American Right
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Putin Going Postal
Just as individual narcissists appear to be inflated egotists but are really insecure souls trying to cover their fragility, narcissistic nations and groups that parade their power are often actually haunted by fear of their own weakness. Narcissists crave recognition, but they can never get enough. Narcissists crave psychic security but act in self-destructive ways
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Ukraine Silver Lining
But Mr. Putin’s savaging of Ukraine, which many of his right-wing supporters had said he would never do, has recast the Russian president more clearly as a global menace and boogeyman with ambitions of empire who is threatening nuclear war and European instability. For many of his longtime admirers — from France to Germany and
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Jamelle Bouie on Civil War
…if you’re worried about a second Civil War, the question to ask isn’t whether people hate each other — they always have and we tend to grossly exaggerate the extent of this country’s political and cultural unity over time — but whether that hate results from the irreconcilable social and economic interests of opposing groups
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Edsall on White Unhappiness
Graham and Pinto measured poll respondents’ sense of purpose, sense of community and their financial and social well-being and found that “blacks and Hispanics typically score higher than whites,” noting that “these findings highlight the remarkable levels of resilience among blacks living in precarious circumstances compared to their white counterparts.” Graham and Pinto write: The
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Genealogy Part 5: Salience Landscapes v. Salience Bubbles
I don't see myself as doing anything particularly original, but I do see myself as part of a larger effort to get things rebalanced. When I talk about the "Living Real", that's real for me, but I am no prodigy in the scope of my experience of it. It's real enough for me that it
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Edsall on the Big Lie
Bart Bonikowski, a sociologist at N.Y.U., describes the danger of this political dynamic: In capturing the party, Trump perfectly embodied its ethnonationalist and authoritarian tendencies and delivered it concrete results — even if his policy stances were not always perfectly aligned with party orthodoxy. As a result, the Republican Party and Trumpism have become fused
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Jacobin Magazine on The Great Books
As early as 2003, a student editorialist for the Harvard Crimson complained that it was possible to graduate from that august institution without reading Aristotle or William Shakespeare. True, students bothered by this tend to be conservative little shits — but they are right to complain. More important than the decline of Harvard, however, is
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A Genealogy of Our Current Insanity, Part I
[This is the 1st installment in a series. Links to the other installments are found at the end of this post] “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs,” Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend in 1753, “[yet] if he goes to see his relations and
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America in 2025
The historical irony is rich. Democracy has a better than even chance of being permanently subverted by those who in their delusions believe it already has been. They aim to turn the country in fact into a far worse version of what in their fevered imaginations they already believe it has become.
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Quote of the Day: Terry Eagleton
Western capitalism, in short, has managed to help spawn not only secularism but also fundamentalism, a most creditable feat of dialectics. Having slain the deity, it has now had a hand in restoring him to life, as a refuge and a strength for those who feel crushed by its own predatory politics. If it finds