Another Bright Shining Lie
We had a system in Afghanistan when I was with the Army: “red, amber, green.” The particulars differed slightly from brigade to brigade—some used different fonts and colors to measure local gradations...
View ArticleThe Horowitz Report Won’t Deter Trumpworld’s Conspiratorial Frothing
President Donald Trump and his allies spent almost three years denouncing the Russia investigation as a sham. They claimed it was part of a political vendetta by angry Democrats and disaffected...
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Vladimir Nabokov’s Fighting Spirit
In 1925 in Berlin, Vladimir Nabokov participated in a literary evening for Russian émigrés living in the German capital; the topic of his talk was a recent boxing match he attended at the Berlin Sports...
View ArticleThe New Behemoths of Health Care Bureaucracy
What are the ten biggest companies in the United States? Put that question to a group of younger people and they’re likely to rattle off tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Older people...
View ArticleSweetgreen’s Soft Rebrand of the GoFundMe Crisis Model
Sweetgreen, as you may already know, sells expensive salads. Its schtick is fairly simple: Take lettuce and kale, put it in a bowl with some other stuff—maybe chicken, maybe tofu, maybe cranberries—and...
View ArticleThe Trump-Kim Bromance Is Over
The next crisis between the United States and North Korea is here. It began, as it always does, with Donald Trump’s and Kim Jong Un’s dueling egos, and it likely ends with Trump paying a price for his...
View ArticleStop Overthinking Impeachment Politics
At 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, House Democrats formally unveiled two articles of impeachment that they would bring against President Donald Trump. The announcement brought the House one step closer to...
View ArticleThe Irishman and Parasite: Two Paths for the Hustle
You have to respect the hustle. No matter what else you might think of Robert De Niro’s Frank Sheeran, the titular anti-hero of Martin Scorsese’s twentieth-century gangster saga The Irishman, you have...
View ArticleScenes From the Ragged Edge of American Health Care
It’s 5:30 a.m., and Michael and Lancelot have been sitting on a metal bench in the dark for two and a half hours. At the Beltway Church of Christ in Suitland, Maryland, the two brothers are wrapped in...
View ArticleIf Elected, Joe Biden Should Be President for Five Minutes
On Wednesday, Politico reported that former Vice President Joe Biden has suggested to aides that he intends to serve only one term if he wins the 2020 presidential election. “According to four people...
View ArticleDoes It Really Matter That Buttigieg Worked for McKinsey?
On the 30-minute drive across eastern Iowa from Mount Vernon to Cedar Rapids on Saturday afternoon, Pete Buttigieg began (albeit with some prompting) by reciting Robert Frost: “Whose woods these are I...
View ArticleThe Heavy Burden of The Report
The Report is just an okay movie, which is too bad, because it needed to be great. Very few of the policymakers who enabled the grotesque, systematic torture of terror suspects in the aftermath of 9/11...
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The Tragedy of the Yale Commons
When 18-year-old Stephen A. Schwarzman, the son of a Philadelphia dry-goods store owner, entered Yale in 1965, he took his meals, like all freshmen, in the Commons, a vast, baronial dining hall in a...
View ArticleThe Dramatic Detachment of The Crown
About halfway through the new season of The Crown, Peter Morgan’s sweeping drama about the interior lives of the royal family, Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies) makes a drastic publicity move. It is the...
View ArticleWhat’s Lost When a Language Disappears
The cultural practices and locales that define the hundreds of Native communities dotting the North American landscape are grounded in languages. Each is unique, with distinct dialects, accents, and...
View ArticleBritons to Decide Whether to Prolong Tories’ Carnival of Austerity
It feels a bit like today is the end of the world; or, at least, the end of Britain. The general election being held in my home country today feels like the last shot we have at becoming a...
View ArticleWhy the Media Is Ignoring the Afghanistan Papers
This week, The Washington Post published the Afghanistan Papers, an extensive review of thousands of pages of internal government documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. Like the Pentagon Papers,...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg entered the presidential race in November with all the blinkered confidence of a billionaire who has heard time and again of his own business prowess and shrewd political instincts....
View ArticleThe Heavy-Handed Moralism of Terrence Malick’s New Film
It should be hard nowadays to make art set in Europe just before or during World War II without arousing some suspicion. Too often in such films and books there’s a longing, however concealed, for some...
View ArticleTrump’s Loyal Apprentice in Congress
On October 23, a gaggle of House Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz of Florida, stormed the Capitol’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Gaetz had hoped to expose the supposedly secretive nature...
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