Author: Citizen Truth

Capitalism is not, as its defenders like to claim, defined by “free” or “private” enterprises. Likewise, “free” or “unregulated” markets do not define capitalism. Politics and ideology drive its defenders to choose those definitions over clearly better, different definitions. The causes and consequences of conflicts over definition are part of today’s mounting battles over capitalism. The task of any definition is to separate its object from others, to expose its uniqueness so all can recognize it and distinguish it from other, similar objects. We define “dog” to differentiate it from other animals, “chair” from other furniture, and “Mary” from...

In late September a black pickup truck plowed into a large crowd of anti-racist demonstrators protesting the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Hollywood. Video of the incident shows the driver hit a young man, subsequently accelerating over his body to escape a crowd converging on him. In Seattle, a man in a black sedan car barreled into a large demonstration protesting the killing of George Floyd. After he stopped, he got out and shot a protestor at point blank range. The crowd scattered in terror. The man calmly left the area. Meanwhile, in Buffalo a woman screaming racial...

The fact that the president and his supporters want us to tolerate hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from the pandemic reveals their true nature. When President Donald Trump was challenged by Axios national political correspondent Jonathan Swan to respond to the fact that, “a thousand Americans are dying a day” due to COVID-19, the president responded as though the grim tally was perfectly acceptable, saying, “They are dying, that’s true. And it is what it is.” While observers were aghast at the callousness of his statement, it should not have surprised us. Trump had warned that the death...

The debate over whether Donald Trump is a fascist is no longer confined to a narrow segment of the far left. It is now out in the open. Even mainstream columnists like the Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times, Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post, and influential Democratic politicians, such as Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, have come to use the “F” word to describe our 45th commander in chief. Although it is an emotionally loaded and often misused term, fascism is as real today as a political and cultural force, a set of core beliefs and a mode...