The constitutional settlement that governed America from the end of the Volcker Shock in 1982 to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024 encompassed three profound domains: politics, economics, and culture.
Trent and Caitlin talk with Dr. Aris Clemons, an Assistant Professor in Linguistics, about the various slanders and misapprehensions that plague her field of study. We discuss language ideologies, the illusion of objectivity, the futility of being “apolitical” in a political institution, ethnography and lived experience, “other ways of knowing,
No serious person believes it’s possible to both decrease and increase the US population at the same time.
Commentators who got it wrong wouldn’t listen, won’t learn, and can’t lead.
"Sex-based rights" are a Potemkin feminism that commit us to a theory of objective sex where there is something special about your very biology that entitles you to special treatment not deserved by others.
Things literally cannot go on as they have before the present democratic crisis—things have been broken and will have to be put back together somehow. Ideas that were unthinkable even a decade ago may see their chance in the sun. It is time for liberal socialism.
Content warning: rape, pedophilia, and historical atrocities. Join Samantha and guest Alan Elrod as they talk about the role of rape in conservative ideology, biopolitics as the Rosetta Stone of authoritarian reaction, and the pornographic fantasies that pervade the new right. Alan is the president and CEO of the Pulaski
Politicians will try to win elections whether you self-censor your principled position or not.
Trent and Caitlin talk with Adam Gurri, founder and editor-in-chief of Liberal Currents, about his take that the most accurate way to view the Trump presidency is as an example of “personalism.” What is personalism? What are other examples of personalist systems? What can a nation do once a personalist
Brian Goldstone doesn’t use the abstract language of structural violence, but his story is full of landlords, bureaucrats, and politicians insulated from the pain they inflict by distance, resources, and power.
MAGA’s approach to young Americans is about creating adherents and eliminating undesirables.
The right and so-called moderate center have framed trigger warnings, the deplatforming of far right speakers, and peaceful protests as urgent free speech crises, but now they downplay the actual stifling of speech and expression.
Neither states nor nations are endowed with inalienable rights. Individuals are.
There is no problem with trade deficits in principle. If we wish for more capital to flow into the “real economy,” we must prevent crowding out from housing.
Whatever its policy merits, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are mistaken to offer Abundance as an answer to Democrats' political woes.
A large part of the media today is devoted solely to making men into terrible people.
American politics has become so insane that being reasonable feels like a malady, and MAGA agrees.
To be only masculine or only feminine is to be half a human being.
Despite having all the resources and connections they need to fight, major law firms have abandoned their duties to the system that makes their success possible.
We may not have a legal system worth the name soon if no one hits the brakes.
Today's hollow strategizing leaves politicians endlessly calculating the precise polling impact of every statement while refusing to defend basic democratic principles.
The American tradition of celebrating racial terror.
Media is a crucial tool for building solidarity among opposition to authoritarian rule.
The burden of freedom has always been heavy, and Baldwin forces us to confront whether we are willing to bear it.