The United States has degenerated into a social order that is awash in public stupidity and views critical thought as both a liability and a threat. Not only is this obvious in the presence of a celebrity culture that embraces the banal and idiotic, but also in the prevailing discourses and policies of a range of politicians and anti-public intellectuals who believe that the legacy of the Enlightenment needs to be reversed.
Henry GirouxWhen the dominant media invites the torturers on their programs to defend the nature of torture and then label that as "just another position," these media apparatuses have really sunken into hell. They've become something really vile and despicable. And yet they do it with a smile.
Henry GirouxAny collective struggle that matters has to embrace education as the center of politics and the source of an embryonic vision of the good life outside of the imperatives of predatory capitalism.
Henry GirouxCapitalism, in my estimation, is not about democracy. I think we're beginning to see an understanding of this. We see it in the Black Lives Matter movement. We see it among black youth who are now struggling and trying to make connections internationally with other groups and trying to figure out what's going on in the world and the ways things like police violence and systemic violence all come together under neoliberalism.
Henry Giroux