Blog
The Texas GOP platform is riveting(ly bad) political reading
I could not tear myself away from it. The Texas GOP’s “Temporary Platform and Resolutions” packs in a huge amount of religious superiority, prejudice, and self-contradiction.
January 6 — and transphobia — make some people feel empowered
They enjoy the illusion that they’re the deciders. Post-2020 Trump supporters believe they have the power to decide how others already voted—and, if they don’t get their way, they’ll force it.
Why the Republicans chose Mike Johnson
He’s been made House Speaker because he’s serving their goals. Their goal is patriarchy, white Christian nationalism, and unfettered environmental destruction. They will make elections obsolete if they can.
The feeling of knowing
Steven Connor’s 2019 book ‘The Madness of Knowledge’. ‘Epistemopathy’ means the feeling of knowing. We have pleasant and unpleasant feelings associated with knowing. That’s part of why knowledge matters to us.
Turtles all the way down
Finding truth in emptiness. When we acknowledge there is no final turtle, we open ourselves to discover and live more. The turtle on which we are standing is never the last one.
We can’t prepare for this moment
‘Opening to Darkness’ by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. What to make of this political and ecological moment, this chaos that arrives with no instructions? We can “see, collectively, in the dark.”
‘Do I want it? Life, that is.’
‘On Not Knowing‘ by Emily Ogden. What is there to hope for? Should we hope? We can work in the field, making bales of hay, but the work of the soul “never will be cut and dried.”
‘Agnotology’: The study of ignorance
Our ways of knowing can be corrupted. “We’re going to have to rethink our metaphors,” Proctor said, on persuading people away from science-denial. “We’ve got to think much more creatively.”
We knew it before we were quizzed
That truth remains valuable. We existed. We went to school and forgot ourselves for a while. Then we remembered who we are. We had this knowledge with us the whole time.