The Tyranny of the Pandemic Office
The worst manager I ever had could slip frictionlessly between enthusiasm and furor, high fives and reprimands. He liked to stalk through the restaurant where we worked, his shiny shoes and shiny hair...
View ArticleThe Case Against the $2,000 Checks
Now that the Democrats have won control of the Senate, with a 50–50 split and a tie-breaking vote for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, they should forget about those $2,000 stimulus checks and...
View ArticleDemocrats Are Finally Unafraid to Be the Party of Free Money
For decades, Democrats have tried to downplay any desire to simply give people cash benefits, seemingly fearful of being seen as doling out freebies to the lazy and undeserving—“welfare queens,” in the...
View ArticleAmerica’s Obsession With “Peaceful” Transitions Crashes Into Reality
As pageants go, presidential inaugurations are tame affairs. I went to one—Bill Clinton’s first, when I was 12—and don’t remember a thing about it. The parades are dull, the balls forgettable, the...
View ArticleThe Conservative Media Really Wants You to Think the Capitol Riot Is the...
Speaking on Fox News hours after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, a somber Tucker Carlson had a message for his audience: What happened was tragic, but it was also understandable—maybe even...
View ArticleThe $2,000 Checks and Our Failing Vaccine Rollout Have Something in Common
Even the prospect of the government cutting Americans no-strings-attached $2,000 checks seemed, as 2020 ended, to send certain moderates and liberals into a state of mild panic, as they imagined the...
View ArticleNext Week Might Be Too Late to Impeach Trump
It’s been almost three days since President Donald Trump incited a mob to attack Capitol Hill. So far, Facebook and Twitter have responded more forcefully to the attack on Congress than Congress has in...
View ArticleThe Capitol Riot Is Inspiring Far-Right Groups Around the World
Watching armed neo-Nazis and other extremists violently storm the Capitol building on Wednesday, my first thoughts weren’t of reaction in Washington D.C. Instead, I wondered who was watching in...
View ArticleThis Year’s Underground Sensation: Modern Monetary Theory
At the close of 2020, it’s hard to think of another year in living memory that has forced such a radical rethinking of our politics and social life. The Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered as a dire...
View ArticleDemocrats Shouldn’t Just Restore American Democracy. They Should Reinvent It.
At long last, it seems like nearly every Democrat in Washington finally agrees on something: impeaching Donald Trump (a second time) and removing him from office. Nancy Pelosi has declared that she is...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Stark, Historic Choice
Let’s get something straight. The press and many of our leaders have converged upon an implicit consensus that last Wednesday should be understood as the nadir of the Trump era—as a tipping point...
View ArticleThe Democrats Keep Recycling Tired Rhetoric
Over the past 60 years, two inaugural addresses, in particular, have left a lasting impression on Democratic oratory. In 1961, John Kennedy embodied the spirit of Cold War patriotism with his ringing,...
View ArticleDie Laughing at the Capitol
I am trying to cope with anti-democratic social collapse during a pandemic by reading local news stories about the people who stormed the Capitol. There was the remorseful CEO from the Chicago...
View ArticleFeeling Trump’s Pain
“But just remember this: You’re smarter, you’re stronger, you’ve got more going than anybody, and they try and demean everybody having to do with us.”—Donald Trump, January 6, 2021“We need to be the...
View ArticleWhy America Loves the Death Penalty
On the evening of February 16, 1961, 19-year-old Wilbert Rideau found himself at a loose end. He’d missed the bus after finishing work in his hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and couldn’t get a...
View ArticleTrump’s Four-Year Drilling Binge Has Done Irreparable Damage
Last week, amid the chaos of the Capitol riot, the Trump administration proceeded with plans to sell off chunks of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the gas and oil industry’s highest bidders. The...
View ArticleWhy Are Journalists and Surveillance Researchers Helping the FBI to Catch...
Last week, in the wake of the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol, The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a story about an Air Force pilot turned extremist who was photographed during the maelstrom...
View ArticleStop Comparing the Capitol Riot to Banana Republics. It’s Lazy—and Wrong.
The Trump-incited insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday was a fitting coda to a presidency that came into this world likening Mexicans to “criminals and rapists” and that has, along the way,...
View ArticlePost-Work Migration and the End of America
People have always moved to live, from early agrarian societies seeking fertile land to the undocumented workforce that currently powers this country’s agricultural sector. More recent, though, are the...
View ArticleMichael Apted Took The Very Long View
When the director Michael Apted died at 79 years old on January 7, social media lit up with remembrances. He had directed many films, including Coal Miner’s Daughter, and more recently, prestige shows...
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