Am. History & Culture

  • Toward a Normie Progressive Politics

    I'm getting a little self-conscious about my incessant references to Ezra Klein, but he is quite remarkable for having his finger on what I see as the critical issues. This week he had on Michelle Goldberg, a woman I respect as a sensible Progressive and like for her intellectual honesty and personal authenticity. But she's

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  • Bremerton Coach Wins His Crusade

    Speaking of religious fanaticism and the courts, I wrote about this guy in May in response to David French's defense of his right to pray on the fifty yard line. He won his day in court 6-3 with Gorsuch writing the majority opinion. Here's how I concluded in my piece in May: It's not clear

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  • The Woe of Roe 2

    Setting aside the record of insincerity from Alito himself and the other conservative justices, the reason not to trust his disclaimer is that the Supreme Court has become an institution whose primary role is to force a right-wing vision of American society on the rest of the country. The conservative majority’s main vehicle for this

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  • Constitutional Jump Ball

    If it wasn't clear already, it is now. January 6 was a coup attempt, and it had a good chance of working had Mike Pence been the wimp that Trump always thought he was. Pence is reported to have thought of himself as on a mission from God, and maybe this was it: to stand

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  • Progressives v. Jacobins

    For so long, San Francisco has been too self-satisfied to address the slow rot in every one of its institutions. But nothing’s given me more hope than the rage and the recalls. “San Franciscans feel ashamed,” Michelle Tandler told me. “I think for the first time people are like, ‘Wait, what is a progressive? …

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  • The Case against Trump–and the GOP

    Liz Cheney's indictment as summarized by Amanda Carpenter: Trump’s misinformation campaign provoked the violence on January 6th. Trump corruptly planned to replace the Attorney General of the United States so the U.S. Justice Department would spread his false stolen election claims. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes on January

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  • The Danger of This Moment 1

    “Unlike the bulk of their colleagues who are eager to remain in office, Romney and Cheney have decided continuing to serve in Congress is not worth the bargain of remaining silent about an individual they believe poses a threat to American democracy,” Jonathan [Martin] told me. “They also can’t understand why Republican colleagues they respect

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  • Reactionary Chic

    Whereas the old Christian conservatism was about defending an old order, the new social conservatism is about overthrowing a new one. The transformation of the right is a direct response to a shift on the left. In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the G.O.P. was the party of the traditional

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  • The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

    In fact, if you ask me what really went wrong after 1991, it’s … that there was no recognition among the Soviet elites that they had lost the Cold War and that they had deserved to lose it. Instead, people like Putin and others nursed resentments about betrayal and humiliation—as if the Soviet Union had

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  • Ukraine and the Politics of Inevitability

    Because the politics of inevitability assures you that whatever the good things are, they’re being brought about automatically by some invisible hand, right? The market is like Mom. You know, it’s going to take care of you with that invisible hand. And you don’t have to think about what the values might be, what you

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