American Right

  • Santos ‘R Us

    Jackie Silver, of Great Neck, said she had voted for Mr. Santos and would do so again. Ms. Silver said that those calling for him to face further investigation, or even relinquish his seat, were only targeting him because he is a Republican. … “He has to ask for forgiveness, and he’ll be forgiven,” Mr.

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  • Tom Frank on Liberal Obtuseness

    … liberals, intoxicated by their own righteousness, can never figure it out. They keep expecting the right to die off, as if poisoned by its diet of wickedness, and yet the Republicans persist, dreaming up new culture wars against the “liberal elite,” radicalizing themselves continually along the way, refusing to succumb. And what do liberals

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  • Beth Dutton: Uebermensch?

    Some further thoughts on themes about Fukuyama and how his ideas about Hegel and Nietzsche are represented in Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone: The concern of the last part of Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man is the "Last Man" part. The Last Man is Nietzsche's counterpoint to Hegel's First Man, the warrior aristocrat who

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  • The Duttons vs. The Roys

    The TV shows Succession and Yellowstone are very similar in that they are both about two powerful American overlords and their families. What's different about them is more interesting and significant. To understand why is to understand a lot about the clash between Red and Blue America. In a proxy war between the Duttons and

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  • Is It Finally the End of Trump?

    The front page above is from one of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing propaganda media properties. I don't know that it means much. MAGA is toothpaste that Trump squeezed out of the tube. It was always there, and now that it's out, it ain't goin' back in. If the MAGA Jacksonian base is just as Trumpy now as

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  • Some Thoughts on Election Day

    Whatever happens this week in the midterm elections, it won't be decisive. The stalemate will continue regardless whether the Red or Blue team gets the upper hand.  America has always had a split personality: One part Jeffersonian/Jacksonian, mostly premodern in its outlook, wanting to stay close to the land and keep to the old ways,

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  • Liberalism + Whatever

    There are moments of transition and turmoil when liberalism appears to stand alone, and liberals sometimes confuse these moments for an aspirational norm. But nobody except Hugh Hefner, Gordon Gekko and a few devotees of the old A.C.L.U. can bear to live for very long under conditions of pure liberalism. Instead, the norm for successful

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  • Moral Parity

    The former president recognized that the fact of an investigation was far more important than the results. It worked with the Benghazi investigation, about which House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was accidentally honest, and in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, which didn’t produce charges but did hobble her presidential campaign. By the time Trump

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  • Third Party Solution? II

    Annie Lowry interviews Andrew Yang about the Forward Party in the Atlantic: Lowrey: You say that Forward wants to represent rural Democrats and city-dwelling Republicans. Which policies are you pushing with this centrist party? … Yang: That is one of the more interesting communications challenges for something like Forward. We’re so accustomed to something falling on a

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  • The Coming Violence

    These people, acting individually or in small groups, will be led not by rebel generals but by narcissistic wannabe heroes, and they will be egged on by cowards and instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio—or from behind the shield of elected office. Occasionally, they will congeal into

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