democracy in america

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Having outgrown the 2004 election, a general picture emerges.

It all derives from the public ambivalence between monarchy (top-down governance) and parliament (bottom-up)—in the U.S. a matter of Executive telos vs. Legislative telos.

The majority of the U.S. public has voted for monarchy, though the Executive reign (the Republicans) would prefer to dissolve itself through decreased federalism, causing increased confederacy among states (which is also the net result of federal tax cuts: shifting burdens of public welfare to the states)—which, by the way, is fostered by increasing the national debt.

“democratic transhumanism”

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James Hughes, who teaches health policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, has just published a fascinating, realistic, and progressive book on a politics for burgeoning enhancement culture: Citizen Cyborg (Westview Press, 2004), which seems to be the proper answer to Habermas' concerns in The Future of Human Nature (ch. 2 on liberal eugenics).

how to outgrow the 2004 U.S. election

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The obituary of the Democratic Party in 2004 is written—it’s been a long week—but already filed away. Lots of commentary on what progressives need to do has already happened, and this will grow.

Democrat in a place on Earth

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The Earth is becoming a lattice of metropolia with often more in common with other metropoles than with the general region of towns (let alone rurality) “nearby” the metropole.

This condition is largely one of large regions being centrally oriented by the metropole, as the Earth “reverts” progressively to global city-states: state of London, Parisia, Berlinstaat, Tokyowhatever, Beijing, etc. Cosmopoly, such as it may be, belongs to the lattice of city states.

Metropoles in America now face a big problem of understanding what just happened to them, and there’s no shortage of commentary on it. If you’re outside America, you might wonder: What’s really going on? Though there’s no singular answer, Thomas Frank has as good a short explanation as you’re likely to find. He has the “real” explanation.