“What good is international law when countries do whatever they want?” I aggressively asked my international law professor years ago. “Well,” he replied with a certain pride, “the United States president usually confers with the State Department legal adviser before he sends troops somewhere.” “But does that change anything?” I insisted. “No,” he replied, “but at least he asks.”
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Deniers, Narratives and Quantum Politics
The insurrectionists of June 6 and the vaccine deniers are all part of a larger struggle about how we know and what we know. In different ways, we all search for knowledge, we all search for truth. “Great is the truth and it prevails” is the motto of my high school. Really? The world now seems in conflict between fact and fiction. The search for knowledge and truth has become fractured. “We create our own reality,” is a famous quote attributed to a senior adviser to President George W. Bush. Or, in senior adviser to President Trump Kellyanne Conway’s infamous phrase, there is an alternative reality.
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A Reminder: Black Lives Matter and Woodrow Wilson in Geneva
The recent insurrection in Washington is a reminder, if one is needed, that not speaking up against injustice has dire consequences. The invasion of the Capitol was the physical culmination of at least four years of collective amnesia/appeasement. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is an ongoing manifestation against hundreds of years of amnesia/appeasement. While reactions against the insurrection have been swift and powerful, the BLM movement needs continuing vigilance and updating.
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1968 – A Dress Rehearsal for 2020
Around this time of year, there will be speculation about how 2020 was a special year. People will point to the pandemic as a unique experience, not lived through since the pandemic of 1918. Comparisons will be made with World War II. And what about the Great Depression of 1929 or World War I?
