The Real Pandemic Gap Is Between the Comfortable and the Afflicted
The stories from the front lines of this country’s abandonment of the poor in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic are not in short supply. The Washington Post reports on the devastating stories of...
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The Secret History of Ronald Reagan’s Letters
Ronald Reagan began laying the groundwork for his 1980 presidential run almost immediately after his defeat in his campaign for the 1976 Republican nomination. The work consisted primarily of hundreds...
View ArticleCan Kamala Harris Earn the Trust of Indian Country?
On Tuesday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden officially announced California Senator Kamala Harris as his pick for vice president. Harris famously comes from a background in law enforcement...
View ArticleA Novel Way to Fund a Green Economy
The government has been pretty kind to fossil fuel companies these last few months. Recent disclosures from the Federal Reserve’s secondary bond-buying program show that it has now bought $17 billion...
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The Douglass Republic
As our country grapples with a deadly pandemic, responds to still more outbreaks of police brutality, and bears astonished witness to street after street filled with fed-up citizens calling for change,...
View ArticleSuspect Policy
It’s difficult to see Faten Abu Ali’s expression, since her white veil leaves only her eyes uncovered. But those eyes are red, and her voice quivers with fear. With good reason: Last week, the...
View ArticleWhat I Learned From the Worst Novelist in the English Language
Some time ago, after several years on the job market, I landed a professorship at a small university in Wisconsin, a little moon of the state system orbiting the more recognizable institution in...
View ArticleLessons From the Frontlines of Global Warming
Ronnie Scott lost his wife when she tried to to rescue their dog and cat from floodwaters in West Virginia in 2016. Carole Duncan almost lost her 83-year-old father during Australia’s massive 2019...
View ArticleSocialism Is as American as Apple Pie
One of the strengths of the Republican Party is its message discipline. When it finds an issue that works, it beats that issue to death, flogging it long after it stops working. Thus after the Civil...
View ArticleWhy the Media Is Uniquely Terrible at Covering the U.S. Postal Service
Four months ago, the United States Postal Service warned Congress that it could run out of money by September, requesting a $75 billion bailout amid an unprecedented decrease in revenue due to...
View ArticleCan Democracy Handle Charisma?
Sometimes charismatic people don’t know their own strength. And sometimes they do. In private, charismatic people light up a room and make each person feel beloved. In public life, they’re the ones who...
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Joe Biden’s Great Reclamation Project
Provided that the polling of late summer holds (a big “if” in presidential politics), on January 20 Joe Biden will—as a late bloomer on par with Grandma Moses—have finally achieved his life’s great...
View Article“Being Vegan Doesn’t Save My Ass When Fires Come”
In late October 2019, the Kincade Fire spread from the area near a power plant in northern Sonoma County, California, to the towns of Windsor and Healdsburg and to the northeast part of Santa Rosa. It...
View ArticleJoe Kennedy’s Utterly Pointless, Utterly Consequential Campaign
On November 4, 1979, CBS aired an hour-long primetime special on the career and anticipated presidential campaign of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. Incidentally, this was the very same night...
View ArticleDemocrats Are So Worried About the Postal Service That They Might Finally Do...
There is a growing sense of panic about what is happening to the United States Postal Service, or USPS, as well as the president’s admission that its collapse would aid his election prospects—at least...
View ArticleSanders Has Become Biden’s Happy Warrior
The first night of the Democratic National PowerPoint Presentation went off without a major technical hitch. But partly owing to the uncanny nature of this virtual non-event, much of it had a very...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Eternal Wall Street Ticket
This summer, Wall Street made its peace with Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. If Donald Trump had spoiled the financial sector rotten for four years with tax cuts and regulation...
View ArticleWilliam Faulkner’s Southern Guilt
In February 1956, William Faulkner, blind drunk, gave an infamous interview. After toiling for decades in relative obscurity, Faulkner had become a literary celebrity—he had won the Nobel Prize seven...
View ArticleNewsweek and the Rise of the Zombie Magazine
Writing in The Columbia Journalism Review last year, Daniel Tovrov depicted Newsweek, once one of America’s most distinguished magazines, as a shell of its former self. All that was left was clickbait,...
View ArticleThe World’s Dumbest Authoritarian
What would the U.S. media say if the president of another country was threatening to hobble his nation’s postal service in hopes of suppressing ballots ahead of an election?Every once in a while, an...
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