Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Page 70 of 117

Trump Insurrection: Very Bad People on Both Sides

Any reader not living off the grid knows about the Trump insurrection on January 6 (and second impeachment). Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol. And they did so with a bit of help from some police officers and violent conflict with others. The Trump insurrection involved a conflict between QAnon conspiracy theorists, other Trumpists, and the police. Insofar as that’s true, I’m inclined to grab and modify Trump’s ‘very fine people on both sides’ remark.

In the Trump insurrection there were, indeed, very bad people on both sides, i.e., Trumpism and policing. We might say a great deal about how the left should respond. But I’m inclined to say the left shouldn’t directly involve itself in a fight between a Trump insurrection and police officers. Because that’s not really our fight.

Continue reading

Do Executives Work Or Talk About Work?

Senior executives claim they work a lot. How much? On average, they report working 62 hours per week. If we expand to studies including middle management, we come up with average work weeks up to a whopping 72 hours. Talk about work!

Well, yes. As we’ll see, that’s the idea. Are senior executives and other managers some new proletariat, as they want us to believe? Do they toil away at work all day like real life hero-leaders from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged? Would the world fall apart if they quit doing what they do – if the people working under them took over their roles?

Not exactly.

Continue reading

2020 Review

In one sense, it feels a bit quick to already write one of these end of year reviews (see also 2019 and 2018). They always creep up. And yet 2020 dragged on. I mean, it really dragged. While the end of summer moved pretty quickly, I think it took about 5 years to get through March.

How long did 2020 take? If you recall, back in January we were talking about the Bernie Sanders campaign. Now that seems like it was…what, 10 years ago?

Anyway, let’s take a look at 2020!

Continue reading

« Older posts Newer posts »