Categories as fundamental as fact and fiction, news and entertainment, gender and sexuality, have eroded away. In literature and architecture, in cuisine, in music, in fashion and furnishings, everywhere, everything—it’s fusion and mix. Barack Obama emerged as a literal embodiment of this age. To educated people, especially younger people with generally progressive views, other candidates suddenly looked parochial by comparison—or simply outdated. In his ethnicity and biography and in his personality and politics, Obama, the conciliator, was above all a combiner. Because he was from virtually everywhere—Kenya, Indonesia, Honolulu, Harvard, Chicago’s South Side—he was also from nowhere. The pastiche of his persona made him “his own man” in a new sense of the term.

On the Politics of Pastiche and Depthless Intensities: The Case of Barack Obama
posted by Rumple on Aug 25, 2011 - 22 comments

The Undoing of America. Gore Vidal on war for oil, politics-free elections, and the late, great U.S. Constitution. And he doesn't pull his punches either.
posted by acrobat on Mar 24, 2005 - 92 comments

"I have become more and more aware of the Stalinist tactics and mentality of much of the American Right..... Relentless insistence on unity, on the existence of an unprecedented and overwhelming external threat, and on the total moral depravity of political opposition were all integral to Stalinist propaganda, and they are a growing part of conservative rhetoric in the United States today.....[Hateful] rhetoric was the prelude to a terrific acceleration of state murder in the Soviet Union....when I read posts on right-wing websites and blogs such as Free Republic or Little Green Footballs, I am reminded strongly of the rage and rhetoric of the young Communist Party activists in the late 1920s....The drive to sustain the administration's alternative world, and the blind hatred and rage of many of President Bush's supporters, may well have disastrous consequences for America." [ Matthew Lenoe, author of Closer To The Masses. Stalinist Culture,Social Revolution, And Soviet Newpapers. Harvard University Press, 2004 ] An op-ed, by someone who knows a bit about totalitarianism, it reminds me of Metafilters 36201, 32747 24363....
posted by troutfishing on Oct 28, 2004 - 9 comments

Is The New York Times biased? Dan Okrent, the NYT public editor, has gone through reams of campaign coverage and delivered his opinion. Make sure you read to the very end. Previously discussed here.
posted by grrarrgh00 on Oct 10, 2004 - 52 comments

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism.
posted by thedailygrowl on May 12, 2003 - 47 comments

The "duh" in Fundamentalism: Jaime Wright's "The Philosophy Of The Bomb". Please scroll down to Essays, Rants, Etc...
posted by protocool on May 30, 2002 - 6 comments

Camille Paglia in full flow at Salon: "In the three weeks since my last column, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been up hill and down dale, beating the bushes in upstate New York to try to convince someone somewhere that she is a woman of substance rather than a raisin-eyed, carrot-nosed, twig-armed, straw-stuffed mannequin trundled in on a go-cart by the mentally bereft powerbrokers of the state Democratic Party."
posted by Markb on Mar 3, 2000 - 0 comments