The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Gymnastics on the Front Bench From one extreme to another Sophia Barnes In his 1957 work  Mythologies , the French philosopher Roland Barthes explored the role of ‘euphoria’ in creating the myths by which we make sense of experience. Questionable links between ideas become, by the magic of ideology, self-evident. We construct narratives that suit us and harmonise contradictions in the process. No one dares to deny these myths. A clear example of such ideological gymnastics can be found in the Labour Party’s proclaimed intentions concerning misogyny. In the wake of the recent unrest across the UK, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to identify, tackle, and reduce online radicalisation. This includes treating  ‘extreme misogyny’  as a form of extremism. It will be interesting to see how the Government copes with the cognitive dissonance of declaring misogyny to be extremism while continuing with plans to protect Islam by law and criminalise ‘Islamophobia’. Of course, we w

  How to Orient an Organism Understanding Depression, Collapse, and Triumph J. Daniel Sawyer Emerging from primordial musical chaos, light dawns on a new Earth, and we see the title card  The Dawn of Man . A tableaux unfolds in which semi-erect apes get attacked by leopards, hunt with their bare hands, and fight wars over access to water, before inspiration strikes—perhaps sent by the gods—and one curious ape makes a connection between the way a discarded bone knocks other discarded bones around, and the usefulness of that bone as a weapon. Smashing the bones around him, the ape works himself into a state of triumphant, orgiastic glee. He takes the bone and uses it to defeat the rival tribe, hunt game, and rule his small corner of the world until, in a celebration of triumph, he throws the bone up into the air, where a quick scene change lands us in orbit above the Earth, traveling alongside spacecraft, space stations, and weapons satellites. The first tool in the conquest of the Earth