Latest posts
-
The Freedom to Go Broke: Republicans Unveil Their Plan to Liberate You From Affordable Healthcare
The GOP has finally found a solution to the problem of people having health insurance. It involves taking the money away and giving you a coupon for a savings account you cannot afford to fund. There is a specific kind of grim comedy that defines American healthcare policy. It is the comedy of a man
-
The Myth of the “Good Old Days”: A Thanksgiving Toast to the Eras That Tried to Erase Us
We gather here today, in the warm glow of incandescent bulbs and familial obligation, to perform the sacred ritual of forced gratitude. The table is set. The turkey is dry. The cranberry sauce retains the ridges of the can, a gelatinous monument to industrial efficiency. And around the perimeter, a collection of relatives—some beloved, some
-
The Politics of the Kids’ Table: A Survival Guide for the Holidays
The cranberry sauce is shaped like the can. The turkey is dry enough to be used as attic insulation. The tension in the room is vibrating at a frequency usually reserved for bomb disposal units or hostage negotiations. Welcome to Thanksgiving in America. We are gathered here today to worship at the altar of “Family
-
The Great American Price Gouge: Why Your Grocery Bill Is a Corporate Ransom Note
The modern American experience is defined by a very specific, recurring moment of vertigo that occurs standing in the aisle of a fluorescent-lit grocery store. You are holding a box of cereal, a product made of corn dust and sugar that costs pennies to manufacture, and you are staring at a price tag that suggests
-
Red Scare 8.0: How Idiots Still Don’t Understand The Difference Between Socialism and Communism
Why You Should Probably Google Words Before You Scream Them at Thanksgiving Dinner Welcome, patriots, comrades, and confused centrists. Grab a beverage—preferably one produced by a worker-owned cooperative or a ruthless multinational conglomerate, depending on your vibe—because we are about to embark on a journey. A journey into the heart of darkness. By “darkness,” I
-
The Ring Is in the Dishwasher, but the Marriage Is in the Sewer: Why Usha Vance Might Finally Be Tired of the MAGA Casting Call
There is a specific genre of political theater that plays out in the unspoken spaces of a marriage, a silent drama usually reserved for the frantic final act of a melodramatic screenplay. But recently, that drama has spilled out onto the campaign trail and into the glossy pages of People magazine, centering on the ring
-
No Good Deed and the Critics: Why ‘Wicked’ Is the Tragedy We Deserve
The lights went down in the theater, and for a brief moment, the collective anxiety of the world—the elections, the economy, the general sense that we are living in the final season of a poorly written reality show—suspended itself in the dark. I sat there with Matthew, my fiance and designated emotional anchor, and our
-
The Oracle of Failure: Larry Summers, the Epstein Emails, and the Poetry of Bad Judgment
For decades, Larry Summers has functioned less as a human being and more as a sentient institution, a kind of granite monument to the neoliberal consensus that simply refuses to erode. He is the man who is always wrong but never fired, the failing up champion of the Western world who managed to wreck the
-
Nancy Mace and the Charleston Airport Meltdown: A One-Woman Soap Opera the Constitution Was Never Built to Withstand
The congresswoman who once wore a Scarlet Letter to protest being insufficiently seen has now discovered an even more reliable path to attention, and it involves screaming at airport cops about her BMW. There are weeks in American politics that unfold like chapters in a serious novel, quietly advancing structural themes and inching toward institutional
-
The FEMA Administrator Vanishes During a Flood, and Suddenly We’re All Supposed to Pretend This Is Fine
America asked for a functional disaster agency, and the administration handed us a shrug in a windbreaker. There is a particular stillness that happens right before the government announces a resignation. You can almost hear the PowerPoint slides being frantically re-saved under new filenames, the comms staff muttering into their sleeves, the soft metallic clang