A few days ago I stumbled on a startling truth I want to share with you. Do you know the concept of “mirror worlds?” It has a few meanings. The one I’m using describes a parallel dimension that mirrors the world as we know it, but everything important has been flipped, monsters instead of mates, …
Back in February, when I wrote about the first few deranged actions the MAGA regime took against cultural agencies—”Il Duce Redux: Art Under Trump“—I focused specifically on art, as my title said. One of the things that tends to convince artists of the significance of our work is autocrats’ reliable tendency to go after it …
For our Passover Seder, we ask people to share a story from their own experience or imagination that rhymes somehow with the exodus from slavery. Here’s how we put the prompt this time: This year, we’re feeling like Mitzrayim is here and our challenge is to allow something far better to push through and be …
Twenty years ago, my friend Daniel Burstyn introduced me to an exercise created for Passover, the Jewish holiday which this year begins on the evening of 12 April. The holiday commemorates the exodus from slavery in Egypt (“Mitzrayim” in Hebrew, which also means “straits” or “narrow places”). The tradition is to retell the story as …
I loved the original Star Trek because its brief morality plays captured the importance of culture. Every planet the Starship Enterprise visited had a clear body of shared knowledge and set of customs that shaped social relationships as well as interstellar ones. The fundamental principle called the “prime directive” prevented Starfleet from doing anything that …
NOTE: This post is to introduce you to the 49th episode of François Matarasso’s and my monthly podcast, “A Culture of Possibility.” It will be available starting 21 February 2025. You can find it and all episodes at Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts, along with miaaw.net‘s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie …
In the mid-twentieth century, it was understood that the leaders of a coup would reliably seize media outlets first, commandeering radio and later television broadcast apparatus as a quick and efficient way to stop the flow of unwanted information and discourse, flooding the people with a message that made it crystal clear who was in …
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 …
As Trump continues to flood the zone with executive orders and brainless pronouncements designed to commandeer our attention while he attempts to install autocracy as our operating system, I’m reminded of the typology of trauma response. When pursued by a sabre-toothed tiger, we are told, our ancient ancestors experienced the same three impulses that beset …
In 2018, the egregious Trump strategist Steve Bannon—erstwhile investment banker, Hollywood executive producer, and cofounder of Breitbart News—was interviewed by the writer Michael Lewis, who inquired about the Trumpists’ strategy to vanquish the Democrats. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon said. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to …