In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination. One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Donald Trump's popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgement rather than titillation.

Marie Luise Knott is right in noting that "We live our lives with the help of the concepts we form of the world. They enable an author to make the transition from shock to observation to finally creating space for action—for writing and speaking. Just as laws guarantee a public space for political action, conceptual thought ensures the existence of the four walls within which judgment operates.”[1] The concepts that now guide our understanding of American society are dominated by a corporate induced linguistic and authoritarian model that brings ruin to language, politics and democracy itself. More

Following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour’s new leader, the news in Israel was bleak. “New Labor Leader in Britain: Anti-Zionist” read the headline of Yisrael Hayom, the most widely read newspaper in Israel, which is owned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s longtime supporter, casino king Sheldon Adelson. The subtitle explained: “Bad Surprise: The newly elected head of opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, who in the past called for a dialogue with ‘friends’ from Hamas and Hezbollah, is known as a radical lefty, an admirer of Karl Marx.” The article goes on to claim that Corbyn has donated money to Holocaust deniers and notes with alarm that, as head of the opposition, he has the right to receive sensitive security and diplomatic updates.

One might have expected a different line from Ynet, Israel’s most visited online news source, which was adamantly against Netanyahu’s re-election in March 2015. But Ynet did not exude enthusiasm for Corbyn either, rather it characterised him as “A fierce opponent of Israel.” Repeating practically all of the accusations made in Yisrael Hayom, it also criticised Corbyn for portraying Osama Bin Laden’s assassination as a “tragedy”. The new Labour leader was blamed for claiming that it would have been more just if the US had arrested Bin Laden and brought him to trial. More

The fever that gripped the U.S. following the attacks of September, 11, 2001 demonstrated that manufacturing a shared enemy did little to create a deeper commonality of interests amongst nominal citizens. Whatever one may think about the specifics of the attacks--- the motives of the attackers, their choice of targets or the veracity of official explanations, it would have required a full scale assault by an established military to destroy as many lives and communities as American born and bred bankers did through predatory mortgage lending in the housing boom and bust. And as much as official apologists would like to deny it, this destruction is wholly in keeping with the market outcomes that now constitute the base credo of the market-state.

The paper-thin bravado that sent heavily armored children and young adults to slaughter innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq for the benefit of Bechtel, Northrup Grumman and Exxon Mobil found its domestic truth in the quivering puddles that had supported the wars suddenly wondering how they were going to feed themselves and their children with their jobs outsourced and their homes in foreclosure. A fortunate few saw their fealty to the system of economic and social dispossession rewarded through the spectacle of social dissolution, through their neighbor’s bounty of cheaply-made goods strewn across suburban and ex-urban lawns as sheriffs and their agents made room for fresher members of the tenuous classes. More