Editorial Team

Or, How Social Proof and Dopamine Tech Make it Possible to Hack Entire Societies As the scale of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal becomes clearer — that millions of people were reached by propaganda — a tiny thought keeps popping into me head.

Or, Why the Best Defense Against Authoritarianism is Democracy on the Offense Imagine a school with a newspaper that only ever covered its bullies — what they’re wearing, what they said today, which one was on top. Would you want to send your kid to such a school? And yet that’s precisely what America’s…

The World is Turning Catastrophically Stupid. Here’s How Not to Join It. I’d bet, these days, shortly after reading the headlines, you’ve thought, shaking your head and muttering, something like: “Jesus. We live in an age of impossibly catastrophic stupid.” You’re not wrong. About a decade or so ago, hot on the heels of the … Read more

A New Synthesis I was talking to someone recently and in the middle of a perfectly civilized conversation about our impending doom they blurted out: “but you’re a socialist!” Whoa. I’m not any of these things, capitalist, socialist, atheist, any-ist. I believe in three things only, disco, chocolate, and true love, and they’re all the … Read more

The Gun, the Blindfold, and the Gag Pity the poor liberal. It’s become fashionable to point out that liberalism is collapsing — and yet, the question is, why? Just this morning, I read a tweet from an anonymous superstar pundit that said: “No!!! This wave of fascism isn’t about economics! It’s about culture!” This little … Read more

Or, Why Neoliberalism is Ending in Authoritarianism Rising Around the Globe Again You might be surprised, and a little disheartened, as I am, to look around the world in the early 21st century, and see it, well, giving up on freedom. There is America, lapsing into comic-book authoritarianism. There, China has a newly forged lifelong … Read more

Six Megatrends That Will Shape the Future There are many beliefs America holds that the rest of the world finds gruesome and strange: guns, capitalism, greed, cruelty. But among these is a new one: that this dark period in American history is an anomaly — and therefore, things will revert to normal. Sorry. American collapse … Read more

Or, Why The Economy We’ve Built Gets Life and Death Upside Down Here’s a tiny question. Have you ever wondered how the economy can be doing well — while kids massacre each other regularly at schools? After all, an “economy,” if it’s anything at all, is about how well we live…

Or, How Punching Down Became a Way of Life In this essay, I want to share with you a tiny theory of what it means to be American. It is up to you to judge, as ever, whether it carries any weight. All that I will say is that when I look around, it explains, … Read more

Or, the Dismal Future of the Average American Young Person Did you know that American kids perform “active shooter drills” from the age of 5?Bang.In busts a cop, pretending to be a gunman. There’s little Johnny, trying desperately to figure out how to save little Sarah and little Ravi.