13 October 2024

Long Road Ahead – Trump and Beyond

[Photo: Long Road Ahead (Death Valley, Ca. by Jon Rawlinson. ]

By Rowan Wolf

I was recently given a terminal diagnosis and told that I have about 6 months to live. As you might imagine, this has set off a firestorm of emotions and a lengthy evaluation of my life and what to do with the time I have left whether that be the estimated six months or hopefully longer. But even before this, especially with the election of Trump in 2016, was the deep sadness of decades of effort by millions of people to advance the causes dear to my heart – justice, equality, and protecting our beautiful planet – was being deliberately destroyed. Now I look forward and see not only how much of my personal goals have been left incomplete, but how much has been undone by forces with a far different agenda than mine. Even worse, we are running backward and cherished gains and dreams are being ripped up and thrown aside. I wanted to save the world (or at least make it better). Instead, I’m leaving it in even worse shape.

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Category: Activists, Democracy, Dictatorship, Futurescape, New Right, Rowan Wolf - UTJ Editor, Save Democracy, The .01%, White Nationalism | Comments Off on Long Road Ahead – Trump and Beyond
22 September 2024

The Necessity of Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times

I think therefore I'm dangerous

[Photo: John Eisenschenk, flickr 2013]

By: Henry A. Giroux
Source: LA Progressive

Editor's Note
Pedagogy is a method and theory of teaching. Critical pedagogy is a method that focuses on context, histories, and experience and looks at the whole person and the environment in which she resides. This perspective is inherently multidimensional and identifies the role of power in the function of interactive paradigms. On the other hand, the (Western) “traditional” pedagogy focuses on skill building and classroom management. Ideas are seen as tools and there tends to be a sense of false objectivity with a tendency towards either one-dimensional and/or binary thinking. It is also inherently hierarchical with the teacher/expert as the sole holder of knowledge.

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Category: Activists, Democracy, Education, Henry A. Giroux, Ideology, Mechanisms of Contrrol, Religion, Save Democracy, White Nationalism | Comments Off on The Necessity of Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times
11 July 2024

The Dismantling of Democracy: A Grim Projection of American Fascism Under Trump

[Graphic: “Trump Gets Immunity“, Paresh Nath, U.T. Independent, India. (Not public domain, fee paid)]

By: Henry A. Giroux
Source: Counterpunch

Editor's Note
The ruling of the ultra-conservative majority of the Supreme Court regarding Presidential immunity as relates to Donald Trump is clearly pro-Trump. However, it is also fulfilling a long-term goal of Republicans which is the legal enforcement of the concept of the Unitary Executive. I published Revisiting the Concept of Unitary Executive in 2018 which built upon an earlier article I wrote during the George W. Bush Administration in 2006. 

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Category: Democracy, Dictatorship, Henry A. Giroux, Pull Right - Fascism, Save Democracy, SCOTUS, Trump | Comments Off on The Dismantling of Democracy: A Grim Projection of American Fascism Under Trump
10 June 2024

Mainstream Media Obscure the Threat Posed by Trump’s Authoritarianism

[Photo: “Trump Buddies”. Pat Bagley. The Salt Lake City Tribune, UT. 10/15/2018.]

By: Henry A. Giroux
Source: Truthout
If recent swing-state polls are to be believed, Donald Trump could be on his way to potentially being reelected president. He embodies the overt, brutal, punishing symptoms of the racism, class warfare, and attacks on youth and women that have marred the United States since its inception. Beneath these not-so-hidden authoritarian undercurrents lies neoliberalism’s erosion of and attacks on critical and civic education. This ideology is characterized by a staggering indifference to human needs, systemic racism, intensified class warfare, the fear of living with difference, and a profound obsession with instrumentalist methods, such as racially discriminatory and class-based “zero tolerance” policies, and teaching that focuses on standardized testing outcomes.

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3 January 2024

Which Way America? It Is Up To Us!

Trump Big Brother

[Photo: Trump Stop the Steal Jan 6, 2021 by WSWS]

By Rowan Wolf

Welcome to 2024 and the beginning of the next stage of the struggle for the future of our nation and the world. The U.S. is rapidly sliding down the slope into fascism. Trump, and the coordinators of his next presidency, are not being shy about their plans. Trump makes it clear with his rants at rallies, and his accomplices are quite open about what America will look like with another Trump presidency – a dictatorship with a crony government, the DoJ restructured to rout out anyone Trump deems threatening, the construction of concentration camps for those deemed anti-American / anti-Trump (Democrats, people of color, LGBTQ, etc) and the expulsion or execution of non-white immigrants. The Constitution will be thrown out, massive bans on books and rewriting of curriculum, a total ban on abortion, and the removal of licenses for any media that does not support Trump and the MAGA agenda. The Republican party has already given their power to Trump and most refuse to speak against him or this plan at recrafting the government.

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