David Masciotra

1 week ago | washingtonmonthly.com | David Masciotra

Donald Trump’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions; doctors who offer reproductive health services to women could go to prison; Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters; rogue police could break down citizens’ doors and bust into college dormitories in midnight raids; schoolchildren could not be taught evolution, Black history, or gay rights; writers, artists, and journalists would be censored at the whim of government; and the doors of the federal...

1 week ago | counterpunch.org | David Masciotra

One of the late Jacques Derrida’s most useful exercises in linguistic play was to hyphenate “represent.” The word that appears after the alteration, “re-present,” offers transformed definition and application. To re-present something, especially a memory, is to present it anew, but also to mark, mangle, and manufacture a different present.

1 month ago | unherd.com | David Masciotra

ExtremismLiberalismPoliticsTrumpUS Donald Trump is a great uniter, bringing together the most delusional elements of American life. Attacks on his administration’s reactionary turn are, of course, accurate. But it is far wiser to see his cabinet as a crackpot coalition. Served by representatives from the extremist Left and Right, the President appears to reward any idea, no matter its absurdity or origin, as long as it breaks with the exhausted liberal consensus.

1 month ago | salon.com | David Masciotra

Most Democratic elected officials are behaving with stunning timidity, at the exact moment that the crisis facing American democracy demands strength and aggression. Combining the neuroses of insecure teenagers and the poll-monitoring reticence of politicians fit for parody, they appear both weak and bashful. They are acting like losers, but their constituents will suffer the gravest losses. Chief among those endangered constituents are transgender and nonbinary people.

2 months ago | washingtonmonthly.com | David Masciotra

Jay Farrar, one of the best American songwriters, describes the exurban life in his rock band, Son Volt’s aptly named song, “Exurbia”: Exurbia, someone’s nightmare dream… No people walking  No people conversing  Just work, car, interstate then house. The nightmare dream has invaded national politics, transforming conventional notions of the American dream—not to mention Martin Luther King’s egalitarian dream—into a cruel taunt.