Justin C. Mueller

Author: Justin C. Mueller

  • Lies and the ecology of political truth

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    It is hardly news to point out the profound disconnect between the world as imagined by a substantial portion of the U.S. population and the world as it actually is. This disconnect has been especially prevalent among the more reactionary segments of the populace thus far this election season, though they certainly don’t hold a monopoly. When faced with the egregious falsehoods repeatedly espoused by Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and the rest of the gang, many people are baffled. Why are these liars getting airtime? Why do they keep repeating lies, even after being corrected? Why do people keep believing and supporting them? Don’t any of them have any shame?

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  • In memoriam: Michael A. Weinstein

    My mentor, close friend, and former PhD and dissertation advisor, Michael A. Weinstein, passed away yesterday. I know that myself and the many other people whose lives he changed will be tottering somewhere between a numb shock and open grief. How could he die? He was one of the most alive people I’ve ever met, exuding enthusiasm for everything and devouring what the world had to offer, even if that world was both “a pleasure palace and a torture chamber”. He was a powerful teacher, prolific scholar, photography critic, and frontman for a punk band into his 60s. He overflowed with compassion and love for his students and friends. He possessed an intellectual nimbleness, acuity, and profoundly deep storehouse of both knowledge and wisdom (his “underground workshop”) that I sincerely doubt I will ever see again. Accompanying these virtues, he possessed a magnetism and pedagogical skill in the classroom that could draw students in, undo their worlds, and then give them another that was clearly alien, and yet somehow familiar and truer. While death was always near to the surface of his philosophical projects, it never really seemed like it could touch him.

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  • Trumph of the Will – Taking Trump’s Fascism Seriously

    The GOP presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has been seen by many as a hilarious farce. How could this former reality TV star, a multiply-bankrupt billionaire, an all of a sudden family-values champion with four failed marriages, whose official politics have shifted loudly with the political winds NOT be seen as a ridiculous indictment of the spectacle of American electoral politics? As some have noted, his very appeal to some people is in his willingness to say things that normal politicians just don’t usually say… at least, out loud. As several commentators have observed, however, Trump is simply not funny any more. What has changed?

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