Subterms
The term soft power was coined by Joseph Nye in the late 1980s as a country’s ability to influence others without the use of force. Soft power is established in culture and grounded in history, unlike hard power, which is based on coercion and the use of military and economic means. Soft power and hard […] More
Immunologist Dr. Rick Bright has the job title of the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). He is the author of the phrase “the darkest winter in modern history,” which may one day become the title of a Hollywood movie that recounts the invasion in 2020 of the serial murderer bearing […] More
Fear, in the globalized sense of the word, had largely dissipated ever since the height of the Cold War, when the world stood by as the two superpowers stared each other down with nuclear weapons. Largely absent since the days of brinkmanship seen during the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world has […] More
Some people in the US seem surprised that a form of cultural chaos is spreading far more rapidly than the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. It’s the predictable consequence of three convergent phenomena: American individualism, the confrontational forms of expression it takes through social media, and the belief that the freedoms listed in the Bill […] More
In more halcyon days, back in 1964, at a time when most popular music in America was still about idealized romantic love, radio stations across the US broadcast the sonorous voice of Dean Martin intoning the lyrics of a song composed 20 years earlier: “You’re nobody till somebody loves you, So find yourself somebody to […] More
The revolt against the coronavirus lockdown is brewing in the United States. At the heart of US culture is the notion that everyone knows what’s best for themselves and they don’t need a government or even their neighbors to tell them what to do. Chris Cuomo demonstrated that principle on Easter Sunday. The CNN host […] More
The far right thrives on fear. It’s no surprise, then, that it would use the latest pandemic, which has generated widespread panic, to bolster its own agenda. All of the hallmarks of the far right are in play during the coronavirus crisis. It has pushed to close borders. It has demonized foreigners and particularly border-crossers. […] More
US President Donald Trump will go down in history as the ultimate master of hyperreal politics. No matter how far he deviates from reality, the American public consistently expresses its approval. The further he wanders from rationality, even when the consequences are measurable in the number of deaths, the more he is rewarded. In the […] More
