Reimagining Politics Blog

Our dear friends at the International Monetary Fund recently published a blog post about the need to “uproot finance as we know it” in the name of (drumroll please) “financial inclusion.” They tell us with alarm that over one billion people on the planet remain “unbanked.” God forbid these poor wretches don’t have a bank account or a Visa card at 30% interest, let alone a lengthy credit history! Something must be done to get them

The consent of the governed has been withdrawn It you have not visited Reimagining Politics Magazine at Substack recently, or are not a subscriber, be sure to follow the links below to subscribe, read, comment and donate. The Magazine is neither written nor published on a deadline because we take the time to research and think about the issues of the day. It is the antithesis of social media. If

A tribute to Lourdes Grobet, an extraordinary artist, friend and imaginative beacon to dreamers everywhere My latest article about my friend of many years, iconic Mexican artist Lourdes Grobet, published this week in both English and Spanish at Substack and was republished by Resiliente Magazine in Mexico City. Links follow to all three versions of the article. RESILIENTE MAGAZINE (español) SUBSTACK (inglés y español)

Geopolitical life lessons from a beautiful woman named Frances Many years ago, while attending a free concert on the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, CA, I had a moving encounter with a homeless woman who I arbitrarily named Frances. My account of the experience was published by the Santa Monica Mirror. With profound thanks to the Mirror, a very lightly annotated update of the article is published below. Although the issues du

The fragile beauty of citizens’ democracy in a world blighted by absolutism and manufactured crisis “Each American knows when to sacrifice some of his private interests to save the rest; we [Europeans] want to save everything, and often we lose it all.”  Alexis de Tocqueville on enlightened self interest in America Friends, as subscribers to Reimagining Politics Magazine at Substack, you know that I believe we are engaged in a historic

TWIN TALES OF TRADITION AND MODERNITY My latest articles on Substack are “Warm beer and bathos” and “Barbie and Ken – Infantilization for the Masses.” Ironically, they are both about the same thing – the quest to find some kind of “uniquely American common ground.” This challenge has never been more urgent, nor more difficult. I hope you will take a look. In the Bathos article, a casual rumination on

French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, author of works such as The Poetics of Space, is remembered for his articulation of the idea that “scientific investigation is polemical.” Bachelard cautioned that science must stay vigilant not to impede “scientific imagination” by succumbing to “the seduction of the empirical.” In L’engagement rationaliste, Bachelard went so far as to declare that the goal of an epistemology of science was to “give back to human reason its function

The Reimagining Politics Magazine at Substack is now two years old. The magazine is not written on a deadline. Its long form mix of philosophy, storytelling, history & politics is an open invitation to take the time you need to think & feel deeply about the issues of the day. There are articles and essays on everything from “Covidnomics” (A six part series published in 2020), to philosophic explorations of

I’ve been writing about the sweeping social, political and economic reconfiguration taking place under the new Covid-19 public health regime since the pandemic started in March 2020. I knew immediately that the public health crisis around Covid was also very much about money and power (easily $40-$50 trillion or more in stimulus and counting), and was coming at a time when post-war neoliberalism was on the verge of political and economic collapse

A day in the life of a fun loving Google algorithm The day in question is December 2, 2021, and the ranking of search results for trending topics that day is as follows: Porn = 4.16 billion Covid-19 = 3.75 billion Taylor Swift = 738 million Donald Trump = 700 million Jesus Christ = 556 million Joe Biden = 363 million Mohammed = 361 billion Kim Kardashian = 238 million

My latest article at Substack is about the artistic voice in times of foreboding. Part personal reflection, part philosophical meditation, it takes a closer look at three artists whose poetry and social commentary pierced the veil of fear and propaganda that held sway in the United States in the decade before the nation’s entry into WW II. The artists that I take a closer look at from the vantage point

By Michael Polling by Pew Research and Nature indicates that rather than bringing people together against a common threat, the Covid pandemic has deepened and exacerbated division worldwide over the past 14 months. Whether the subject is masks, distancing, pandemic data or vaccine trust, the divisions are obvious in everyday life. A sense of community (communitas) is difficult to discern during a headlong global rush to achieve its philosophical opposite