There was a time when Americans were told the country was split between left and right, as if citizenship were a booth at a county fair and democracy Continue Reading
Politics
It’s Good That Gas Prices Are So High. It Reminds People That There Is Actually a War On.
Americans hate high gas prices. Politicians know it, economists study it, and every election cycle seems to include promises to bring them down. Continue Reading
When Whiteness Becomes Probable Cause
There’s a point where a society stops pursuing justice and starts playing racial bingo with a body still warm on the floor. We have reached that Continue Reading
Failure Got Promoted and You Got the Bill
Failure used to leave a bruise. Now it gets a staff retreat, a revised title, and a lanyard printed by people who think “impact” is a substitute Continue Reading
The Hot Take Laundromat
Nothing in modern public life is more impressive than the speed with which allegedly serious people can convert ignorance into certainty. Give them a Continue Reading
The Sanctimony Industrial Complex
We’ve built a society where moral status is rented by the hour, and the monthly fee is public performance. That’s the thesis. Not that people have Continue Reading
The Virtue Bunker
There is no sermon more passionate than the one delivered from a safe zip code. That is the central racket of modern public life. The people most Continue Reading
The Cost of Truth is a Comfortable Lie
“The further a society moves from the truth, the more they will hate those who speak it.” It’s a quote often attributed to George Orwell, and Continue Reading
China’s “Lay Flat” Problem: Passive Resistance in an Age of Active Competition
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
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