Author Archives: markoconnell99@gmail.com

Illiberalism, disappearing truth and collapsing thirdness form a virulent triumvirate that explains many of the most insidious phenomena of this post-truth age. Attacks on science are attacks on truths that cannot be colonized by one’s subjectivity. The same is true with the right’s paranoia based assault on competence and expertise. The retort “fake news” suffices […]

In his book “Jason Stanley details the characteristics and underpinnings of fascism. It’s an excellent book, worth reading. In it Stanley offers a thorough review of the characteristics of a fascist government. Here, culled from Jason Stanley (How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them), Hannah Arendt, (How Democracy dies), and others, is a […]

The concepts of markedness, thirdness and intersubjectivity embody contemporary psychoanalysis’ radical solution to the question of how subjectivity develops and grows. These concepts, in turn, represent a radical alternative to the disappearance of truth, and the consequences of this disappearance; dictatorial subjectivity, lying, illiberalism. In this way, modern psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity truth differ from […]

Legal Originalism and the Collapse of Triadic Space The landmark 2008 supreme court case District  of Columbia v Heller dealt a severe blow to advocates of gun control. At the heart of the argument was the following sentence in the second amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, […]

“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” These days, when bravado about hand size is what passes for political erudition, it was a welcome delight to hear James Comey and Angus King riffing on the Henry II and Thomas Becket story.    That narrative is worth a brief review. It is, in interesting ways, […]

Donald Trump’s recent contribution to the “women don’t make good leaders because they have periods” genre is easy to dismiss given Trump’s cartoonish persona. Still, some of the most progressive among us have wondered, perhaps to our politically correct chagrin, whether there might be some grain of truth here, and even committed feminists have joked […]

  Last week NFL commissioner Roger Goodell punished Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay with a $500,000 fine and a six month suspension for driving under the influence, possessing unprescribed narcotics, and having $29000 in cash in his car. The punishment came some seven years after U.S. District judge Henry Hudson sentenced Atlanta Falcon’s quarterback Michael […]