In 1976 I spent a year in France when my father was on sabbatical. The first paper I had to write in my Lycée French class was on "La Littérature Engagée". I argued at the time (I recall) for the primacy of pure art over any mandate for political engagement; I would take a somewhat more nuanced view now, beginning with the recognition (which makes ( Read more... )

I have seen at least three fundamentally different analyses of what "happened" with Trump's win on Tuesday night. Each of them has some element of truth to it, but they give rise to very different models for response.

1) The first is well-represented by this Crooked Timber discussion around Ta-Nehisi-Coates argument that American democracy is ( Read more... )

Trump's latest speech seems to me to read as though it were lifted from Senator Morgan's speeches in the campaign in First Lensman.

I keep hearing the statement that Hillary Clinton is "the most qualified presidential nominee ever ( Read more... )

Glenn Beck has effectively endorsed Clinton.

The record of the CPC over the past several years frequently had me scratching my head in puzzlement: so much of what they did seemed ham-fisted, guaranteed to alienate the voters in the middle whom they would need for re-election; and so it proved in the end, with an election showing the clearest marks of strategic voting I have ever seen ( Read more... )

If the CPC had won Monday's election, it would have allowed a graceful bowing out of Harper with a somewhat managed transition to a new leader sometime in the next four years. As it is, however ( Read more... )

I have avoided posting about the current federal election because it is very hard to be analytical and clear-thinking when one is tightly bound up in the success or failure of one of the parties - and, like many other people I know, I have a deep dislike for the current incarnation of the federal Conservatives. Between their dogwhistle racism in ( Read more... )

Last week saw three quite different and in their various ways unexpected results in the political world: and NDP government in Alberta; a Conservative majority in the UK; and the selection of Patrick Brown as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives ( Read more... )

I was at a Homeless Memorial Service on Tuesday where one speaker characterised the relative lack of expenditure on homelessness as (basically) a result of "tax cuts for the rich hurting the poor ( Read more... )