The Culture and Revolution by Gerard DeGroot (Air Mail)

The revolutions of 1848 in Europe are the subject of a new book by historian Christopher Clark. What DeGroot finds exciting in this new treatment of old material is how "alive" the revolution becomes. Gossip and rumors spread quickly and following them were revolts. But, spontaneous political unities fall apart as fast as they start. The old governing powers go on the counteroffensive with great success.

There was no Jesus by Garin Evans (Aeon)

"The outlaw and theif Robert Hod was fined for failing to appear in court in York in 1225 and a year later he reappeared in the court record, still at large." By the 16th century, he was the main figure of the story of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, which was told to have taken place in the 1100s. Garin Evans argues that this is much like how the story of Jesus developed. Not only are the supernatural elements subject to skepticism, much of the moral teachings are as well. Arguing against what is a very accepted belief around the world, Evans leaves us with a new belief that Jesus may have just been one Jewish preacher among many killed by the Romans. The myth of Jesus was then historicized, similar to Robin Hood.

Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden on The Ezra Klein Show (The New York Times)

Ezra is taking Democrats seriously in their threats the Trump is an "existential threat" to democracy. If so, Ezra thinks, it requires an existential defense plan. His solution is an open or brokered convention, where Biden wins the primary, steps down, and democrats spend the summer launching a media circus full of debates, interviews, op-eds, and more to choose the Democratic ticket. The way it works, Ezra explains, is that primary votes only mean you elect a delegate, but if Biden drops out, the delegates can then decide at the party convention in Chicago who they will vote for.

Your Questions on Open Conventions, A Gaza Schism and Biden's Chances on The Ezra Klein Show (The New York Times)

The episode on the open convention generated a flurry of responses. Many, Ezra notes, were not engaging with the substance of his claims, mainly, Trump is an existential threat and Biden's memory is deteriorating. Rather, the main concerns are against the method and the plan. The criticisms are many. One, if Kamala Harris is not picked as the presidental candidate, it could cause a crisis. Two, it is anti-democratic for delegates to decide and not the ballot. Three, it is risky, the safe bet is to win or lose the old fashioned route.

It's Not as Easy as Just Getting Biden to Drop Out by Jamelle Bouie (The New York Times)

Bouie has some original criticisms not covered in the response episode to Ezra's open convention idea. One main one is that prior to the 1968 Democrat open convention disaster, the social and political legitimacy of the convention has profoundly changed. Bouie argues that times have changed, the convention is seemed as elitist and anti-democratic. Despite having the same rules, there is no guarantee that the party or the people would accept the outcome, most likely not in our more democratic era. I would have liked to see Bouie engage with Ezra's claims that, although it looks like on paper elitist, even our electoral system is not as 'small d' democratic as folks believe. But, to Bouie's general attitude, it would be odd to spend time railing about Trump's threat to democracy while simultaneously making, at least what would seem to most American's Bouie argues, anti-democratic moves.

Liberal Socialism Now by Matthew McManus (Aeon)

In my reading queue alone, I think I have three articles with neoliberalism in the title. Enough time has passed since the neoliberal policies were passed, the schools of thought that have come and gone, and most likely Trump's election have brought us to a present where intellectuals and politicians are starting to examine what is left for liberalism. McManus wants to go to the roots of liberalism to show us that it is not all neoliberalism, that neoliberalism was one sect that ruled for a moment. If liberalism is to revitalize itself, it needs to look to thinkers such as Paine and Wollstonecraft, critiques of capitalism by Smith or Mill, discussions of socialism by Rawls or Bernstein, former enemies of neoliberalism such as Rousseau, Hegel, or Marx, and contemporary approprations of liberalism such as Charles Mill's 'black radical liberalism'.

The Strange Resurrection of the Two-State Solution by Martin Indyk (Foreign Affairs)

There two main blockers for peace in the Middle East are Israel and the United States. There are two things that, on Israeli and American sides, former diplomats from either the Clinton or the Obama years have been trying to do. The first, which looks backwards at first, is to give Biden permission to put pressure on Israel. The other is tell Israeli's that Netanyahu has to go along with the far-right ultranationalists. Diplomat's want to assure Biden that being a good friends means being a tough friend on occassion. They also want to assure Israelis that they are in their own way to peace.

'The MANIAC' blends fiction and history at the edge of reason by Becca Rothfeld (The Washington Post)

Labutut's previous book, When We Cease to Understand the World, Rothfeld describes, is about three scientists who "must become more --- and less --- than human". The philosophical mood is one of modernism, how the further we try to grab hold of the world, the more it escapes our grasp. His latest effort is continuing the theme of modernity, specifically with one of the main aspects of modernity, scientific reasoning. This is how it is able to unite figures like John von Neumann and Lee Sedol. Both look beyond the limits of math, science, and technology. One would expect von Neumann to be an evangelist of some sort, but he was "ambivalent" about technology. Lee Sedol is not too different from John Henry, man vs machine, except to some Lee represents the divine.

The Many and the Few by Fintan O'Toole (The New York Review of Books)

Jewish people living in the land of Palestine before 1948 had a similar relation to the ruling power of the time, Britain, that Palestine has to Israel. Two terrorist organizations, Irgun and Lehi, were using violence and blurring the line between combatant and noncombatant. Britain warned Ben-Gurion, the current leader of the pre-state government, that if he did not reign in the terrorist violence, Britain would run the classic "law and order" playbook. At the height of the tensions between the two, British police and army officials were echoing similar statements that people use towards Palestinians today, for example, that the Jews were "human animals" or that they were having a hard time differentiating between violent and peaceful Jews.

Beyond the Myth of Rural America by Daniel Immerwahr (The New Yorker)

There is no rural America. To be rural, you need to be "from the land". No Americans, unless native, are from the land. To be rural, you need to be independent, self-subsisting. Rural Americans largely farm for huge food corporations. If they end up at the grocery store, it is most likely at the end of a long supply chain, not a morning delivery from your neighbor. If not farming, most rural American jobs were factories that left unionized cities for a more politically friendly labor force. Politicians, such as Sarah Palin, campaign on being rural Americans, even though the town Palin is from was created through FDR polices. The difference between some country music and beer commercial lyrics are neglible..

The Orphan Among Revolutions by Lynn Hunt (The New York Review of Books)

Hunt enjoys a few things about this new book on the 1848 revolutions. Unlike other reviews, Clark finds positives that came out of the revolutions, even if they fell apart quickly. Also, Clark weaves together the complex ways in which the revolutions were truly international, such as the countless agitators who could only do their work abroad or Romanian's rushing back from Paris. There is a real flurry and excitement underneath the complex political year that is 1848 in Europe that Clark, Hunt thinks, captures well.

Defending Allende by Ariel Dorfman (The New York Review of Books)

50 years since Kissinger, Nixon, and the political actors around Pinochet, the battle over the memory and legacy of Allende is still being faught in Chile. Dorfman was involved with Allende movement, so involved that they knew many who served with him who were executed during the coup. The two sides, Allende's socialist and united and Pinochet's neoliberal and authoritarian, are still represented by Gabriel Boric and José Antonio Kast. The Pinochet dictatorship lasted so long, was so brutal, Dorfman wonders if the seeds Allende planted cannot survive in Chile.

A Framework to Help Us Understand the World by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Hammer & Hope)

Táíwò is writing in a new magazine, inspired by the book Hammer and Hoe by Robin D. G. Kelley which centers is about "the courageous Black Communists in Alabama whose lives and struggles to organize against capitalism and white supremacist terror in the 1930s and 1940s". Táíwò is writing again about what his idea of racial capitalism is and why it matters. If I can be short, it is not that capitalism is necessarily racial, agreeing with class reductionists, but also that capitalism has actually developed along racial lines (among other lines). The main agent here is the British empire, which carved up its colonies along racial lines, which have left a lasting impact.

Can Israel Be a Democracy for All by Dov Waxman (Dissent)

Written in March of 2023, Israel was already undergoing a crisis. Waxman argues that the liberal protesters from Netanyahu should realize that the democratic crisis is not an abstract event. The crisis, Netanyahu wanting to nullify the powers of the Supreme Court, was caused by the far-right plan for annexing all of Palestine. The far right views the court as a potential blocker, so they made a preemptive strike. Even if this crisis is overcome, it doesn't stop the source of the crisis

To Sanitize the Master's Corpus" On the Heidegger Hoax by Richard Wolin (The Los Angeles Review of Books)

Putting together the complete works of a famous intellectual is a daunting task. There are not only the published works to organize and compile, there are the lectures, the notes, the marginalia, the student notes, the letters, the diaries, etc. It is even harder when you have to make interpretive guess, such as when a piece was written, what an abbreviation means, or deciphering untidy handwriting. On top of this, Wolin shows us, is that Martin Heidegger's complete works have been and continue to be sanitized. Heidegger lived long enough to write philosophy before, during, and after the Nazi regime which he was, at least for a time, an active participant. Most know that Heidegger was ambivalent or at worst unrepetant about his relation to Nazism, fascism, and anti-semitism. There is always the plausible deniability that we have not read all that is out there yet, or that what has been said orally may not be entirely accurate. Some may hold out hope in his personal writings or later writings he turned course or showed some regret. One, Wolin argues, there is enough published to definitively categorize Heidegger's views on these issues throughout his life. Two, the executors of his literary works who are his son and now grandson and those involved with the endeavor are actively sanitizing the Heideggerian corpus to present a more palatable figure, less "short old man near a hut" and more "raving anti-Semitic, Nazi til the end".

Doodling Along by Susan Lehman (Air Mail)

Bernedoodle's are a new status symbol. Costing around $25,000 for the "Epic Dog" training package, not to mention the tens of thousands it costs to purchase the dog. Innovations in dog breeding practices have made more efficient the overall process as well. How bizarre.

Hearing the 'Ramayana' Again by Wendy Doniger (The New York Review of Books)

With the completion of the Rama temple not long ago and the upcoming elections in India, this essay by Doniger is more relevant than ever. Doniger notes that the Ramayana is as central to India as the Bible is to the West. The comparison is apt given the rise of Christian nationalism in the West and Hindu Nationalism in India. The essay does not revolve around this, however. Doniger is reviewing the new one volume edition of the Goldman's Ramayana translation, condensed from their seven volume edition intended for scholars. Doniger has critiques of the editorial choices, such as the notes and index, and the translation itself. However, such a monumental text is impossible to get everything right, "the only solution is for everyone to learn Sanskrit."

Who Should Regulate Online Speech? by David Cole (The New York Review of Books)

David Cole shows us the complexities in regulating speech. I liked Cole's essay for the tour of legal cases concerning private corporations and the government's restriction of regulating speech. What it lacks, I think, is why we keep feeling the need to regulate social media as if it was not a continuation of the newspapers and other traditional forms of media. Strictly speaking, social media is private. It is private in the strict legal-philosophical meaning of the word. A person in their own home, a newspaper, or Twitter, are all private. Someone could say horrible things in the privacy of their own home with no one around or to 1,000 people in their backyard over a speaker. The speech would still be private. People confuse the "they" (thinking here of something like Heidegger's Das Man), the "masses", a large collection of people, as public in the legal sense. The law does not recognize some sort of third category, it is public or it is private.

Wham, Bam, Thank You Yam by James Wolcott (Air Mail)

I have only walked past The Village Voice, never read it. Wolcott used to work here, so the review, as he says, reads like insider's talking shop about the glory days.