind intellect. We know that it is now possible for the whole world to be blown up by hydrogen bombs, yet we cannot really employ this knowledge: it does not come to us as a living image. …
. . . Never before had the fact of being an American brought one so close to humiliation. The sight of Washington in August was enough to make one cringe, so enormous was the upsurge of elemental stupidity and reasonless …
It is possible that by the time this issue of DISSENT appears, the problem of Guatemala will have been forgotten, pushed aside by some new catastrophe. But forgotten, we are convinced, only for the moment. What happened there is so …
The uneven development of world economy has resulted in a disastrous split between the industrialized West and primitive East; but it has also brought another split, at the moment quite as important, between the United States and its own allies. …
For American radicals these are not times of easy political choice. They are all the more difficult if we continue to think in terms of elections, candidates and parties.
1 Intellectuals have always been partial to grandiose ideas about themselves, whether of a heroic or a masochistic kind, but surely no one has ever had a more grandiose idea about the destiny of modern intellectuals than the brilliant economist …
The confusion of modern politics runs so deep, the breakdown of those traditional responses which held together a more or less “enlightened” public is so complete, that one no longer knows what feeling an event is likely to evoke among people of some political sophistication, particularly among people of political sophistication.
