There are two models of the acquisition of political power discussed here:

1. the Republican model, in which an "aestheticized" politics is promoted (in this case, it's the "aesthetics" of the War on Terror and of insecurity in general) in order to capture power for an elite (the Bush administration and its neoconservative cronies, and its financial backers in the oil and defense industries)

2. the model proposed by the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in which a coalition comes to power in order to support the claims of working people.

Here I will try to suggest that the former is "bad pragmatism" and the latter is real pragmatism, and suggest that the Democratic Party stop imitating 1) and find a way to subscribe wholeheartedly to 2).

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a book review of Kate Menken's English Learners Left Behind, which details the difficulties faced by "English language learners" under the testing regime faced by NCLB, with special emphasis upon problems the author observed and researched in New York State.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

I know your attention is probably better devoted to some good, popular diaries which have made the rec list today: One Pissed Off Liberal's jeremiad against the crooks, for instance, or Nightprowlkitty's harrowing story of detention.  This is simply a short reflection upon the recent history of bad pragmatism, the political trend which decks itself out in colors of "realism" and "pragmatism" (while attempting to present a moral face to the world) but is in fact just plain wrong.

This diary will only confront three rhetorical principles of bad pragmatism: "bipartisanship," "teacher accountability/ test them every year" and "fiscal prudence."  More will be forthcoming.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

Book Review: Ginsberg, Benjamin.  The American Lie: Government by the People and Other Political Fables.  Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

This, part two in a series, will analyze Benjamin Ginsberg's book The American Lie as a "cynical realist" take on the American political process, suggesting that even though it's marginally useful to be "cynical," we still must be against "bad pragmatism" and in favor of politics for the greater good even when confronted with the corrupt system we have today.

Next: either a history of bad pragmatism, or a diary on the latest bad pragmatist outrage.  There WILL be a Bad Pragmatism pt. 3.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This diary was prompted by the debate that circulated here around Senator Obama's vote on telecomm immunity in the FISA bill, especially in Keith Olbermann's diary of 6/26, and thereafter.  Olbermann's rationalization was that Obama's vote was a pragmatic move to attain power for the greater good.  The debate about Obama's vote culminated in a defense of "purity trolls" (as such) in a diary listed here: "I'm calling out purity trolls by name," incl. the Founding Fathers.  Since this "pragmatic" justification is endemic in politics today, I think it behooves us to examine it, and to specify and explain a "bad pragmatism" that comes of the uncritical acceptance of social "reality".  I will also specify an antidote to "bad pragmatism," in the concept of utopian dreaming.

(crossposted from Docudharma)

This is a short review of David Hursh's High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning.  Hursh's book is important because it achieves three important aims: 1) to detail how the personal and the political intertwine at the level of schools and schooling, 2) to show how standards-based reform is based on an economic agenda, namely neoliberalism, and 3) to show that alternatives to neoliberal schooling are possible in all respects and that such alternatives can be created by politically-organized parents and teachers.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a review of two books suggesting a constructivist critique of the public school system as it stands: Kaia Tollefson's Volatile Knowing, a constructivist critique of NCLB, and Tollefson and Osborn's Cultivating the Learner-Centered Classroom, a practical guide to constructivist teaching.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a book review of Benson, Harkavy, and Puckett's book of last year,
Dewey's Dream (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2007), which picks out a moment in John Dewey's opus in which he is recommending a rather activist model of schooling.  The authors of Dewey's Dream then criticize Dewey for deserting this vision, largely to be found in Dewey's (1899) text The School and Society, and suggest that Dewey's leaving Chicago (and his experimental school) was a disaster.  I agree, and further suggest that there are insights to be found in Dewey that go beyond those to be found in Dewey's Dream.

Since almost all of you forgot to read my diary of last February about Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen's The Politics of Money, I'm going to try to encapsulate the wisdom contained therein in a series of bullet points, with links added.  Maybe I was too long-winded back then.

(Crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a new review of Bill McKibben's book of last year, Deep Economy, from a critical-theory perspective; it's informed by a fair reading of McKibben's opus, observance of a recent speaking appearance by the author, and a reading of his DKos diaries.

There are a lot of citations of Bill McKibben on DKos; kudos to hof1991 for an oh-so-brief review, and to Gmoke for his 350 ppm or bust diary.  And of course to Bill McKibben himself.

posted on Flickr by lollyknit

Since politicians regularly visit DailyKos.com, I decided today to write a letter to them, expressing just how bizarre the current political situation is.  For the most part, this diary is a link-fest: don't just read the diary itself, check out the links.

This is a politicized summary of a project I've been doing at the Pomona College Natural Farm, an urban one-acre farm in southern California and the subject of a previous essay on Docudharma.  The focus of this essay will be mustard, and mustard-growing.  There will be more such essays.

(reposted from Docudharma)

This diary was suggested by two recent pieces on abrupt climate change: Joseph Romm's piece on Salon.com (The cold truth about climate change), and a paper in the journal Risk Analysis which was seized upon by columnist John Tierney in a column for the New York Times: "Global Warming Paradox"?  I discuss these articles in order to suggest that there is a general state of denial as regards the social and economic causes of abrupt climate change, thus to suggest that therein lies the discovery of social and economic solutions.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a review of Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen's The Politics of Money, a critique of the money system that contains lots of good material, especially insofar as the authors' discussion of the money system can be used to debunk the Republican dross about the sacredness of capitalism, but also insofar as the authors suggest a number of alternatives to the money system we currently have.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is my take on Duncan Earle and Jeanne Simonelli's (2005) book Uprising of Hope, an ethnography of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico.  I conclude by suggesting that there are political lessons to be learned from Zapatistas, especially insofar as they go about their everyday lives.

(original photo taken by "Alma_Roma", San Cristobal de las Casas, August 12, 2006.)

Zapatistas -- Wikimedia public domain

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a book review of Joan Martinez-Alier's 2002 classic "The Environmentalism of the Poor."  This is a book about the history of environmentalism that tries to fit the struggles of native peoples into that history.  

My last review was of a recently-published biography of Sup Marcos, the EZLN (Zapatista) figure; my next review will to a certain extent integrate the insights of Zapatismo into Martinez-Alier's framework.  This, to a certain, extent, forms the knowledge background for my interest in people's movements (centered on, but not exclusive to, peasant movements) as a counterweight to the environmental predations of the mainstream of capitalist industry.

(Crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a review of Nick Henck's book on Sup Marcos, the military leader of the EZLN, the subversive movement in Mexico.

(Photo from the account of Whodisan215)

(Crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a short review of two biographies of Hugo Chávez, current President of Venezuela.

(from Idealterna on Flickr)

Mostly I am interested in comparing and contrasting the two biographical styles.  Marcano and Tyszka are much like journalists, whereas Jones has a somewhat pro-Chávez axe to grind.  In the end I find Jones more straightforward.  I am also interested in depicting Chávez against the background of Venezuelan political economy, in which a rich few garner all of the profits from Venezuela's enormous oil reserves while the poor majority have in the past found themselves shut out of the benefits in times when the price of crude oil has been high.

(crossposted at Docudharma)