I had no expectations about Barack Obama and I'm not in the least disillusioned.

All media depend on advertisement to survive.

It is one thing for the institution to offer space for serious engagement, in thought and action, and to encourage free and independent use of such opportunities; it is something else for the university to become engaged as an institution, beyond a fairly narrow range where true consensus exists, and even that raises questions.

Nothing in these abstract economic models actually works in the real world. It doesn't matter how many footnotes they put in, or how many ways they tinker around the edges. The whole enterprise is totally rotten at the core: it has no relation to reality.

Enormous and growing parts of the population are basically superfluous for profit-making purposes. Along with this, the jail population is increasing very rapidly; it's the highest in the industrial world by far. New and onerous crime bills are being passed to deal with this superfluous population.

In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War.

Academics are mostly professionals, involved in their work and other concerns of their own, with no particular interest in the workings of the ideological system.