We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, January 22, 2011

America’s ‘culture of cruelty’

by Henry A. Giroux from The Spec. 

This perceptive educator sees the recent Arizona tragedy within a culture of cruelty that is driven by political forces:
...culture of cruelty is important for thinking through how entertainment and politics now converge in ways that fundamentally transform how we understand and imagine politics in the current historical moment....
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...a powerful set of political, economic and educational forces at work in miseducating the American public while at the same time extending the culture of cruelty.
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