I’m a strange sort of American, one of a handful who has reached middle age without ever having read To Kill a Mockingbird or seen the movie based on it. Evidently Bill Kauffman also avoided the novel in high school, but has since read it repeatedly and “seen the movie 20 times.” He makes a fine case [...]
All posts tagged crackpot realism
The American Conservative, June 2010
Posted by acilius on April 29, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/04/29/the-american-conservative-june-2010/
Victoria Fontan
Victoria Fontan in Baghdad The 16-31 March issue of Counterpunch features an article by Victoria Fontan, a scholar in “Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies,” a growing subfield of Peace Studies. Fontan studies conditions under which people who have been humiliated are more likely than others to become terrorists. She has interviewed members of several violent groups in Lebanon and Iraq. In this article, [...]
Posted by acilius on April 16, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/04/16/victoria-fontan/
The Nation, 30 March 2009
A review of The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills mentions Mills’ concept of “crackpot realism,” introduced in his Causes of World War Three to explain how a group of highly intelligent people could come to believe that each step in a course of action certain to lead to their destruction was the safest, [...]
Posted by acilius on March 20, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/03/20/the-nation-30-march-2009/
The American Conservative, 15 December 2008
Several pieces this time despair of any prospect that traditionalist conservatism will reassert itself as a force to be reckoned with in American politics. What, then, do the writers for this traditionalist publication believe is to be done? At least two of them seem to think that the time may have come to give up on the [...]
Posted by acilius on December 17, 2008
http://losthunderlads.com/2008/12/17/the-american-conservative-15-december-2008/
The American Conservative, 22 Sept 2008
In this issue. John Laughland describes the Saakashvili regime in Georgia, quoting along the way gushing praise that various Western media outlets have lavished on that grubby little dictatorship. Faced with the contrast, Laughland provides an intriguing psychological theory to explain why media and policy elites in the USA and the states ranged with it [...]
Posted by acilius on September 27, 2008
http://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/27/the-american-conservative-22-sept-2008/
This June’s Issues of The Nation
It’s been a few months since any “Periodicals Notes” have gone up here about The Nation. In part that’s because it’s so topical that there aren’t many articles in each issue that I think I’ll want to have notes about, in part because I’ve been busy and have been slacking on “Periodicals Notes” generally, and [...]
Posted by acilius on September 22, 2008
http://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/22/this-junes-issues-of-the-nation/
Crackpot Realism
Via antiwar.com: In 1958, the New Left sociologist C. Wright Mills made a seminal contribution to political science in his book The Causes of World War Three by introducing the concept of “crackpot realism.” He applied the notion specifically to the intellectual outlook of top government officials, especially the ones known as the “serious people,” [...]
Posted by acilius on November 20, 2007
http://losthunderlads.com/2007/11/20/crackpot-realism/
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