Even if you see through the phony panic being spun up by Trumpists, some of what you hear from critical race theorists can sound extreme, especially if you don’t know much about the context. In this episode, host Spencer Critchley offers a guide for people who feel confused about Critical Race Theory but aren't sure why. Episode Transcript On the one hand, Trumpist … [Read more...] about A Guide for the Confused: What Is Critical Race Theory?
Politics
Susan Neiman: What America Can Learn From Germany About Facing Its Past
More than a century and a half after the Civil War, America still hasn’t faced the full truth of what caused that catastrophe or what came after it. Many Americans still believe in the myth of the Lost Cause, a rewritten history in which a noble, innocent South valiantly defended itself against invaders from the North. In this fiction, slaveholders became the victims. Racism — … [Read more...] about Susan Neiman: What America Can Learn From Germany About Facing Its Past
Vinz Koller: How to Repair Democracy
American democracy is more fragile than many of us ever imagined. But we’ve been neglecting and abusing it so much that maybe the bigger surprise is that it’s lasted as long as it has. A lot of that damage can still be fixed, though—as long as we don’t let the whole thing fall apart first. Spencer's guest Vinz Koller has great insights on what's gone wrong and how we can … [Read more...] about Vinz Koller: How to Repair Democracy
Living With Big Lies
Even with Trump out of office, the Republican Party's leaders and media enablers seem determined to live in a world of lies — a place where democracy can't live. As host Spencer Critchley says, it's like life under Soviet domination as described by writers such as Vaclav Havel and Czeslaw Milosz: "Everything is a lie, everyone knows it's a lie, and everyone goes along with the … [Read more...] about Living With Big Lies
Ask Anything: The State of Democracy
Spencer Critchley hosted a Zoom-based "Ask Anything" discussion covering the chaos in the Republican Party, how we can both believe in tolerance and make clear moral judgments about something like the Capitol riot, whether better education would be enough to save democracy, what we can learn from other countries that have had to deal with shameful periods in their histories, … [Read more...] about Ask Anything: The State of Democracy