Books to read for the current world situation

[COVRTDESIGN]

I have started reading more, especially when it comes to trying to understand the mechanisms at which humans, specifically Americans, (Canadians as well) are programmed to believe what they believe.

I just finished, again:
Walter Lippmann Public Opinion. Written in 1923 and he was one of the most influential minds of that time frame.
Propaganda by Edward Bernays, (who multiple times talks about Walter Lippmann)
Jurgen Habermas A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics.

All HIGHLY recommended for what is going on right now and how to better understand the socioeconomic impacts and simply the people that you are around, that shape the narrative and though processes of politics.

I would love to get a "book club" for these political topics, so that we can all learn more and bounce ideas off of each other for the upcoming storm. Any recommending reading of any kind, is always welcome!

[thollandpe]

I was looking for Every Man by Jackson Katz, but found this instead.

The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Can Help (Frisco Book Review)

It really gobsmacks me how so many of our young men are drawn into a culture of misogyny, which is part and parcel to the shitstorm we’re in.

Also, I’m guessing that Katz’s days of consulting for the U.S. Military are over. Because a personified example of his teachings is at the helm. Fist emoji, flag emoji, flame emoji.

[Peter Polack]

Stolen Pride: Loss, shame, and the rise of the right-Arlie Russell Hoschschild

War- Bob Woodward

Lucky Loser- How Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success-Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig

Autocracy Inc.: The dictators who want to run the world-Anne Applebaum

Everyone who is gone is here: The United States, Central America, and the making of a crisis- Jonathan Blitzer

24/7 Politics:Cable television and the fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News- Katherine Cramer Brownell

The death of truth: Notes on falsehood in the age of Trump- Michiko Kakutani

Why we did it: A travelogue from the Republican road to hell-Tim Miller

Our own worst enemy: The assault from within on modern democracy-Tom Nichols

The cult of Trump-Steven Hassan

I'm not making any statement here-these are some of the books I've read in the past two years.

[ides1056]

James, by Percival Everett. Actually, everything he has written. Never underestimate the stupidity of a cracker.
The Premonition, by Michael Lewis. Get ready for the next one.
The Postcard, by Anne Berest. How genocide works.

[j44ke]

Autumn of the Patriarch - Gabriel Garcia Márquez

[hampco]

Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler

Washington Journal - Elizabeth Drew (Yes, it's Watergate, but the hubris, corruption, and illegality are mirrored today)

[suspectdevice]

V.I. Lenin - What is to Be Done

Hamid Dabashi- On Edward Said

Thomas Sankara- Thomas Sankara Speaks

Sharon Smith- Subterranean Fire

Howard Zinn- A people’s History of the United States

Murray Bookchin- Post Scarcity Anarchism

[COVRTDESIGN]

V.I. Lenin - What is to Be Done

Hamid Dabashi- On Edward Said

Thomas Sankara- Thomas Sankara Speaks

Sharon Smith- Subterranean Fire

Howard Zinn- A people’s History of the United States

Murray Bookchin- Post Scarcity Anarchism

Any ones in particular to read first?

[Scott G.]

For the JD Vance and the Cabinet,
Ismail Kadare's, 'The Successor'

If you read 'What is to be Done'
then read Victor Serge 'Midnight in the Century'

[suspectdevice]

Any ones in particular to read first?

Zinn’s a People’s History and Subterranean Fire give you great background on American History, from a worker and labor perspective. You can begin to recognize paterns of oppression. On Edward Said is an immensely readable book about the creation and formulation of a framework for post-colonial discourse. The Boomerang back from colonial oppression in Palestine here to the Imperial Core is very much at the middle of our current constitutional crisis in America..

Bookchin’s “Post Scarcity Anarchism “ is a refreshing 1971 vision of the world we could live in now, very much the antithesis to the Techno Feudalist future the current power brokers envision.
There are a couple other great essays that help to crack open some of the failures and contradictions of the liberatory movements of the 60’s.

What is To Be Done is a zesty Pamphlet that has done more than just about anything to prompt people to start revolutionary vanguard parties that aim to dramatically improve people’s material conditions.

The fascists claim that everyone that isn’t them is some marxist radical. Go read some Lenin. Decide for yourself just how radical the Bolsheviks really were.

[beeatnik]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324005777...=migrant%20che

“A chef’s gripping quest to reconcile his childhood experiences as a migrant farmworker with the rarefied world of fine dining.

Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Máximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes.

Mexico City–based journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalo’s story: from Máximo’s kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai’s first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalo’s hometown of San José de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalo’s struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a family’s border-eclipsing dreams, Mexico’s culinary heritage, and the making of a chef.”

[echappist]

The fascists claim that everyone that isn’t them is some marxist radical. Go read some Lenin. Decide for yourself just how radical the Bolsheviks really were.

How about, extraordinarily so and on the same level as fascists when it comes to trampling human rights? Bolshevism quite literally calls for the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

It matters not one iota how Lenin waxed poetics on some ideals, when in practice, Lenin and his cohorts instituted repeated terror programs. Red Terror, Dzerzhinsky, Cheka, NKVD, Great Famine, Gulag Archipelago. I can go on, but then again, too much evidence of grim inhumane acts is just a mere statistic, according to a foremost practitioner of totalitarian communism. Even the henchmen themselves keep on getting offed by their respective successors, with Yezhov offing Yagoda, only for the former to be offed by Beria.

The world is not bipolar. The fact that capitalism can be quite exploitive does not directly mean that the its opposite (as in state totalitarian command economy) would be a better alternative.

Even more damning, the practices of the Russian Bolsheviks got wholesale copied elsewhere. See PR China, Cambodia, and North Korea. The one commonality linking the Bolsheviks with the Fascits is totalitarian state control, which inevitably leads to the complete and utter disregard for human dignity.

Marx is correct only in his indictment of the ills of unfettered capitalism. When it comes to offering of a solution, I'm afraid that history of the last 125 years has definitively shown it (and particular the totalitarian version practiced by Bolsheviks and their disciples) to be a scourge on mankind.

And just to be clear, I do not equate democratic socialism with communism, although such a cynical conflation is often employed by those critiquing democratic socialism. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks themselves hated the democratic socialists, seeing the latter as not revolutionary enough. See the history of the KPD and SPD in Germany.

The view shared in the quoted post is effectively the flip side of the coin of the ideas propounded in "Road to Serfdom" by Hayek, as the latter essentially views unfettered capitalism as the solution for ensuring personal freedom. Both views are dichotomic and leads to much misery, although it has to be said that even an ultra-libertarian state not commanded by fascists is still better than a totalitarian state (communist or otherwise).