The Progressive Page Turner

There is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States. Alone, we watch the country slide away from democracy and toward dictatorship. We need to band together to fight for what had already been won.  Staying in it for the long run means learning how to get along with others. In his book Love in an F*ed- up World Dean Spade looks at how to build enduring private and public relationships for the work ahead.

What if we have it all wrong? We accept unemployment, inflation, low wages, lack of access to healthcare and education, periodic recessions, ecological collapse, food insecurity and endless wars as inevitable. The underlying belief in a market driven system is the bedrock of our economy. We’ve handed our lives and resources over to a mechanism that doesn’t value humans or their well-being. But humans created this system and humans can change it. In her book Escape From Capitalism Clara Mattei makes the case that we can build systems that serve people not the market. Her organization is the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (freeforum.org).

The cost to our nation from militarized borders goes beyond the cost of enforcement. Both legal and undocumented migrants pay into our tax system. They boost the economy by spending money on the basics like food and rent. Many of our skilled workers in tech and medicine are immigrants. They also are the backbone of construction, agriculture and food services.  When we discourage people from entering or deport people already here we’re not safer, we’re poorer. John Washington takes a look at possible solutions in his book The Case for Open Borders.

When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 in 2023 the goals seemed so radical that many dismissed the threat as far-fetched. But as the Trump presidency steamrolls over accepted norms, court orders and public opinion much of that radical agenda is being implemented. In order to see where all this is leading one has to take a look at history and what life looked like for so many people in the past. In his book How We Win the Civil War Steve Phillips posits that the Confederacy never really surrendered and until we examine the past we can’t move forward into a better future. But he also maintains that the better future is realistically achievable. It’s all about mobilization.

For the first time in over a hundred years salmon are returning to historical spawning grounds in the Klamath River. After four hydroelectric dams were removed the river came back to life. Wild salmon, once on the brink of extinction have returned in astonishing numbers. More than just a regional victory, the dam removal from the Klamath River could be a blueprint for ecological restoration. I spoke with Amy Bowers Cordalis of the Yurok Nation about her book The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.  

The only metric for our economic system is the growth of wealth. Who gets that wealth or how that growth impacts people’s lives and the planetary life support system is never part of the equation. This has created the insanity of a billionaire class who can destroy entire countries while basic needs are unmet for many people and the looming climate crisis is ignored. In this episode of The Progressive Page Turner I talked with Tim Jackson, author of The Care Economy about another way to view prosperity. 

How are intimate violence and geopolitical violence linked? Both are expressions of male dominance. The imbalance in our culture toward masculine values has impoverished us all. In her book All We Want is Everything Soraya Chemaly outlines how dismantling male supremacy can result in an increase in dignity, independence, agency, respect and freedom for everyone. 

The saying goes that "people can imagine the end of the world easier than imagining the end of capitalism." I know it seems insane but what if we geared society to produce for sufficiency instead of profit?  We might actually be able to mitigate the damage from our fossil fuel civilization if we change the mindset of infinite growth.  It's time to start imagining the impossible because everything, maybe even all life on the planet, is at stake if we continue business as usual.

The imperative to stop burning fossil fuels and a proliferation of new tech gadgets like cell phones and smart everything has businesses and governments scrambling to procure the metals that make the magic happen. Mining, refining and even recycling these components comes with a heavy environmental cost. Can we realistically switch from fossil fuels to green energy if obtaining the raw materials cause environmental destruction, political instability and a great deal of human suffering? Vince Beiser traveled all over the world to document the real cost of the new economy.

It's dawning on a growing number of people that the lack of any sort of rational and effective response to the climate crisis is bringing us toward a Thelma and Louise ending for industrial civilization. The hope for a soft landing fades with every year. In his book Franken Politics George Tsakraklides looks at how we arrived at this point and honestly examines life in the era of global capital. 

As we scramble to create a more sustainable version of our civilization much of the focus has been on technology. But electric cars and reusable containers will only take us so far. From mountaintop removal to factory farms our relationship with the non-human world has been one of unabashed exploitation. If we’re to regain some sort of equilibrium we need to reset the way we view our place on the planet. In their book Naturekind: Language, Culture and Power Beyond the Human  Melissa Leach and James Fairhead explore how we can establish a richer and more nuanced relationship with other beings. 

Rich and connected, Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls with impunity.  We've all seen those stickers for anti-trafficking organization in airports and bus stations and it's normal to assume they are there to help people caught in the same sort of situation. In their book Not Your Rescue ProjectChanelle Gallant and Elene Lam detail how the anti-trafficking industry actually harms sex workers. The predicament of migrant sex workers is not what you might expect.

Donald Trump was surrounded by billionaires during his inauguration. It became glaringly obvious who bought the election. But the influence of the uber wealthy goes far beyond that one election. They are picking our pockets and causing societal instability in many ways. Chuck Collins looks at their impact in his book Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.  

When Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White house it was both real and symbolic. Much of what we took for granted, the rule of law, the constitution and due process have also been demolished. All of this happening as the planet is reaching irreversible tipping points. A recent report found that 84% of world’s coral has been bleached. Heat waves, wildfires, floods and droughts driven by burning fossil fuels are transforming our world and have devastating consequences for life on the planet.  Faced with the intellectual, moral, and spiritual abyss created by these intersecting crises, despair can seem like a reasonable response. But this isn’t the first time it appeared as if the world might come to a crashing halt. After two catastrophic world wars, the rise of fascism and the threat of nuclear annihilation mid 20th-century thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus and Simone Weil found meaning and hope. Wen Stephenson explores their legacy and examines what it will take to find the resolve to keep going in his book Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe.

In the spirit of upcoming Halloween, the new interview is about a horror graphic novel trilogy. Tim Mulligan adds supernatural forces to the most radioactive site in the United States, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland Washington. In this interview we talk about the real horrors of radioactive releases and the fictional horrors of witches, ghosts and radioactive bats.

Charlie Kirk’s organization, Turning Point, started out as secular, promoting capitalism, free markets and the separation of church and state. All of that changed in 2020 when he embraced  the “Seven Mountains Mandate”,  a theology promoting a Christian takeover of government, education, media, family, business, arts, and religion. It’s so reactionary that only a small minority of evangelicals agree with its principles.  Many of the key players in Donald Trump’s regime are part of this movement and are working to dismantle democracy and replace it with theocracy.