some info: i am a graduate student at cornell studying political theory and american history; it is my opinion that in the trumpean era that we find ourselves in, american political institutions can no longer carry the burden of societal norms--it is thus the responsibility of individuals in civil society to resist aspects of formal politics.
i hope to provide some insight into reading lists that cover a range of topics--specifically to aid in whatever political projects of resistance and liberation you all want to pursue.
i am of the mindset that knowledge is power. i offer insights into what is worth reading, or at least what is sanctioned as worth reading at the ivy-league level; what you do with that info is of course up to you, though i hope you move toward truth and justice rather than the opposite.
i will post the collection in intervals, and mention titles i think are particularly salient. of course, i have not read all these books; what i own is mainly for reference. i do, however, have a nice flat-bed scanner and am willing to scan in and dropbox some of the rarer documents/texts i have.
my intention is simple: to share and make available knowledge that is otherwise eldritch and hidden. please let me know what you most desire to read and i will attempt to complete the scanning in a timely manner.
He said that he hasn't read all these in the OP. Are you this fucking insecure?
Logan Myers
art
Brayden Reed
>american political institutions can no longer carry the burden of societal norms What did you mean by this?
Luke Howard
Just bought another Lamborghini. Need it to store more books in.
Levi Ramirez
I dont know if you have any of these but here a list of stuff i’ve been struggling to find lately. I would be incredible if you could dropbox any of these.
Jean-Francois Revel’s - Last Exit to Utopia,How Democracies Perish,The Totalitarian Temptation.(or anything else except Anti-Americanism which I own)
Writers and Politics - Conor Cruise O'Brien
Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors
Orlando Furioso – The Sir John Harington translation . (which should be public domain but I cant find it anywhere) or the Barbara Reynolds translation would also be great.
Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
Tyler Green
God bless you, OP. This collection is amazing. I'd love to stand in it and smell the unread words, the uncracked spines, and think of how many evenings overprivileged undergrads spent chasing stinky New England quim.
Choosing a book to scan will take some perusing. Is one to choose dollars per word? Or what is most interesting? Or least Veeky Forums meme-y? Decision, decisions...
Brayden Jones
art
Robert Wright
nietzsche
i would simply argue that our formal democratic institutions--the executive and legislative in particular--no longer serve the public good.
i've ordered all these and will scan when they arrive. i will create a thread with the dropbox at a later date.
Amazing. How long did it take you to acquire all these books? I hope some day I own something similar.
Colton Ward
assorted anthropology/theory
Luke James
assorted theory
thanks--i'm 27, began collecting around 18, so 9 years or so?
Jacob Phillips
economic theory/ studies in charisma/ weber/ nationalism I
Robert Smith
nationalism II/ rhetoric
Easton Gray
russia/ fascism I
nazi doctors will be scanned in by friday.
Hunter Phillips
fascism II
Brayden Jenkins
Can you expand on this? Do you mean they still represent the public and the public simply fails to have interests that are in their own good or that the institutions no longer represent the people. Have the institutions failed or the public. In either case how and why? If the people have failed should our institutions be adjusted to accommodate that failure or should we try to fix the people. If the institutions have failed how can they be fixed?
Are the political projects of resistance and liberation the public against the government or the individual against the public? As a student of history is there a similar period of history you would compare this one too? if so what acts of resistance and liberation from that era are in the same vein you have in mind?
Easton Perez
I am currently 21 but I have a decent collection of good titles going. Thanks for posting this thread. I will continue buying as I see these titles.
Logan Lopez
aesthetics and politics
man, there is a lot to say here. ill drop a couple points--but im a little tired, and will respond in full tomorrow. i would say: it is both a failure of representation (see hannah pitkin; jan muller; eric voegelin) as well as a failure of the public. as far as representation goes, there are two aspects to this: 1. the operative ratio of representation set down by the founders; madison thought that anything about 1:30,000 would fail to adequately represent collective interests--we are now reaching 1:750,000. 2. the representatives themselves are no longer responsive to their constituencies in meaningful ways. compare today's party politics to the political machineries of the early 20th century--ima too tired to elaborate so ima just link you to a blogpost of mine to cover the rest (see point 3): catilineconspiracy.com/2017/03/02/on-the-2016-presidential-election-explaning-the-failure-of-the-left/
Dylan Rodriguez
Good to see you again familia, do you still have all those math textbooks?
Ian Smith
war/strategy I
as far as the public goes, i would say the following: it seems to me that there are three primary forms of the "public" in democratic politics.
1. publics that form in response to extraneous stimuli (John Dewey's model--whether these publics are formed as effective responses or not, as pragmatic or not, doesnt concern me here, however--only that people collectivize around actual crises/events)
2. publics that form in response to pseudo-stimuli and false events (anti-vaccinators, for instance), or publics which are formed on bases other than reality, such as charisma or "fake news"
3. publics in potentia that fail to form in response to actual extraneous stimuli (I am here thinking of Alfred Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918--Crosby examines the "cultural amnesia" and lack of direct response to what was obviously a devastating crisis, and I think that his analysis is sound)
i no longer think the public operates in line with 1, but now vacillates between 2 and 3, at least in the current state of american populism that we find ourselves
