Verticals

I wonder if “conversion disorder” — a classical psychiatric term for the conversion of psyche into soma in the form of psychosomatic issues — could be one way of thinking about the present. Especially with so many patients complaining of bodily symptoms, armed at times with cadres of healers; with so many seeking recourse to pharmacological treatments or bodily modification of various sorts, plastic and otherwise; with young men and women seemingly willing to direct violence at any-body, including themselves, in the name of powerful religious ideals.  Something increasingly insists on the level of the …

Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2016 US presidential election presents the left in the United States with some hard questions. Is this the revolution we’ve been hoping for? Or is it just more of the same, another effort to generate and mobilize enthusiasm that is destined to break our hearts?

Those convinced that the electoral process is a vehicle through which the capitalist class enlists the rest of us in consenting to our own subjection doubt that there is anything different about the Sanders’ campaign. …

The Bernie Sanders campaign for President is one of the most exciting and hopeful developments in US politics in decades. Sanders is, and long has been, a man of principle — democratic socialist principle. He articulates a clear message — that a more genuine democratic politics in the United States needs to mobilize millions of people on behalf of an egalitarian political economic agenda — and he does so in a way that is both consistent and intelligent. He is always “on message,” because he has expressed this message for decades and he knows and believes in it, not because he is properly “handled.” His campaign has thus far succeeded beyond …

Earlier this week the United States Center for Disease Control (the CDC) released yet more guidelines for women of “reproductive age”. These guidelines take what could be seen as a draconian, or perhaps more bluntly, a misogynous stance of recommending that all women of reproductive age who do not use contraception avoid alcohol altogether. For women, drinking alcohol, as the CDC materials detail, results  in “unintended pregnancy, fertility issues, sexually transmitted diseases, …