Latest posts
-
Trump’s $12 Billion Apology Note to Farmers Is Signed With Your Credit Card
The arsonist has returned to the scene of the crime, not to put out the fire, but to sell the victims a very expensive glass of water. On Monday, the political circus will descend upon Washington with the heavy, frantic energy of a infomercial host realizing his product is defective. President Trump, flanked by a
-
The Bulwark Wants to Build a Bigger Ship, But We Are Already Underwater
When the sensible conservatives start sounding like doomsday preppers, it is time to check the expiration date on the canned goods. There is a specific frequency of alarm that only emits from the offices of The Bulwark. It is not the shrill, glass-shattering panic of liberal Twitter, nor is it the guttural, blood-and-soil roar of
-
Apple’s Spaceship Has a Hull Breach: Why the Smartest Guys in the Room Are Ejecting
Tim Cook is wandering the halls of the Infinite Loop with a roll of duct tape and a bag of stock options, but the airlock is already open. There is a specific kind of panic that sets in when the invincible object suddenly cracks. For the last decade, Apple has been the monolith of Silicon
-
The Constitution Stops at the Water’s Edge: Why We Drone Strike Boat Captains but Pardon Kings
When the penalty for smuggling is a Hellfire missile, we have not won the War on Drugs; we have simply decided to stop taking prisoners. The American legal system is famously obsessed with procedure. We have entire libraries filled with books about the rights of the accused, the rules of evidence, and the precise geometric
-
The Battle of Suriname: How We Saved Ohio from a Boat Headed to the Netherlands
The White House promised us they were stopping a direct threat to the homeland, but it turns out they were just interdicting a shipment for the Amsterdam party scene with a Hellfire missile. Geography has never been a strong suit of the American empire. We have a long and storied history of confusing one desert
-
The Avengers Assemble to Save Cinema from the Algorithm: Why Hollywood Just Sent an Anonymous Ransom Note to Congress
The call is coming from inside the beach house. A secret cabal of A-list directors is begging the government to stop Netflix from turning Warner Bros. into a content sludge factory, while the President tries to cast the winner like a reality show finale. There is a specific genre of panic that only exists in
-
The Cartography of Coercion: How the Supreme Court Just Turned Texas into a Republican Fortress
Democracy isn’t dying in darkness; it’s being rezoned in broad daylight with a high-resolution plotter. Somewhere in a windowless room in Austin, under the hum of fluorescent lights and the whir of cooling fans, a team of political cartographers is high-fiving. They have just pulled off the heist of the century, and they didn’t even
-
The United States of Amnesia: Importing the European Nursing Home Model to Save the Snowflakes
When the goal is to turn a dynamic superpower into a gated community for the frightened, you end up importing the stagnation along with the prejudice. There is a specific kind of architectural madness currently gripping the West Wing, a design flaw in the blueprint of the new American century that would be laughable if
-
The Canary Just Coughed Up Blood: Why a “Safe” Seat in Tennessee Is the GOP’s Chernobyl
When a twenty-two point lead shrinks to single digits, you don’t pop champagne; you check the foundation for termites. In the grandiose, self-mythologizing atlas of the Republican Party, Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District is supposed to be a fortress. It is drawn with the kind of jagged, protective geometry that ensures a generic conservative can sleepwalk
-
The United States of Racketeering: Governing by the Code of the Hitman
When the Situation Room becomes a mob social club, the only difference between a war crime and a pardon is who you know. The water in the Caribbean is warm, blue, and apparently lawless. If you look closely enough at the recent reports coming out of the Pentagon, you can see the stain spreading. It