politics | ZETEO

Donald Trump the Fascist?

December 14, 2015 by fritztucker

Seemingly every statement regarding Donald Trump in recent weeks either explicitly or implicitly compares him to Hitler. It’s almost as though both social and mainstream media are trying to pay homage to Godwin’s Law, which humorously and tautologically states that any online discussion will eventually compare the subject to Nazi Germany. These comparisons highlight both the capacity and limitation of the American imagination. For these comparisons to have any meaning, however, historical facts must be addressed. It is true that Hitler was a uniquely effective rhetorician. Perhaps Trump is too. […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, ethics, History, immigration, India, law, literature, Narendra Modi, politics, race

Who is Paris?

November 16, 2015 by fritztucker

As my colleagues at Zeteo, William and Steve, have already pointed out, the sorrow we feel for those who lost their lives or loved ones during the attacks in Paris and Beirut this week is unfortunately accompanied by fear that the violence will only escalate from here. That is, after all, the point of terrorism, to take the middle ground out from under people’s feet and make them choose sides. If we refuse to choose sides, however, we combat terrorism better than any aircraft […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, Uncategorized, ZiLL • Tags: death, French, History, immigration, ISIS, Paris, politics, terrorism, travel

Fun, Football, and Carnality before Paris

November 15, 2015 by Ed Mooney

This post was largely finished before the Paris terror attacks. I criticized costumes that mock and mimic violence, writing, that these outfits “cut too close to the bone.” Those words of mid-week cut even deeper now. ♦ Halloween is over, but Fall Football isn’t. In his magisterial A Secular Age (45-6), Charles Taylor writes that Carnival and similar [Medieval] festivities, such as the feasts of misrule, or boy bishops, and the like [are] . . . periods in which the […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, children, politics

Voting in Maine

November 8, 2015 by Ed Mooney

Is atmosphere important? — Can I control breeze? I usually leave political observation to one side, but today was my first voting experience in my newly adopted state, Maine, and it was distinctive and instructive. But before I get to the voting, let me pause on the place, pass on some impressions of the atmosphere. I haven’t seen the alleged moose, though the alerts are on every highway. I have seen the domesticated deer, who seem to feel quite at […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: Caravaggio, elections, New England, philosophy, politics, voting

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Halloween as Social Movement

November 2, 2015 by fritztucker

In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Holt Paperbacks, 2007), Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the evolution of carnivals; from tribal societies masking and dancing to manufacture group solidarity (Intro, Ch. 1); to feudal festivals that challenged oppressive gender and class relations (Ch. 4). Writes Ehrenreich: Whatever social category you had been boxed into–male or female, rich or poor–carnival was a chance to escape from it. No aspect of carnival has attracted more scholarly attention than the tradition of mocking the powerful, […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: art, books, capitalism, childhood, children, civil rights, gender, History, homosexuality, law, literature, love, politics, social justice, women

Film, Marxism: Tanner, Berger, Jonas

October 13, 2015 by William Eaton

If now largely ignored, Alain Tanner and John Berger’s 1976 film Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000 (For Jonas Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000), remains warm, charming, lovable.[1] And the movie is particularly hard not to like now when the hopes and “Marxist humanist” analysis underlying it have come to seem a Romantic pipe dream. “[A]lles Heilige wird entweiht, und die Menschen sind endlich gezwungen, ihre Lebensstellung,” Marx and Engels wrote in the not-Marxist-humanist […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: Alain Tanner, capitalism, dreams, film, Frederic Jameson, French, Jean-Luc Godard, John Berger, Marx, Marxism, politics

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Eyes on the Street

October 5, 2015 by fritztucker

Perhaps Jane Jacobs’ most acclaimed contribution to urban studies in The Death and Life of Great American Cities is her “eyes on the street” theory. “[T]here must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street . . . to insure the safety of both residents and strangers” (1992, p. 35). According to Jacobs, this high-density street life not only provides safety, but a shared sense of civic duty. People must take a modicum of […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: books, capitalism, civil rights, crime, History, law, literature, New York City, politics, race, reading, social justice

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The Black Panthers: Revolutions and Dinner Parties

September 20, 2015 by fritztucker

I recently watched Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution. While the documentary is clearly pro-Panther, I nevertheless found it to be a surprisingly critical examination of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The film focuses on many of the well-remembered legacies left by the Panthers–such as their Free Breakfast for Children Program, their armed-yet-non-violent storming of California’s capitol building in Sacramento, and the mass movements to free Huey Newton, the Chicago 7, and the New York 21–as well as a few of the negative […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: African-Americans, art, Black Panthers, capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, film, History, literature, movies, New York City, politics, race, social justice

The Possibility for Nuclear Non-Proliferation

July 26, 2015 by fritztucker

Iran and the US have finally reached a deal to limit Iran’s potential to develop nuclear weapons, in return for the US lifting economic sanctions against Iran. The deal includes constant video surveillance of Iran’s nuclear facilities, similar to that in the UN brokered peace treaty ending the 1996-2006 Maoist insurgency in Nepal. Skeptics of the US-Iran deal might point to the failure to demilitarize Germany after the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. There are, however, at least two key differences between the recent US-Iran nuclear deal and […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: History, Iran, nuclear weapons, politics, treaty, war

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Tag: politics

Donald Trump the Fascist?

Who is Paris?

Fun, Football, and Carnality before Paris

Voting in Maine

Film, Marxism: Tanner, Berger, Jonas

The Possibility for Nuclear Non-Proliferation