Trent R. Nelson is a poet, historian, and philosopher, as well as a political and socioeconomic analyst. He is the managing editor for MWF Springfield and a contributing editor with Liberal Currents.
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Samantha and fellow Liberal Currents editors Caitlin Green and Trent Nelson talk the crisis of misinformation, taking responsibility for your own beliefs in the social media age, and their new podcast, Half the Answer. Knowing the Question Is Half the AnswerPodcast Episode · Neon Liberalism · 03/18/2025 · 51mApple Podcasts Neon
halftheanswer
Centrist pundits, conservative think-tank guys, and far-right propagandists say the movement to target libraries with new laws and book challenges is about making sure patrons have access to all viewpoints and kids aren't exposed to obscene materials. But what does the situation really look like on the ground?
halftheanswer
Caitlin and Trent speak with Bradford Vivian, a Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, about campus misinformation. How do op-eds and other polemics use hyperbole, metaphor and innuendo to create a false impression that college campuses are overrun with radical left wing revolutionaries, communist professors, mentally
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Caitlin and Trent, a linguist and an historian, introduce Half the Answer, a new podcast from Liberal Currents. The headlines and pundits ask their questions and present their framing of the topics of the day, but are there better questions we could be asking? Caitlin and Trent will interview experts
Antisemitism is a great blight upon massive swaths of the world. It takes many forms, of course, and does not always resemble the violence and pogroms of so many centuries, The Dreyfus Affair in France, or the Nazi regime and the Holocaust all across Europe. It can be aggressive or
Economic sanction regimes, of which we can see applied to nations the world over, have been applied to countries for decades—in some instances, even centuries—for various reasons. Some, like those rationalized to embargo Magara, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and previously Vietnam, were utilized in order to attempt pressure
The United States has had many questionable relationships with nations across its history, befriending and casting nations aside with equally curious motives and callousness, but none may be stranger and more questionable than that which America has with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While American President after American President for
Despite the hesitancy in some quarters to acknowledge the likelihood of an invasion before February 24, the landscape of analysis and punditry—including myself—has, since that entire calamity earnestly began, come to terms with the fact that what Russia is doing in Ukraine right now is absolutely dreadful. The
What is currently occurring in Ukraine is beyond barbaric and is in no way sustainable by the Russian government on any level. Period. While the invasion of Ukraine was not sustainable before the massive, multilateral sanctioning campaign that has since occurred, it is even less so today as the Russian
“The Great Era of Sanction Diplomacy” is nothing more than a ruse. The extreme use of sanctions is not diplomacy at all, though they begin with diplomats, include multinational agreements and negotiations, and ostensibly seeks to avoid the death that is wrought by conventional warfare. Rather, sanctions are, like conventional
When analyzing events in foreign countries, it is important not to overemphasize the importance of one’s own – all politics are local, as they say, and every election is determined by a variety of factors, most of them internal. At the same time, a country the size of the United
The homeless population of America carries with it undue burdens unique among wealthy nations. While Canadian researchers have recently experimented with new methods of welfare for their own homeless population, America has done its best to ignore the ever growing issue across the nation. During the current COVID-19 pandemic however,