Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • Political Earthquake: Honduras Elects Leftist Woman
    The original “banana republic,” Honduras is the second poorest country in the Caribbean region. A few wealthy and many poor. You know the story. It’s had a right wing government since a US supported coup in 2009, but on November 28th the LIBRE Party’s Xiomara Castro was overwhelmingly elected. As MesoAmerican expert Orlando Perez explains, her support comes from what we might call “flyover” regions; her candidacy brought out a great many new voters in a real victory for democracy. Biden now has an opportunity to reduce the migration from Honduras. Good news every now and then!
    1 hr
  • Why Privatization is the Wrong Tool for the Common Good
    In his new book, The Privatization of Everything, author Donald Cohen directly takes on the myths which have led to intense concentration of power a an wealth and offers ways to reassert what America’s founders had in mind. Despite the popular trend, fortified by Reagan and Bill Clinton, there is evidence that privatization is insufficient and that government, from muncipal to federal, often has a key role in protecting the common good. Even Republicans are figureing this out. Cohen reminds us that since we gave the private interests their power, we can take it back.
    1 hr
  • How TV, Movies, and Social Media Maintain Invisible Sexism
    Unless it’s a spectacle, we don’t see it on screens. But as our guest author Andrea Press spells out in her new co-authored book Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism, everyday sexism is just accepted. The Me Too movement originated in 2006 by Tarana Burke but it wasn’t until the spectacle of the big Hollywood producer story in 2017 that it really spread. Listen in and see how Desperate Housewives, Jersey Shore, Tinder, and even Wikipedia play roles in maintaining invisible sexism.
    1 hr
  • Simplistic Binary Genders is Cultural Fortification and Wrong
    “‘Opposite sex’ is a phantom concept—nobody lives it.” So says our guest author Kathryn Bond Stockton. Her new book Gender(s) argues that what seem like obvious genital distinctions are in reality incomplete. When children are born, it’s like parents “lower a cone over the baby,” imposing an identity without consent and even ignoring other actual layers of a newborn’s fetal biology. Men are dealt a bewildering “ideal of masculinity” which today’s far right is using at the vanguard of the culture war. There is much more depth than merely at the surface. Freedom from rigid constraints is challenging but worth it, Stockton argues.
    59 min
  • Violent Authoritarianism: How Did This Become the GOP?
    Pat Buchanan was ahead of his time. He used the KKK’s David Duke to breed a new nativist religious nationalism, based on fear of liberalization. On this show political science professor Joseph Lowndes sheds light on how the Republican Party got where it is. He says Rittenhouse is a perfect example: powerful antidemocratic masculinity, violently protecting the community. Trumpist populism has become Caeserism. It’s crucial that we learn how.
    1 hr
  • Why the Fear of Trans Troops in the Military?
    How can one have optimum performance at your job when you have to hide your identity? There was fear of disruption by having openly trans troops in our military.  But the truth is the only disruption was from people in irrational fear of The Other. On this show author lieutenant colonel Bree Fram talks about her new book With Honor and Integrity, Transgender Troops in the Own Words. Fram explains that Trump’s 2017 ban on trans people unintentionally served to help the cause of equal rights and a more united military. But the work is not yet complete.
    1 hr
  • Slice A Trillion From Defense: Bring Greater Security?
    It’s easy to be all for cutting “waste” in the Pentagon budget but that enables continuing plans to spend 7.5 trillion over ten years. And on what? Could shoveling money to the military make us less secure? On this show William Hartung,  director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy examines a new Congressional Budget Office plan to cut one trillion over ten years. Today every dollar spent by weapons lobbyists brings them nearly 2 thousand back. Hartung explains how making this moderate cut would actually create more jobs. You can help congress to see that.
    1 hr
  • Remembering the Dogs on Veterans Day
    They’ve save countless human lives in many wars. Military working dogs have a new monument at the Navy Memorial in Washington DC and it’s about time. Dogs are an essential asset deserving recognition. On this show first up is 20 year Marine veteran Chris Willingham president of the US  War Dog Association followed by Susan Bahary sculptor of the new monument. The roles dogs serve range from acting as sentries to sniffing out improvised explosive devices, to finding and boosting the spirits of wounded men and women, often saving their lives. Why should dogs be so honored? Give a listen. (pictured is WWI’s Sergeant Stubby)
    59 min
  • He Knows a Coup When He Sees One
    Claiming the election was stolen, “angry loyalists storming the building while overwhelmed security guards gave way. The slavishly loyal vice-president who would, the president hoped, restore him to power.” Sound familiar? This was 1986 in Manila. Author and history professor Alfred McCoy was there. On this show we learn why, on January 6th the Pentagon failed to protect the Capitol. And about the dire warning from all living former secretaries of state January 3rd which was ignored. He explains that supporters feel a crisis of masculinity in our loss of empire which leads to blind nationalism that remains a very real threat.
    1 hr
  • What Was the Obama Presidency Really?
    Everyone who supported him projected what they wanted to see on him in 2008. In his new book He Was Our Man In  Washington, A History of the Obama Years, author Owen Symes reveals such little known facts as Obama’s support for Illinois’ coal industry. And though many chose to believe he was liberal, he was a conservative Democrat who put many people who had caused economic problems into positions of power. His healthcare program was market driven, subsidizing the insurance industry. His was a familiarly muscular foreign policy, the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan occurring on his watch. And Obama’s fiscal policies, like so many others, redistributed wealth to the top. Despite all this, of course his racial identity alone led to Trumpism. And Symes argues Obama will be remembered for missed opportunities.
    1 hr

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