‘Illiberalism’s history is America’s history’

“American illiberalism is deeply rooted in our past and fed by practices, relationships and sensibilities that have been close to the surface, even when they haven’t exploded into view,” writes Steven Hahn in a NYT column that condenses the arguments from Illiberal America, which I reviewed a couple days ago. America, as William S. Burroughs

April 2024 reading

“Even as they are in some ways the greatest beneficiaries of democracy’s distribution of influences, rural whites are the least committed to our system,” writes Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman in White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, a history whose self-explanatory title indicts a system in which, say, Wyoming’s legislative representation matters as

‘Civil War’ answers the question of the great American ‘What if?’

Now that’s a box office hit #1 in America for the last two weekends, it’s time to reckon with Civil War. A 110-minute thriller about the dissolution of the United States into sectional warfare, Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) offers no exposition; he treats info with the delicacy of sprinkling grated cheese on a salad.

DeSantis sees red

At least Governor Ron DeSantis has focused on priorities: Students in traditional public and charter K-12 schools are on track to receive instruction on the history of communism beginning in the 2026-27 academic year in what is billed as an age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate way.

No moral conservatism exists

11. Without apartheid, South Africa would fall into the hands of "witch doctors … and reckless demagogues.” Russell Kirk, 1967. — Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 6, 2013 No liberal — no Democrat — should pine for a “reasonable” conservative party. None has existed in my lifetime. The Republican Party of Pat Buchanan, Ronald Reagan, Jesse

Ron DeSantis will save us from reefer madness

On a quiet Fourth of July weekend eleven years ago, over Grand Marnier or port, I can’t remember, my father shared views on marijuana dependent on what must’ve been a high school reel-to-reel screening of Reefer Madness. “Trust me, it’s a bad thing,” he growled. “It leaves you like this.” He imitated an interrogation victim

Normalizing a Trump reelection, one croqueta at a time

I drove past the Madruga Cafe last week, and, yep, this is real. I will not link to it: Just over a week ago, Madruga and his wife Aida replaced the sign on their namesake cafe with a banner bearing an image of the former president flashing a thumbs up, with an American flag in

Florida “a foreign, freakish concept of a state”

I reacted to the stats in this story with little surprise but with a chill: yes, Florida (the state with the prettiest name!) has seen record population growth in the last five years, but we have traded our young for the old. Very conservative older people. A Polk County historian, Billy Townsend crunches the data:

January 2024 reading

Two remarkable memoirs stood out during a busy month. Crisp but running over with feeling, A Childhood evokes a time and a place. A boy who grows up on a Georgia farm circa 1935 learns to use every part of an animal. This reader learned how to scale (as opposed to skin!) a hog, care

Ron DeSantis: Little man, what now?

I called it. When Floridians reelected Ron DeSantis by a double-digit margin in November 2022 I wrote: “Like Richard Nixon in January 1973, two months after one of the century’s most convincing landslide victories and sixteen months before resignation, Ron DeSantis has peaked. On every phone and TV, behind every sofa, he will see Donald

What I read in 2023

Sleeplessness is for me a cherished state, to be desired at almost any cost; there is nothing for me as invigorating as the early morning shedding of the shadowy half-consciousness of a night’s loss, reacquainting myself with what I might have lost completely a few hours earlier. I occasionally experience myself as a cluster of

On the novelty of today’s far right

An expert on the gyrations of conservatism, Corey Robin appears on “Factually! with Adam Conover” for a fascinating hour in which he discusses the history of the American far right, its partial origins in the French Revolution, how Donald Trump is and isn’t its product, and how Clarence Thomas became the most influential SCOTUS justice