In recent years, a quiet but consequential social trend has emerged in the People’s Republic of China: tang ping (躺平), or “laying flat.” At its core, Continue Reading
Politics
Protected, Powerful, and Still Performing Persecution
There’s a fascinating little magic trick modern Western culture performs every day. A woman can live in the most legally protected, socially Continue Reading
America’s Four-Year Experiment in Presidential Puppetry
In 1968, Star Trek aired one of its nastier little morality plays, an episode called “Patterns of Force,” in which a Federation historian tries to Continue Reading
Explaining Iran’s “These Hands Are Rated E for Everyone” Strategy
To most Americans, Iran’s foreign policy often looks less like grand strategy and more like a drunken bar fight. Missiles at Israel. Proxy attacks Continue Reading
When the Virtue Machine Learned to Hate in Public
The most impressive trick of modern American moral culture is that it can take an ancient prejudice, hose it down with graduate-school vocabulary, Continue Reading
The Watchdog Put the Wolves on Payroll
There are scandals that shock the conscience, and then there are scandals that walk in wearing a nametag that says, “Obviously.” The Southern Poverty Continue Reading
Useless Geniuses: The Complement to Useful Idiots
There’s a term that gets thrown around a lot in political and military circles: useful idiot. I wrote about it here on The Havok Journal. Other Continue Reading
The Bribe Faucet Is Drowning the Republic
America doesn’t have a polarization problem. America has a cash-register problem. The screaming, the tribal jerseys, the cable-news arsonists, the Continue Reading
The Revolution Would Start Right After Brunch
If Americans ever truly understood how money works in this country, there wouldn’t be a revolution by morning because this is still America and half Continue Reading
Europe’s Deadbeat Patriots
The European Union has a marketing problem, but that’s not the real emergency. The real emergency is that half of Europe’s political class treats the Continue Reading
The Outrage Buffet Is Open, and America Has Gone Back for Fifths
Hatred is a contagion, but let’s not insult viruses. Viruses at least have the decency to mutate quietly in a Petri dish. American hatred straps on a Continue Reading
The Democracy Fainting Couch Rolls Out Again
Well, break out the smelling salts and emergency tote bags, because the democracy fainting couch has once again been rolled into the national living Continue Reading