Culture has become a pivotal educational machine, often commercializing, brutalizing, and infantilizing what it touches. We need a formative culture unfettered by the forces of consumerism and violence. The cultural politics of casino capitalism has numbed our sense of social and moral responsibility. Against this moral coma, with its theater of cruelty and legalized irresponsibility, we need to recast the language of politics. We must create public spheres and pedagogical practices that celebrate the public good, civic courage, compassion, and meaningful spirituality. Both pedagogy and the educational force of the cultural apparatus are crucial to any viable language of democratic politics.
If it is true that a new form of authoritarianism is developing in the United States, undercutting any vestige of a democratic society, then it is equally true that there is nothing inevitable about this growing threat. The long and tightening grip of authoritarianism in American political culture...
