Editorial Team

Why Capitalism’s Collapse Feels Weirdly a Lot Like Communism’s Here’s a funny observation. Soviet style communism was always marked by chronic, predictable shortages. Especially for luxuries. The line for jeans, sweaters, boomboxes, and TVs, which stretched around the block, always leaving people empty-handed — while decadent…

How Predatory Capitalism Breaks Societies, Economies, and Minds Jul 20, 2018 Member-only Save Here’s a tiny fact.Burberry recently had $35 million of unsold clothes — and so it burned them. Just set them alight. If you think there’s something weird, infuriating, and perverse in that, you’re not wrong. It contains in it the whole story … Read more

The Great Lesson of the 20th Century — and How America Never Learned It When I say “the modern world”, what do you think of? Probably a great city somewhere, with broad avenues, spacious parks, art and culture, old museums, people buzzing about, public transport thrumming.

The Fine Art of Playing Dumb While the House Burns Down Jul 7, 2018 Member-only Save Some things in life, my friends, are unpredictable. The weather. True love. The stock market. But some things are entirely, utterly, and almost boringly predictable, too. And strangely, those aren’t small things. Sometimes, they’re big things. One of the … Read more

The Alliance Versus the Faction When I look at America today, I see a nation in which democracy is at grave risk. If I’m something like a doctor, then I don’t see a patient with the flu — I see a patient with a lethal illness, which needs serious and risky treatment. What do I … Read more

How the Free World Took Four Giant Leaps to Self-Destruction Jul 3, 2018 Member-only Save A (successful) American politician who cries:“God is a white supremacist!”Neo-nazisin the Bundestag. Theextreme right rising in Italy. Poland’s authoritarianspurging its Supreme Court. How did we get here? To a world where the forces of intolerance and indecency are on the … Read more

Why the Future’s Broken (And How to Fix It) Here’s a tiny question. Do you like the way the world is going? I don’t — and I doubt you do either. But what’s really going wrong with it? And can we fix it? The more I think about it, the more I think that two … Read more

Or, Why America’s Melting Down Faster Than Anyone Believed Does anyone know what’s going to happen to America? Does America have a future? Or does it just collapse into…wait, what is it collapsing into, anyways? Let me ask you that another way. Are they authoritarians? Fascists? Nazis? Religious extremists? “Ethno-nationalist…

The Baffling, Toxic, Abusive Codependent Relationship We Don’t Understand Yet Over the past year or so, a fact has become increasingly clear. Authoritarian leaders share the classic characteristics of abusers. Authoritarians are abusers. Only they aren’t abusing a spouse, partner, or family — but a whole…

What Happens When Societies Don’t Invest in Civilizing Themselves? A friend, recently, told me a very interesting and telling story. She’d recently been in the States, where she was taking the subway to work, and she fell down, injuring her wrist. Not a single person helped her up — they all stared at her angrily … Read more