Candice Bernd returns to This Is Hell! to discuss her recent writing at The American Prospect, "The Crypto Racket." After the interview, we hear a classic "Moment of Truth" from Jeff Dorchen.
Listen live from 9AM - 10:15AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
Bradley wrote the brief U.S. Embassy Tracked Indonesia Mass Murder 1965 for the National Security Archive.
Max wrote the article Financialization, precarity and reactionary authoritarianism for ROAR Magazine.
Listen live from 9AM - 10AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
Ashley is author of Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change from Verso.
You might remember Marc from dropping the hottest video game of 2016, the rhythm violence nightmare THUMPER.
Jacob conducted the interviews for Charlie Hebdo's 4-part, English language series Feeling the Burn: The Left Under Trump.
Zoe is author of Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate from PublicAffairs. Zoe is on a book tour right now, she'll be at Chicago Ideas Week next Friday.
Julianne wrote the recent articles Zucktown, USA for The Baffler and How the "Fake News" Scare is Marginalizing the Left for In These Times.
Becquer wrote the articles Have Spain and Catalonia Reached a Point of No Return? and The Spanish Government Just Energized Catalonia’s Independence Movement for The Nation.
Dave reported back two weeks ago that he was fine, and screwed.
Listen live from 9AM - 10AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
Corey is author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservative from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump for Oxford University Press.
Listen live from 9AM - 10AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
Henry is the author of the new book The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism from Routledge.
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
Last week a friend of mine from El Salvador became a US citizen. Of course, to commemorate her joining the great red, white and blue horde, we celebrated with sushi. It's unprecedented that so many millions of people are now scrambling to get ahead of being deported in anticipation of a crazy President's actions. Traditionally the government comes and puts you and your family in concentration camps without much warning. Thank goodness Dump and the GOP Congress are so incompetent. It gives people time to worry and, if they're lucky, get themselves situated. Of course, even as a citizen, there's no guarantee Latins or any people of color won't suffer some kind of surprise new-fangled persecution under the nation's first white president.
My Salvadoran friend cleans houses and sells insurance. I remember how excited she was when she became certified to sell health insurance. Of course, I couldn't celebrate that. Back then she was taking not one, but two jobs from an American. Now that she is an American, those two jobs can now go to an American. As it should be.
One of the main perks of being a US citizen is that you can feel just about as entitled as a white person does. Not that you have the same racial privileges, but you can get as self- righteous as if you do. Just that simple designation, citizen, can give you an entirely new list of grievances. My friend got so outraged over immigrants coming up from Latin America, not learning the language, and stealing jobs from US citizens, she considered turning her mother over to ICE. But then she decided it would be too hard to find a new drug mule. And she couldn't in good conscience send her mother back to El Salvador, which the US prison system and deportation policies have turned into a gang-ruled land of violence of the type our white president likes to make out Chicago is.
As a citizen of a constitutional oligarchy like we have here in the States, my friend understands that she has certain responsibilities. It's not all just entitlements, free education, adequate housing, affordable health care, respectful, restrained police, no, it's none of those. Not even close. But even a government which has abrogated every social contract between itself and its citizens demands a duty from them. I forget what it is. It can't be the duty to be an informed voter. That doesn't help. It just... read more