You are hereBlogs / RobertJensen's blog
RobertJensen's blog
“Greatest nation” rhetoric roars back
by Robert Jensen
My greatness as a writer is simply a fact.
You don’t agree? Well, then obviously you are churlish or malevolent.
If I were serious about such a claim of superiority, now would be the time to stop reading -- on the reasonable assumption that I’m a dull-witted bore with no capacity for critical self-reflection. What applies to individual declarations is also true of nations, yet in the United States such statements about our greatness are common.
Political wish list: Honest talk about economics, empire, and energy
by Robert Jensen
There’s no shortage of political blather in this year’s mid-term election campaigns, but most of us yearn for substantive discussion of the serious problems we face. What should the politicians be discussing? The University of Texas at Austin asked faculty members who teach about politics “to analyze, examine and provide their perspectives” on key political issues for the university’s web site, with new essays posted each weekday throughout the campaign season. http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/10/04/mid_term_elections/
Below are my contributions, three short essays that raise critical questions about economics, empire, and energy that are routinely ignored by most politicians.
-----------------------
Economics: Doing business as if people mattered
by Robert Jensen
A world in collapse?
Robert Jensen interviewed by Alex Doherty, New Left Project
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_world_in...
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas. He is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity; The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege; and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity, among other works. He spoke to NLP’s Alex Doherty about the threat of environmental catastrophe.
Alex Doherty: You have written that: "To be fully alive today is to live with anguish, not for one’s own condition in the world but for the condition of the world, for a world that is in collapse." Even amongst environmentalists it is rare to describe our situation in such apocalyptic terms. Why do you think it is justified to describe the world as collapsing?
Glenn Beck’s redemption song
[A version of this essay appeared on the Texas Observer website at http://www.texasobserver.org/thewholestar/item/16898-glenn-becks-redemption-song.]
About halfway through Saturday’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the DC mall, I realized that I was starting to like Glenn Beck.
Before any friends of mine initiate involuntary commitment proceedings, let me explain. It’s not that I really liked Beck, but more that I experienced his likeability. Whether or not he’s sincere, I came to admire his ability to project sincerity and to create coherence out of his incoherent rambling about religion, race, and redemption.
As a result, I’m more afraid for our political future than ever.
There are no heroes in illegal and immoral wars
by Robert Jensen
When the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division rolled out of Iraq last week, the colonel commanding the brigade told a reporter that his soldiers were “leaving as heroes.”
While we can understand the pride of professional soldiers and the emotion behind that statement, it’s time for Americans -- military and civilian -- to face a difficult reality: In seven years of the deceptively named “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and nine years of “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, no member of the U.S. has been a hero.
