The other day Trump staged a hang sesh with Salvadorian president Bukele. He got the party rolling by saying that Bukele “is a friend of mine and we went through this together and got along […]
Consumerism / Labor / Politics / Technology
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Burn the Tesla Brand and Ignore the Guilt Trip
It’s all over the news. Musk trying to blame democrats for the attacks on Tesla. And republicans are humpin’ the mic, too, trying to reverse the blame, as former Wisconsin senator David Craig does in […]
Politics
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The Dictator’s Mask of Efficiency
Throughout history, efficiency has been touted as one of the benefits of a dictatorship. The trope “German efficiency” derives from the organized and deliberate manner in which the Nazis came to power. Hitler’s oratorical style […]
Class / Culture / Politics
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Where Are the “Goddamned Liberals” Now?
In 2015, I met a retired lieutenant commander in the United States Navy who had purchased a small townhouse about a block down the road from mine. He was often in the yard doing renovations […]
Class / Culture / Politics
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President Pennywise and the (Un)real Reign of Terror
An appliance can become art, like Duchamp’s urinal did. But to do that it must give up being an appliance. A gallows installed on the National Mall on January 6, with a sign on it […]
Culture / Politics
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Mitch McConnell: Master of the Obvious
In two years, a great iterator of the evident will retire from the United States Senate. He was a man who stood for undeniable truth. A man who destroyed the separation of church and state […]
Class / Culture / Media / Politics / Technology
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Zuckerbucks Says Later Days to the Facts
During the 2016 election, a Buzzfeed News analysis found that “fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined.” This, no doubt, is what […]
Class / Politics
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Fascism: How We Stepped in It
You know the joke about the three guys who encounter dog shit? They smell it, touch it, taste it, confirm that it’s dog shit and walk away glad that they didn’t step in it. America’s […]
Culture / Dystopia / Literature / Philippic / Politics
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The Dystopia Files: It Can’t Happen Here
Sinclair Lewis wrote this political satire of American exceptionalism in the early 1930s, when one in four Americans were out of work and the complacent assumptions he’d ridiculed in Babbitt were rasped away by real […]
Culture / Dystopia / Literature / Philippic / Politics
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The Dystopia Files: When the Sleeper Wakes
H.G. Wells originally published When the Sleeper Awakes in 1898 as a serial in The Graphic, an illustrated London newspaper. In his preface to the 1910 edition, The Sleeper Awakes, he expressed disappointment with the […]