Supreme Court and ‘Dark Money’ Opens the Door to a New Debate
As political scandals continue to dominate the media landscape and threaten the integrity of American democracy, another potential scandal has entered the equation: dark money.
Social Psychology & Interaction
Confronting Anti-Social Personality Disorder in Leadership
I am an historian. I know of many societies that have fallen, or began to decline, when they ended up being led by an insane person or persons. I define insanity as a state of being seriously mentally ill, often including delusional behavior and being out of touch with reality.
Bureaucracies: Why We Really Do Need Them
Modern societies operate through their formal institutions. These institutions are run by bureaucracies that carry out the tasks necessary for the functioning of that society. As with aging human bodies that increasingly fail to function, bureaucracies also go into decline. A sure indicator of a society’s impending demise is the breakdown of its bureaucracies.
Adapting to Madness?
As I’ve watched the January 6 investigation, I have been struck by the various testimonies from people reporting on their actions and responses to what was going on before, during and after the assault on the Capitol.
Allow Me to Intimidate You
Nearly all of us, regardless of age, have had schoolyard experiences with bullies. Sometimes bullying behavior is subtle and sometimes it’s severe. It can be found in all cultures, all ages, and in both sexes. It is always destructive.
A Lesson from Mt. St. Helens
May 18th, 2022 was 42 years since 1,300 feet of the top and side of Mt. St Helens was blown off and pulverized in an eruption 500 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, creating chaos and violence here in the Pacific Northwest. Each year, on the anniversary of that tumultuous day, I think about the profound nature of the experience and my adrenaline-charged involvement with it.
Owning the Libs
‘Owning the libs’ is the current mantra of the Republican Party and it resonates through much of conservative thought these days. It means that anything you can do or say to anger or rattle the liberals and Democrats is an acceptable way of grabbing power and attention. It’s essentially a verbal middle finger, and they are using it to express policies and beliefs that end up hurting others, the environment, and even themselves.
That Which Lies Beneath
Do you ever look out on the world scene and ask yourself why it is that humanity seems to always be at odds with itself? It may hearten you to know that our struggle to agree on how we should conduct and organize ourselves, indeed, how to even think about our place in the ‘order of things,’ is not a new story. Humankind has been sorting itself out since our early beginnings. Across cultures and over centuries, we have talked about the conundrum of being human in a variety of ways.
The Myths We Call Reality
Reality is a human construct created because the concept of infinity (time and space) is difficult for most of us to comprehend. So we create a finite view of time and space to deal with living in the world practically. That view then becomes our reality.