Dr. Robert Zaller

Politics

Democracy and the Sixth Great Extinction

Is the fate of the planet—that is, of our fate on it—tied to the fate of democracy? I think there are grounds for suggesting it. You could make a negative case for the proposition. Democracy, [ Read Article ]
Uncategorized

The Twilight of the European Union

The “West,” as that term has been understood since the end of World War II, is cracking up. It consisted, broadly, of the US, Canada, and Western Europe, the latter slowly recast as the European [ Read Article ]
Film

You Can’t Go Home Again: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia at International House

Andrei Tarkovsky, the exact contemporary of the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut (1932-1986), made only seven feature films in his thirty-year career, but their prestige has elevated him to almost mythical status. Ingmar Bergman called him [ Read Article ]
Literary

Towards the Post-Modern Novel: The Polyphonic Consciousness of György Sebestyén

The defining works of the Modernist novel, Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past, Joyce’s Ulysses, and Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, all worked to dethrone the presuppositions of bourgeois consciousness, with its assumption of fixed [ Read Article ]
Music

Early and Late Beethoven, with Fauré

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, winding down its current season, has saved some of its best for last. The Ébène Quartet, beginning a year-long worldwide tour, plans to record all of Beethoven’s quartets in live [ Read Article ]
Music

Of Sacred Spaces and the Right of Protest: The Orchestra’s Tour of Israel

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s just-concluded tour of Germany, Austria, and Israel has been the most controversial in its history. No, visiting Germany, where a resurgent right wing openly invokes the symbols of Nazism, wasn’t the problem. [ Read Article ]
Politics

Pay To Play: America in the Middle East Today

Modern American foreign policy in the Middle East was formed by three pivotal events: the determination to control the region’s oil resources through public policy and oil corporations after World War I; the decision by [ Read Article ]

Romancing Barack: Hillary’s Last Fling

Politics

October 11, 2016 0

As I write this, the results of the Super Tuesday primary votes and caucuses have not yet come in, but the result is foregone: the media that anointed Hillary Rodham Clinton the Democratic nominee and [ Read Article ]

Rock Bottom: A Torturer Now Heads the CIA

Politics

June 25, 2018 0

Weighing in on the subject of waterboarding, the notorious practice of simulated drowning widely practiced on suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush administration, our current president, Donald Trump, proclaimed that he not only approved [ Read Article ]

Politics

Where is the Migrant Crisis Leading Us?

October 13, 2016 0

Sixty million people worldwide are now on the move. It is the largest migration since World War II. It reflects the reshaping of maps, particularly in the Middle East, and the populations of places that, [ Read Article ]

Politics

Hello, Tyranny: Life in the Age of Trump

February 13, 2017 0

The incessant flow of noise and static from the Trump White House—occupied territory on American soil—is designed, among other things, to conceal the fundamental new reality of our political situation: that we have an unelected [ Read Article ]

Politics

Democracy and the Sixth Great Extinction

May 22, 2019 0

Is the fate of the planet—that is, of our fate on it—tied to the fate of democracy? I think there are grounds for suggesting it. You could make a negative case for the proposition. Democracy, [ Read Article ]