Tag Archives: Social Criticism

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: August 6, 2013

Humanist and environmental activist Jerry Mander is nearing 80-years-old, but you wouldn’t know it to hear him. In recent years he has spoken on the dangerous, unsustainable and “obsolete” system of global capitalism, but his earliest and probably most influential public work is his manifesto warning about the many dangers of television. Here in his […]

Posted in Reviews | Also tagged Literary Criticism, Media | 2 Responses

A Tale of Two Cities & Its Lessons (Novel, 1859)

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: April 29, 2013

I recently finished reading the Charles Dickens’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities, a story of sacrifice and revenge before and during revolutionary France. Dickens was partially inspired to write the novel to to develop some of the themes he had addressed in previous novels, namely poverty. He insisted that if things did not change, […]

Posted in Reviews | Also tagged Literary Criticism | 3 Responses

The Collapse of American Optimism and the Rise of Apocalyptica

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: April 19, 2013

Ask any American older than 30 what the country was like when they were growing up and with few exceptions, the answer will be uniformly positive, and certainly more positive than its perceived to be today. Indeed, even young adults in their 20s recognize that the tone of the nation has changed in recent years. […]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged Kunstler | Leave a comment

Five Months After Hurricane Sandy

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: April 9, 2013

It’s been almost 5 months since Hurricane Sandy devastated several towns and knocked out power to more than 8 million people across the east coast. The storm resulted in 72 deaths and thousands of destroyed homes and businesses. At $75 billion, it was the 2nd costliest hurricane in US history. The lives of those directly […]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged OWS, Preperation | Leave a comment

Rising Nationalism Pushes Nations to War

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: February 15, 2013

In early 1095 AD, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos sent a letter to Pope Urban II warning that the Turks were about to overrun Constantinople. Hoping to reunite the Church, which had been in schism for 50 years, the Pope gave an impassioned speech at the Council of Clermont decrying the atrocities being committed by the Turks in their westward […]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged War | Leave a comment

Superbowl Bullshit

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: February 5, 2013

It doesn’t take much to see the Superbowl as a parallel for our society. It is the ultimate display of consumerism, violence, nationalism and faux-Americana. Every year it gets a little worse. Equally unbearable are US families who decry the “edgy” advertisements as they try to “enjoy the game” with those spastic mental cases they […]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged Media | 1 Response

Hope Has Changed – It Died, By Monty Pelerin

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: January 28, 2013

This article is a reprint, posted here with permission and for posterity. It’s by an anonymous author using the name Monty Pelerin. It is originally available at EconomicNoise.com. Hope is dying in the US. The performance of financial markets affects everyone. For savers and investors, these markets represent the means to an improved life, at least […]

Posted in Reposts | Also tagged Justice System, Regulation | 1 Response

The Dependence on Food Stamps is a Ticking Time Bomb

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: January 3, 2013

Discussing the nation’s dependence on Food Stamps is likely to put many people into a defensive mode. Some feel resentful of those accepting government food subsidy. People on Food Stamps are sensitive to criticism in the media because often it comes with the implication that they are lazy or exploiting the system. Of course, fraud […]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged Food Stamps, Unemployment | Leave a comment

History Rhymes: An Analysis of Nazi Germany

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: November 16, 2012

Mark Twain said, “History never repeats, but it often rhymes.” Indeed, the similarities between collapsing societies can be quite stunning. Rome comes to mind. It eventually rotted away through gross mismanagement, but collapse took centuries, while our rise and fall is being made manifest over the course of a single lifetime. While the bread and […]

Posted in Opinion | Tagged Social Criticism | 2 Responses

The King of Ruffle Bar and the Insanity of Bureaucracy

By S.J. Kerrigan | Published: August 17, 2012

In anthropologist Edward Hall’s 1976 book Beyond Culture, he describes a story of a wild dog that lived on the small, otherwise uninhabited island of Ruffle Bar, which is just off the coast of Brooklyn and Long Island. The dog, nicknamed “The King of Ruffle Bar,” seemed to be in good health and had sustained […]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged Civil Liberties, Justice System, Law Enforcement | Leave a comment

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