The war on terror, rebranded under Obama as the "Overseas Contingency Operation," has morphed into war on democracy.

Under a neoliberal regime, the language of authority, power and command is divorced from ethics, social responsibility, critical analysis and social costs.

The market-driven spectacle of war demands a culture of conformity, quiet intellectuals and a largely passive republic of consumers.

I mean, we're not talking about simply racism, we're taking about white supremacy.

Cynicism, disillusionment, and a dispiriting sense of purposeless has cast a shadow over American society seriously draining it of any language or vision that might imagine a different sort of society from the dysfunctional, militarizing, and deeply unequal social order that marked the current historical period.

Rich people live in places so removed from everybody else, they operate in circles so incestuous and so closed, they're off on islands. To try to understand their indifference is to understand also their separation from the rest of society.

There is a need for educators, young people, artists and other cultural workers to develop an educative politics in which people can address the historical, structural and ideological conditions at the core of the violence being waged by the corporate and repressive state and to make clear that government under the dictatorship of market sovereignty and power is no longer responsive to the most basic needs of young people - or most people for that matter.