Subterms
As the joke goes, when confronted by a grizzly, you don’t have to outrun the bear — you just need to outrun your camping partner. With the bear symbolizing every form of headwind that both candidates in the 2020 US election face — from COVID-19, ongoing protests and the US economy to a dozen-odd domestic and […] More
Unreliable narrators are a staple of literature. Consider the delusional, self-serving narrator of Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” or the way Humbert Humbert used his cultured references and gorgeous prose to dress up his crimes in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Now along comes John Bolton and his account of time served in the Trump administration as national security adviser. Bolton’s […] More
As the COVID-19 crisis is gradually slowing down, the world is bracing itself for a very likely second wave of the pandemic. While the shortcomings of the global response and the preparedness of individual countries will be open for debate and analysis for a long time to come, attempting to forecast what architecture the international […] More
In the guise of political reporting, Newsweek has produced a quasi-evangelical account of the new Democratic messiah, a man named Joseph, descended from the tribe of the Bidens. The author, Steve Friess, narrates the story of a man with an inspired vocation. The story begins as the soon-to-be-anointed prophet labors at bringing together his 12 […] More
Some 600,000 Wisconsinites, five polling stations. Do the math. For as long as I can remember, I eagerly watched my parents connect arrows, mark their votes and mail off their ballots. It seems seamless, but in many states, only once you request a ballot by mail can the at-home voting process proceed. Imagine thousands filing […] More
For much of the past decade, radical right-wing populism in the Netherlands has largely been associated with Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV). Following in the footsteps of the late Pim Fortuyn, Wilders established himself as one of Western Europe’s most outspoken promoters of anti-Islamic rhetoric, whose often outrageous and inflammatory rants exerted […] More
Economists like to think of the wreckage caused by stock market downturns, widespread bankruptcies and corporate downsizing as “creative destruction.” As it destroys the old and the dysfunctional, the capitalist system continually spurs innovation, much as a forest fire prepares the ground for new growth. Or so the representatives of the dismal science argue. Donald […] More
For at least the past 30 years, the strategy of the Democratic Party in the US has consistently focused solely on winning elections by arguing that its oligarchic loyalties are less servile than those of the Republicans. Since Bill Clinton’s presidency in the 1990s, the party has never strayed from that orientation, even after repeatedly […] More
