I Quit the GOP and Moved Left. Will Liz Cheney Do the Same?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Liz Cheney. Her courage in standing up to Donald Trump and the increasingly authoritarian Republican Party shouldn’t make her exceptional—ideally, she would have a...
View ArticleJoe Biden Can’t Duck the Jerusalem Crisis
Israeli security forces spent the weekend beating and arresting Palestinian worshippers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Coming late in the holy month of Ramadan, these...
View ArticleThanks to a Horse, the Cancel Culture Debate Just Got Even Dumber
In 2021, anything can be turned into culture-war fodder. Republicans are hoarding Goya beans and Aunt Jemima syrup to own the libs. The Muppets have been canceled. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, too. A...
View ArticleThe Pandemic Planners Were Ready. No One Listened.
The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare many fault lines in American society, from the savage inequalities of our health care system to the collapse of federal governance into a quagmire of blame-shifting...
View ArticleWhy the Democrats Need an Architectural Vision to Counter the Right’s
For years, Donald Trump groused about the ugly architecture in Washington. And then, in December, in the waning days of his presidency, he handed down the “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic...
View ArticleListen Closely to the Cicadas. They’re Telling Us Something.
They went to ground as John Kerry was “reporting for duty” at the Democratic National Convention, deftly avoiding the release of Princess Diaries 2 a few weeks later. They’ve missed the launch of...
View ArticleLow Wages and Crappy Jobs Gave Us the Labor “Shortage”
Too many American workers have become layabouts living off the government dole. That’s the message—same as it ever was—being sent by some businesses and Republican politicians who think that recent...
View ArticleRahm Emanuel Gets Another Job He Doesn’t Deserve
The Biden administration currently has two major initiatives to fight joblessness in America. One is the American Jobs Plan, a $2 trillion package for infrastructure, health care, and clean energy that...
View ArticleDecolonize the Lithium Boom
Last week, The New York Times reported on the upcoming opening of what will be America’s second functional lithium mine—a signal of the nation’s official entrance into the current lithium boom, which...
View ArticleJoe Biden, Tear Down Stephen Miller’s Administrative Wall
For all the talk of constructing a wall on America’s southern border over the past five years, one of the Trump-era notions less discussed outside the immigration policy world was that of a wall of...
View ArticleI Was a Facebook Content Moderator. I Quit in Disgust.
A lot of people in Austin do this job. I knew that it was moderation. I knew that I would be looking at gross content. There’s a lot of turnover at first. For most people, they’re coming from retail or...
View ArticleThe Republican “Civil War” Is Actually Just the Trump GOP Against a Few Losers
As she fought to keep her job as the third-most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, Liz Cheney returned again and again to the same argument. The GOP had a choice: It could continue to...
View ArticleHow Adrienne Rich Changed Her Mind
In 1975, Adrienne Rich wrote a letter to the editor in The New York Review of Books, scolding Susan Sontag for suggesting that contemporary feminists had played a part in promoting Nazi filmmaker Leni...
View ArticleGiving Up on Economic Growth Could Make Us Cooler and Happier
Depending on which climate advocate you talk to, economic growth can either be the force that will deliver us from planetary destruction or the source of it. Most climate models assume growth is a...
View ArticleThe Undefeated
When I was an undergraduate, long ago, there was a legend at my college concerning a student who was up for a summa cum laude degree in English literature and failed not only to garner that high honor...
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Democracy’s Moment of Reckoning
Early in the morning of April 1, Texas state Senator Bryan Hughes, a Republican who represents a rural district in the northeast part of the state, posted a video to Twitter from the Capitol in Austin....
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Majority Is Hanging By a Thread. They Don’t Seem to Care.
On Wednesday, after a speech that saw House Republicans quit the chamber in protest and a closed-door vote, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a vociferous critic of the claim that President Biden stole...
View ArticleCan Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Betrayal Expose the Grift of Cryptocurrency?
It’s a dark day on meme street. Elon Musk, one of Bitcoin’s high priests, seems to have turned against the cryptocurrency, sending its value tumbling more than 10 percent and calling into question an...
View ArticleThe Incredibly Stupid, Entirely Avoidable Gas Panic of 2021
As you may well have heard by now, the Colonial Pipeline—a 5,500-mile system that provides the East Coast with nearly half of its gas supply—shut down last Friday after a ransomware attack by a group...
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Branding ACT-UP
Imagine this: You’re a photo editor at a major newspaper. The year is 1991. Tomorrow, a story about a protest by the activist group ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) is running in the paper, and...
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