Latest posts
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The Half-Mast Presidency: Selective Empathy as a National Ritual
Flags for Some, Not for Others There is nothing quite as American as fighting about flags. We argue about who can kneel before them, who can burn them, whether rainbows belong on them, and now—who gets the honor of lowering them. President Donald Trump ordered U.S. flags lowered nationwide for Charlie Kirk. A right-wing commentator
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Shutdown Theater: Now With More Subsidies and Security Funds!
Welcome back to Washington, America’s longest-running soap opera, where every September the same plotline airs: Will the government shut down? Will Speaker [insert name here, they rotate faster than NFL quarterbacks] hold the caucus together? Will Chuck Schumer furrow his brows meaningfully? And will anyone, at any point, think about the millions of actual humans
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The Party of Free Speech Wants a Muzzle—As Long as It’s for You
Ah, yes. The brave defenders of free speech. The warriors against cancel culture. The self-styled martyrs of the “say what you want, snowflake” movement. They’ve spent years assuring us that America needs to be a safe space—for their offensive jokes, for their racist uncle’s Facebook rants, for their senator’s homophobic tweets typed at 3 a.m.
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Trump’s War on the Calendar: Why Four Quarters Are Just Too Many for Capitalism to Handle
Once again Donald J. Trump has logged on to Truth Social, thumb trembling with the divine power of an unpaid intern, to announce that America no longer needs quarterly earnings reports. Semiannual will do just fine, thank you. If this feels familiar, that’s because it is. Trump tried the same thing in 2018, after a
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JD Vance Turns Charlie Kirk’s Memorial Into a Campaign Rally With Tax Audits
When Mourning Means Monetizing Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. That’s the fact. It happened. A 33-hour manhunt followed. Police arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. The motive remains under investigation. This should have been the moment for solemnity. Reflection. A funeral, not a fundraiser. Instead, the White House turned it into programming content. Vice
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Brian Kilmeade and the “Just Kill ’Em” Doctrine: Fox News Accidentally Says the Quiet Part Louder
If satire is dead, Brian Kilmeade personally strangled it on live television when he suggested, with all the seriousness of a man discussing football stats, that unhoused people with mental illness should receive “involuntary lethal injections.” His actual phrasing—“just kill ’em”—landed with the thud of a guillotine blade hitting the stage floor of Fox &
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Trump’s Federal Reserve Circus: Cutting Rates and Ties With Reality
When Independence Means Whatever He Says There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Donald Trump trying to fire someone he doesn’t like. Now he’s aiming at the Federal Reserve, the supposedly independent temple of monetary policy that has somehow become just another episode of his reality show. Markets expect a 25-basis-point cut at
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Groypers, Grievances, and the Great MAGA Family Reunion
Every political movement develops factions. The Bolsheviks had Mensheviks, the Catholics had Protestants, the Beatles had Yoko. But no coalition fractures quite like the MAGAverse, which has managed to stuff twelve different ideological cliques into one red hat—and none of them particularly like each other. If the Republican Party used to be a country club,
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The Eternal Gravity of Shit: Why Hierarchy Is Humanity’s Favorite Hobby
We like to tell ourselves that human beings are noble, empathetic creatures. We write novels about kindness, sing songs about love, build religions around compassion. But spend thirty seconds in line at Starbucks or thirty minutes Doordashing lukewarm Chipotle to someone in yoga pants, and the truth hits you in the face like a soggy
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From Widow’s Wail to War Cry: The Kirk Tragedy and America’s Talent for Turning Grief Into Ammunition
The Grief Industry Goes Prime Time Charlie Kirk is dead, assassinated on September 10 in Utah. His young widow, Erika Frantzve Kirk, took to the microphone the next day, vowing that “the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.” It should have been a moment of mourning. It should