There is, I think, a prevailing mistake in the way that many are looking at the downfall of Thomas Mulcair. People see him as a failed candidate, a guy who lost an election that was his to win, a man whose political style didn’t fit the NDP values th…
Continue readingAuthor: Kirby Evans
kirbycairo: Look At Me, I Disagree with the Establishment, I must be Hysterical. . .
Below you will find the quote from Mound of Sound on Marie Snyder’s Blog A Puff of Absurdity attacking her and myself. Another typical attack that lacks any actual argument or logic. Typical of Mound, he insists that anyone who disagrees with him is “s…
Continue readingkirbycairo: Look At Me, I Disagree with the Establishment, I must be Hysterical. . .
Below you will find the quote from Mound of Sound on Marie Snyder’s Blog A Puff of Absurdity attacking her and myself. Another typical attack that lacks any actual argument or logic. Typical of Mound, he insists that anyone who disagrees with him is “s…
Continue readingkirbycairo: My Last Kick at the Ghomeshi Can. . . .
I find it interesting the degree to which people think that simply by bullying and name-calling, they have made an argument and that their opponents will go running for the hills. In my last blogpost, I offered real arguments about how one could adjust…
Continue readingkirbycairo: My Last Kick at the Ghomeshi Can. . . .
kirbycairo: Legal Problems, Curmudgeons, and Sexual Assault. . .
kirbycairo: Legal Problems, Curmudgeons, and Sexual Assault. . .
I really wasn’t going to reply to Mound’s irate diatribes concerning the Ghomeshi trial. At the moment I have very little stomach for anyone who seems eager to blame potential victims or has too much faith in the criminal justice system, particular…
Continue readingkirbycairo: Empiricism, Rationalism, Ghomeshi, and our Worldview. . .
Post Script – For those of you with a particularly philosophical turn of mind, what I am really point toward when I talk of rationalism this way is ‘critical theory’ in the continental sense of that concept. But for clarity and simplicity I think it is better in the limited context of a blogpost to pare down to more basic concepts.
kirbycairo: Empiricism, Rationalism, Ghomeshi, and our Worldview. . .
Many political scientists insist that we live in a democracy. After all, there are multiple parties, we all have a right to vote how we choose, and no one holds a gun to our head in the voting booth. Furthermore, we have significant regulations about h…
Continue readingkirbycairo: Rob Ford is Gone but the Violence and Bullying go Merrily on. . .
The death of Rob Ford (and the upcoming verdict in the Gomeshi trial) has gotten me thinking about violence in our society. First of all, let’s be clear, I think Rob Ford was a really bad guy at both the personal and ideological level. In public he con…
Continue readingkirbycairo: Rob Ford is Gone but the Violence and Bullying go Merrily on. . .
The death of Rob Ford (and the upcoming verdict in the Gomeshi trial) has gotten me thinking about violence in our society. First of all, let’s be clear, I think Rob Ford was a really bad guy at both the personal and ideological level. In public he con…
Continue readingkirbycairo: When is Evil Banal?
It was, if memory serves, in relation to Eichmann that Hannah Arendt coined the now famous phrase “the banality of evil.” Most of have seen more than one example of this idea in politics and everyday life. I always thought that it was a phrase that fit…
Continue readingkirbycairo: When if Evil Banal?
It was, if memory serves, in relation to Eichmann that Hannah Arendt coined the now famous phrase “the banality of evil.” Most of have seen more than one example of this idea in politics and everyday life. I always thought that it was a phrase that fit…
Continue readingkirbycairo: The "Melting-Pot" is Boiling Over. . . .
There has, understandably, been much talk recently about the potential decline of the US into genuine fascism. Strict discourse on such matters depends, of course, on how one defines the political ideology of fascism. Dr. Lawrence Britt, offers us a fa…
Continue readingkirbycairo: The "Melting-Pot" is Boiling Over. . . .
There has, understandably, been much talk recently about the potential decline of the US into genuine fascism. Strict discourse on such matters depends, of course, on how one defines the political ideology of fascism. Dr. Lawrence Britt, offers us a fa…
Continue readingkirbycairo: The sad state of the NDP. . . .
Today on the CBC Morning radio program in Ottawa Robin Bresnahan interviewed Robin Maclachlan, former NDP staffer and spin doctor, about the coming NDP convention, the confidence vote that will take place there, and the general question of ‘renewal’ in…
Continue readingkirbycairo: Trump’s Racism and Violence Run deep in the Blood of America. . .
As we watch the Trump phenomenon unfold, a number of interesting aspects are beginning to coalesce around the entire circus. Among these are questions about the ‘real’ heart of the Republican Party; is Trump’s racism just a more blatant form of what is…
Continue readingkirbycairo: The Divisive Crack in US Society. . .
I grew up in the US in the midst of the Vietnam War. It was undoubtably a turbulent time. As I got a bit older and the US started to go significantly downhill during he 1980s, loosing it economic edge and gradually rejuvenating its neo-colonial militar…
Continue readingkirbycairo: Racism and Knownothinism as Capitalist Weapons. . .
One of Karl Marx’s most famous dictums was that socioeconomic systems create the conditions of their own demise. This process could be said to happen in two ways. On the one hand, a system of production creates the conditions for a ‘better’ and ‘more a…
Continue readingkirbycairo: What Rules do Harper and Trump follow??
Watching the gradual deterioration of rightwing politics into racism, extremism, and economic and environmental disaster, it is surely shocking how easily, here in the 21st century, the bugs crawl out from their hiding places. As cynical as I am it eve…
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