It’s been weeks since I listened to a New York Times podcast featuring Allie Beth Stuckey, a far-right, fundamentalist Reformed Baptist social media influencer and podcaster on politics, theology, and lifestyle advice. She is instantly identifiable as such by her look, featuring all the MAGA woman signifiers: the flowing hair streaked with blonde, the masklike …
I have a thing for old black and white movies. Especially in anxious times, they slow me down and calm me. I think it has to do with telling a single story rather than flooding viewers with a barrage of plotlines, images, and settings. It almost feels as if someone is reading to me. I …
I recently completed a new painting after a few months’ hiatus while I finished a book I hope will be published soon. As with many of my paintings, it was inspired by a text that struck me with great force, a teaching by the 18th century Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky, a disciple of the Baal …
I’ve had the same conversation with many friends in the last few days: what is wrong with the Democrats? Why aren’t they responding to the Trump-Musk emergency with the speed and energy required to stop them from (to use Steve Bannon’s repugnant language) “flooding the zone with shit” at “muzzle velocity” and drowning the body …
Are you as confused as I am about how to comprehend and respond to the current political moment? Many people seem certain, far more certain than I, but what I notice is that they are certain of opposite things. Indeed, the mood of antagonism and polarization that currently saturates the United States lends itself to …
What class do you belong to? When I was young, “working class” was a commonsense term. It referred to wage workers, to miners and carpenters and secretaries and waitresses, people who were paid by the hour and mostly lived within modest means. Working class people were the primary constituency for union organizing. They almost all …
This is the second of two essays about a new book that I love (yes, love!): We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. The first one derives a lesson strongly related to the upcoming election from Musa al-Gharbi’s sweeping analysis of “symbolic capitalists.” If you know anyone who has decided …
This is the first of two essays I am writing about a new book that I love (yes, love!): We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. This one derives a lesson strongly related to the upcoming election from Musa al-Gharbi’s sweeping analysis of “symbolic capitalists.” My dream is that some …
I have been thinking a lot about people who are deciding that not voting in the upcoming presidential election—or voting for a spoiler party with no chance of winning—is the only righteous thing to do in November. I have been searching for some way to express my hope that they will awaken from that belief …
I’m recuperating from arthroscopic knee surgery I had earlier this week. Not sure if it’s the pain or the drugs that are giving me a somewhat distanced perspective on our national shitshow of a presidential campaign, but suddenly the whole thing has the aspect of a miniature landscape viewed from a great height. As nearly …