There is a ballot question in my state this November about whether gun regulations passed in 2024 should remain in place. There have been spirited interactions on the Nextdoor app, as you might imagine. Much of the disagreement is focused on the obvious dangers of guns (that the US has some of the highest gunContinue reading “Gun Rights and the Constitution”
Tag Archives: philosophy
Immigration and/in Democracy
We are living in a particularly anti-immigration moment in the US. The Trump administration and many right-wing Republicans depict immigrants as dangerous criminals who must be contained and deported from the country. As most of us are aware by now, neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security makes any distinction in practice between documentedContinue reading “Immigration and/in Democracy”
Arendt, Violence, Power, and ICE
Reports from observers on the ground and from news agencies have documented appalling violence committed by ICE in Minneapolis since agents arrived there in late December 2025, targeting both suspected undocumented immigrants and US citizens alike. What is going on here? I want to explore this moment through Hannah Arendt’s analysis of political violence asContinue reading “Arendt, Violence, Power, and ICE”
Trump, Harris, and Nietzschean Ressentiment
It’s easy to dismiss Donald Trump as unhinged after his recent performance in the presidential debate between him and Kamala Harris. Too easy, perhaps: immigrants are eating people’s pets? Babies are being executed by pro-abortionists. Jeez. I think, though, that there’s a method to Trump’s madness, and I think Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment canContinue reading “Trump, Harris, and Nietzschean Ressentiment”
On Love
Valentine’s Day is all about romantic love, which we tend to think of as having little if anything to do with politics—it’s about a relationship between 2 people, after all. We get a very different view, though, if we consider love through the lenses of Socrates in Plato’s Symposium and in Audre Lorde’s “The UsesContinue reading “On Love”
On Death and Loss
My dad died, and that has led me to the grand insights that death is weird, and losing a loved one is hard. I know: not exactly insightful. But I’ve been trying to think about why death is weird and loss is hard. I’ve been thinking about Martin Heidegger, whose Being and Time focuses inContinue reading “On Death and Loss”
