Skip to content Menu
The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive

essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay

Sidebar
  • Home
  • About the author
  • About the Burning Archive
  • My poetry collections
  • My reading archive
  • On governing
  • The infinite conversation
  • Best of the Burning Archive

Tag: trust in government

Posted on December 21, 2020

Cultural fragmentation and the collapse of authority in Western democracies

My repost today comes from 22 April 2018, and seems relevant to the difficulties we are experiencing in our distressed republics today. I also posted something of a follow-up post…

Continue Reading
Posted on November 27, 2020

Our barren, deformed political society

And if and when Trump is no longer President, all the ills of political system can no longer be blamed on Trump. For four years now – in America but…

Continue Reading
Posted on February 2, 2020

The impeachment curse

The third impeachment of an American President in my living memory is now drawing to a close: Nixon in 1973-74, Clinton in 1998-99, and Trump in 2019-20. Nixon used government…

Continue Reading
Posted on August 11, 2019

The Crisis in Australian Politics 2010-2013 (reposted)

As described in the previous post, Free speech for public servants and Osip Mandelstam, I am reposting here an extended set of posts that I originally posted in three parts…

Continue Reading
Posted on July 28, 2019December 6, 2020

On the virtue of not knowing (WordPress anniversary repost)

Today I am posting the last (for now) of my reposts from earlier, retired blogs. This post comes from 2010 and is a reflection on Vaclav Havel’s thought, then still…

Continue Reading
Posted on July 22, 2019

My wordpress 11th anniversary retrospective: 3 dilemmas of government

I am continuing my blogging retrospective today by reposting a small think-piece from The Happy Pessimist blog. If I have done my digital erasure correctly, you will not find any…

Continue Reading
Posted on March 31, 2019

Do we repair our republics with big ideas or ordinary virtues?

My old boss and sometime mentor, Terry Moran, has given an oration in which he sets out a diagnosis and remedy for the troubles of government and democracy today. Terry…

Continue Reading
Posted on April 22, 2018April 29, 2018

Cultural fragmentation and the collapse of authority in Western democracies

During the week I was discussing with a young colleague at work the preparation of a briefing. I gave them some guidance and some encouragement: the briefing did not need…

Continue Reading

Categories

  • culture (97)
  • history (100)
  • literature (127)
  • music (2)
  • Personal story (81)
  • psyche (1)
  • quotations to write by (28)
  • the real world today (119)
  • Uncategorized (31)
  • What I am reading (11)

Tags

Adam Phillips America Australian politics blogging bureaucracy civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture decay democracy Donald Trump election Empire Essays featured Fernandez-Armesto Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing history Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible literature lockdown machiavelli madness music philosophy poetry political decay politics power Prose public service quotes Russia Russian history society terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel Wallace Stevens Weber writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

Archives

  • About the author
  • About the Burning Archive
  • Best of the Burning Archive
Start a Blog at WordPress.com.
Top
Follow The Burning Archive on WordPress.com

Recent musings

  • Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments February 24, 2021
  • The persistence of the Mahabharata February 21, 2021
  • Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche February 18, 2021
  • 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat February 17, 2021
  • Sound and fury told by the American cultural “elite” February 16, 2021

Tags

Adam Phillips America Australian politics autobiography Bakhtin Blanchot blogging bureaucracy change China civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture culture wars death decay democracy Donald Trump dream election Empire Essays Ezra Pound featured Fernandez-Armesto Foucault Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing Harold Bloom history history of emotions Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible Kierkegaard literature lockdown machiavelli madness Melbourne memory music Nietzsche philosophy poetry political decay politics power progressive politics Prose public service quotes reading Russia Russian history samizdat society Solzhenitsyn Symborska terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel violence W.G. Sebald Wallace Stevens WB Yeats Weber William Dalrymple writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

What is the burning archive?

The burning archive is my symbol for our cultural condition, and my own experiment with a new literary form. Read more here

My burning archive