A Conversation With New York City Icon Marvin Scott About His 50 Years of Experience as a News Reporter and Journalist

Marvin Scott is the guest on this week's special New Year's Eve episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a journalist and reporter with more than 50 years of experience. Scott is an iconic personality in the New York area and has been a host on WPIX Channel 11 since 1980. He is also a master storyteller who covered some of the 20th century's most important events and personalities. He shares those stories in his new book As I Saw It: A Reporter's Intrepid Journey.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show Marvin Scott and Chauncey talk about the rise of the 24/7 news cycle and Donald Trump, how Scott watched the news business quite literally change before his eyes, interviewing Yasser Arafat, a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr., and all of the regular people who helped to make the civil rights movement and the black freedom struggle possible. Scott also shares what it was like to spend a night in the infamous "haunted" house of Amityville horror fame.

In this week's New Year's Eve episode, Chauncey reflects on the year past and shares some of his favorite movies, TV shows, podcasts, and comic books from 2017. On this week's show, Chauncey also does some personal reflecting about the year that was and his hopes and plans for 2018.

And in keeping with the new tradition that is The Twilight Zone marathon on New Year's Eve, Chauncey reads a wonderful short story from Ray Bradbury about black folks on Mars who face a dilemma when white people seek salvation from a ruined Earth as refugees.

This episode with Marvin Scott can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

A Conversation with Brian Klaas About How the American Fascist Donald Trump is the Despot's Apprentice

Brian Klaas is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a fellow in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. In addition to writing columns and essays that have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs and numerous other publications, Klaas is the author of several books. His newest book is "The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy."

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Brian Klaas and Chauncey discuss how Trump's behavior is in keeping with despots around the world, the ways that political polarization helps democracy to fail, and how Trump's apparent incompetence lulled the public and the news media into a false sense of complacency which made American fascism possible. Klaas also explains how Trump's election is a powerful reminder of how there are tens of millions of Americans who have fascist and authoritarian inclinations.

In this week's Christmas week episode, Chauncey DeVega shares some stories about the real people who are the targets of Trump and the Republican Party's vicious and evil "tax reform" bill, a plan that is really designed to kill the useless eaters. To that end, Chauncey reads some stories about elderly people who have been evicted from nursing homes and thrown out into the street. And to close out this week's podcast, Chauncey--who loves animals--can't help but share how macaques are apparently now having sex with deer in Japan.

This episode with Brian Klaas can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

Immigrants are "Human Garbage": The Fascist Donald Trump and the Republican Party's "Soft" Ethnic Cleansing

Donald Trump believes that immigrants (read: nonwhites and Muslims) are human garbage. Proving that point, Trump gave a speech to FBI graduates in Virginia last Friday, where he said this:

You think the [foreign] country is giving us their best people? No. . . . What kind of a system is that? They come in by a lottery. They give us their worst people, they put them in a bin. But in his hand when he’s picking them is really the worst of the worst. "Congratulations, you’re going to the United States, OK."

There was no outpouring of outrage or shock at these words from the American news media or the public. Trump's comments were instead met with a mix of silence and quiet rumbles of discontent. Evil is now normalized. This is how authoritarianism thrives.

Fascists use racism, nativism and ethnocentrism to win and maintain power. Trump has learned that lesson well. To cite the title of Brian Klaas' recent book on the threat Trump poses to democracy, he is the "despot's accomplice." His most recent claims that immigrants are trash who will despoil (white) America is just the latest chapter in a hate-filled epic from a man who has suggested a national registry for Muslims, wants to bar people from entire regions and countries from the United States, has proposed publicly posting the names and pictures of "illegal immigrants" who commit crimes (as the Nazis did with alleged Jewish criminals in Germany), and believes that an entire ethnic group comes to America in order to rape and kill (white) women.

Trump's screeds against people in other countries who dream of making a better life in America are a violation of the country's national creed and mythology about being an inclusive and welcoming country of immigrants. He is perhaps the first modern president to hold such values in open disdain and contempt.

Trump's comments about immigrants are, of course, grotesque lies. Immigrants have helped to drive America's economic productivity. Immigrants have also helped keep America competitive while other countries with more restrictive policies, such as Japan, have become culturally and economically stagnant. Immigrants also help America become a more cosmopolitan society, contributing human capital in ways that make the country more dynamic.

A Special Episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show: Physics, Roleplaying Games, "Star Wars" and "The Last Jedi"

May the Force be with you.

This week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show celebrates all things Star Wars and the release of the newest installment in the saga "The Last Jedi".

Patrick Johnson is the first guest on this week's show. He is an assistant professor of physics at Georgetown University and the author of the new book The Physics of Star Wars: The Science Behind a Galaxy Far, Far Away. 

Patrick and Chauncey discuss how science can help us to understand the Force, the physics behind lightsabers, the engineering involved in building the Death Star, and yes, if Han Solo could have made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.

The second guest on this Star Wars themed episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show is Bill Slavicsek. He is one of the world's foremost experts on Star Wars. Bill helped to perfect the classic Star Wars roleplaying game from West End Games, wrote the legendary A Guide to the Star Wars Universe as well as the Star Wars Sourcebook. Bill's work continues to influence the writers and creators of the new Star Wars films including Rogue One and the TV show Rebels. He is also one of the principle game designers for Dungeons and Dragons and the online video game The Elder Scrolls.

Chauncey and Bill discuss the joy of playing "old school" roleplaying games like Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons, how Bill became a game designer, the principles of good storytelling and share some life wisdom. Bill also offers his thoughts on the health of traditional pen and paper roleplaying games in an era of digital culture and video games.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega tells the truth about all of the folks who claim to love black women after the latter helped to defeat the wicked likely child sex predator and Christian fascist Roy Moore in Alabama. And Chauncey also shares his thoughts about Star Wars: The Last Jedi--hint it is not the great success that many reviewers and other people are claiming it is.

This episode with Patrick Johnson and Bill Slavicsek can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

A Conversation with Nancy MacLean About How the Republican Party's New "Tax Reform" Bill is Really a Plan to Destroy American Society as We Know It

There are two guests on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.

Nancy MacLean returns to explain the real impact and long-term devastation to the American people that will be caused by the Republican so-called "tax reform" bill. She is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and author of the new book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.

Democracy in Chains was also one of the five finalists in the 2017 National Book Awards for non-fiction.  

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Nancy and Chauncey discuss how the Republican Party's "tax bill" is part of a bigger plot by the most extreme elements of the right-wing--including libertarians allied with the Koch brothers--to return America to a time before the 20th century. With last week's passage of their "tax plan" the Republican Party and the plutocrats (as well as Christian fascists) to which they are beholden to have taken one more stop closer to eliminating programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with the ultimate goal of eliminating the "useless eaters". Professor MacLean predicted this would happen in her new book Democracy In Chains.

John Feffer is the second guest on this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a foreign policy expert, philosopher, and author of the much-discussed new book Splinterlands which is a brilliant exploration of a future ruined Earth, an America in the midst of a de facto civil war, and how it call came to pass. This conversation with John is just a preview of a much longer full length episode that will air in the very near future.

On this week's show Chauncey mocks the Democrats and other liberals who actually believe that forcing Senator Al Franken and others who have been accused of sexual harassment to resign will somehow shame the Republicans into moving against Donald Trump and Roy Moore. Chauncey also shares some wisdom from Hannah Arendt about Trump's fascism and the threat posed by his human deplorable trash mob. And at the end of this week's podcast Chauncey shares a story about meeting an angel in human form at the local library.

This episode with Nancy MacLean and John Feffer can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

The Republican "Tax Reform" Bill is Really Just a Malthusian Plan to Kill the 'Useless Eaters'

The Republican "tax reform" bill passed by the United States Senate during the late-night hours last Friday is evil. It has no redeeming social value. It takes money and resources from those who have the least in order to further subsidize the rich and corporations. It will worsen those problems its proponents claim it will solve. It is a nightmare. Republicans and others who support this legislation have revealed once again that they lack any human decency or wisdom or sense of civic responsibility.

This evil is facilitated by an extreme rightward turn in American society that has made normal and healthy politics all but impossible.

This evil will kill people and increase human misery so the idle rich and other plutocrats can have even more money. This statement is no exaggeration. It is a plain fact: The Republican tax bill will raise taxes on the poor and working classes in order to give the very richest American hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a clear statement of social and political priorities: The amount of money gifted to the rich by Republicans is so large it could have paid for debt-free college and universal health care.

This evil also reveals a moral and ethical rot. The Republican Party and Donald Trump's desperate desire to win a legislative victory at any cost was more important than being responsible public servants.

This evil is empowered by a party, a president and a right-wing movement that feels nothing but contempt for the very idea of democracy. The United States is in extreme peril. Moreover, the evil of the Republicans' "tax reform" bill is not a result of happenstance, accident or coincidence. It is an outgrowth of a much deeper malevolent ideology.

Republicans from the post-civil rights era to the age of Trump have increasingly been in thrall to "Social Darwinism" and the 18th-century English economist Thomas Malthus. In this paradigm, the real value of individual human beings (and societies) is determined by their economic productivity and financial value as decided by capitalism. This cruel vision treats human beings almost like animal livestock; "social betters" engineer certain outcomes to cull the herd so the most "valuable" and "productive" are nurtured and protected. All others are viewed as parasites who should be removed, exterminated or bred out of existence.

A Conversation with Henry Giroux About the Condition of American Democracy One Year After the Election of Donald Trump

Henry Giroux is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He has written dozens of books and articles including America at War with Itself and the forthcoming The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Giroux and Chauncey evaluate American democracy one year after Trump's election, wonder about how to stay positive during such a horrible time, and ponder what resistance looks like against American fascism. Professor Giroux also explains the dangers of malignant reality, why Trump's voters will never leave his side, and makes a bold prediction about the 2020 presidential election.

This week's episode also features some bonus content that can be heard at the end of the show. Documentary filmmaker Charlie Siskel stops by the virtual bar and salon to discuss his new project American Anarchist. Charlie also shares some insights learned from the making of the documentary projects Bowling for Columbine, The Awful Truth, and Finding Vivian Maier. And in the spirit of our ongoing discussion about Donald Trump, Charlie works through his initial thoughts about a documentary on America's fascist-in-chief demagogue.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega tells the truth about the murderous and evil Republican "tax bill" which passed during the middle of the night last Friday. Chauncey is also disgusted by the Democratic Party and all the so-called liberals and progressives who are unable to stop the Republican Party--as well as how the American people are sheep who have not taken to the streets in massive protests against the Republican Party's destruction of the Commons and efforts to bring the United States back to a time before the 19th century.

This episode with Henry Giroux and Charlie Siskel can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.