| Title | : | Failure is an Option |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle , Hardcover , Paperback , Audiobook & More |
| Number of Pages | : | 144 |
| Publication | : | Published November 1, 2020 |
SETH ACKERMAN
Failure Is an Option
Haunted by the specter of democracy, the Constitution’s framers blundered into a historic miscalculation. We’re still living with the consequences.
THE SOAPBOX
Down and Out in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas
A slice of life from a country in crisis.
STRUGGLE SESSION
EZRA KLEIN
INTERVIEWED BY BHASKAR SUNKARA
Don’t Blame Polarization
A discussion on American partisanship, political dysfunction, and why it’s not our passions that are the problem — it’s the Constitution itself.
FRIENDS & FOES
DANIEL BESSNER
The General Who Brought Down the American Empire
In 2002, the Pentagon staged a $250 million war game known as the “Millennium Challenge.” It was supposed to be a fixed fight — until a retired Marine lieutenant general, playing the role of a Middle Eastern country, brought the US military to its knees.
MEANS OF DEDUCTION
Data Collection
VULGAR EMPIRICIST
America the Laggard
By virtually any measure, people in the United States are worse off than those in other rich countries. There’s no disputing the impact of our weak entitlements and paltry labor protections.
TRANSITIONS
The Great Divergence
It used to be better to be a low-wage worker in the United States than in France. That hasn’t been the case for a long while.
UNEVEN & COMBINED
Mapping the Decline
How the neoliberal project’s very own fifty-state strategy left poverty and low wages in its wake.
READING MATERIEL
Peer Review
FIELD NOTES
America’s Railroad to Nowhere
We know the US rail network is no match for trains in France or Japan. But Barack Obama’s plan for high-speed rail couldn’t even match that of Morocco or Uzbekistan.
CANON FODDER
PHILIP ROCCO
Ending Federalism as We Know It
A new book shows how the fragmented American state arrests democracy. What we need is nothing short of a reconstruction.
CANON FODDER
LUKE SAVAGE
A Very British Dystopia
A Very British Coup embraced the intrigues of class war, but its sequel falls prey to the mundanities of culture war.
Illustration by Joe O’Donnell
The New American Exceptionalism
FEATURE
RICHARD LACHMANN
Effective states can enforce discipline on elites. The United States is not one of them.
Illustration by Mark Pernice
American Capitalism Is Working — That’s the Problem
FEATURE
NICOLE ASCHOFF
The United States is not a failed state — just ask any American capitalist. But we desperately need something better for everyone else.
Where’s Our Gorbachev?
FEATURE
JONATHAN STEELE
The United States today isn’t on the verge of a Soviet-style disintegration — but neither is there any force at the top willing and able to reform our political system.
Message in a Bottle
FEATURE
MEAGAN DAY
In the United States of 2020, millions are desperate for help, and they’re forced to compete for scraps from Twitter philanthropists.
CULTURAL CAPITAL
Emergency Eye-Wash Station
RED CHANNELS
EILEEN JONES
John Carpenter, Apocalyptic Filmmaker
John Carpenter’s movies provide visions of societies falling apart. No wonder his work is resonating now more than ever.
WAYS OF SEEING
BEN DAVIS
The Collision of Self-Importance and Despair
In the United States today, as in 1990s Russia, for a lot of intellectuals, total nihilism seems more plausible than hope for even modest reform.
WAYS OF SEEING
OWEN HATHERLEY
From Your House to Our House
America’s experiment with public housing was far less successful than Europe’s — but this hasn’t made it any less influential.
THE TUMBREL
Lighting the Bunsen Burner
Illustration by Daniel Zender
GIRONDINS
ABI WILKINSON
On Being a Mother in America
Within ten days of giving birth, a quarter of us are forced to return to work. If liberals truly want to support parents’ choices, they need to back the subsidies and employment legislation that are vital to child-rearing.
THERMIDOR
BRANKO MARCETIC
Stories for the End of the World
From the mutant animals of Chernobyl and Marie Antoinette’s perverted orgies, to QAnon and Russiagate, conspiracy theories flourish in times of crisis and collapse of political legitimacy.
LEFTOVERS
Mouse #4 Has Died
POPULAR FRONT
PETER FRASE
Blue Order
In an increasingly unstable country, what if a “deep police state” threatens to undermine our electoral gains?
DUSTBIN
MATT KARP
How Abraham Lincoln Fought the Supreme Court
It is not enough to question the decisions, the justices, or even the structure of the current court — we need to challenge, as Abraham Lincoln did, the foundation of its power to determine the law.
DUSTBIN
AMBER A’LEE FROST
Socialists Should Be Republicans
The first generation of the GOP tried — and failed — to build a modern republic. Socialists today won’t get very far unless we finish their work.
PROLETOCCULT
DONALD HUGHES
Your Quarterly Horoscope
Real left strategy isn’t found in socialist magazines. It’s found in the stars.
Illustration by Pete Gamlen
MEANS AND ENDS
VIVEK CHIBBER
Celebrating Ten Years of Jacobin
And our decades to come.
Failure is an Option Reviews
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the piece about twitter philanthropy and the piece about the bot that just posts people’s “statuses” (ie: “i work 90 hours a week. i do not have health insurance”) made me wanna weep!! the rest was rant-y and not very well written.
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"You would think a country that is fond of calling itself an experiment would at least be alert to the possibility of failure. But this year, with seeming surprise, millions of Americans became aware of their failing state for the first time."
Jacobin really nailed it with this issue. This is only the third I've read in my subscription, but it's the best so far. I think they really were able to sum up the current state of affairs at the end of 202o marvelously, and far more accurately than most of the other news sources available to people out there. Certainly more than neo liberal propaganda seeking to double down on all the policies and issues that got us to where we are.
"The problem is not lack of spending, but instead the misdirection of much of those funds into yet another round of tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for large corporations. Making matters worse, decades of neo-liberal efforts to dismantle public benefits agencies at the state and federal levels ensure that the United States is unable to identify many of those in need and get money to them.
Despite having all summer to prepare, no funding at all was provided for the safe reopening of schools. Parents and school districts face a choice between two terrible options: they can send children back to schools that have not prepared physically or programatically to educate students safely. Or they can continue with online learning, which is less effective than normal schooling, especially for elementary age children and disadvantaged students of all ages."
With every passing day people are waking up to the fact that the existing system is failing and that our children's lives will be harder than ours are unless we make some drastic changes fast. Jacobin is a great place to start educating yourself about alternative viewpoints you won't find in mainstream politics or media at the moment. Not because people aren't willing to take it there, but because progressives are being frozen out. -
The story on US public housing in comparison to the rest of the world was interesting-certainly not uplifting. I knew quite a bit about the Pruitt-Igoe style developments and why they failed. The article on the connection between modern America and Russia in post Soviet world is striking. The similarities with security apparatus' like NATO and the Warsaw Pact, over spending on security, how neither can/could solve a national crisis, growth of drug addiction and lawlessness. The new stories of hedge funds in the US and the inevitable crushing of any real threats to the status quo and complete lack of democracy-a handgun license is accepted in many states as valid ID to vote but a state University student ID is not are both signs of power collaborating to crush any resistance to the gerontocracy, old money, wall street elitists that run essentially everything. We are doomed. And we deserve it. Plant one tree before it's all over; it will make it that much easier for the Earth to re-wild when we are gone.
