There is a need for subjects who find intense pleasure in commodification of violence and a culture of cruelty.

The generation of youth in the early 21st century has no way of grasping if they will ever be free from the gnawing sense of the transience, indefiniteness, and provisional nature of any settlement.

Increasingly, poor minority and white youth are being funneled directly from schools into prison.

It's much better to talk about the media as a system of propaganda and abuse, of manufactured consent, than it is to claim it's some kind of democratizing force that is not responsible for what it does. The notion that the media simply reflects reality is an argument that justifies its flight from responsibility.

When you look at the Koch brothers, who make three million dollars an hour on their dividends alone, you begin to get a sense of what we're talking about. The estimates now are that the upper 1% control something like 40% of all wealth. Eighty families in the world control as much as half the world's population. These figures are being produced every day. We need to put a human face to these figures. We need to make clear that something is being taken from the vast majority of people, and is causing an enormous amount of suffering.

Social bonds have given way under the collapse of social protections and the attack on the welfare state. Moreover, all solutions to socially produced problems are now relegated to the mantra of individual solutions.

Individual interests now trump any consideration of the good of society just as all problems are ultimately laid at the door of the solitary individual, whose fate is shaped by forces far beyond his or her capacity for personal responsibility.