Long Read
The Land Where Angela Davis Is Queen
In the immediate aftermath of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the Chancellor and the Executive Director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at my alma mater, the University of California, Santa Cruz, issued a joint proclamation condemning the verdict. It began with this: We are disheartened and dismayed by
The Schenker Controversy
In the realization of my plan, I will not permit myself to be distracted by anything in the world, and it is my conviction that the truth, however anybody may try to assault, ignore, or otherwise abuse it, will nevertheless prevail. ~Heinrich Schenker Located in the Neue Israelitische Friedhof [the
Brutal and Unreformed—Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ at 50
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following analysis discusses the film in its entirety and features spoilers throughout. I. December 22nd will be the 50th anniversary of the release of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, a film so marked by violent killings and violent sex that, according to Peckinpah’s biographer, David
How D.B. Cooper and the Golden Age of Air Piracy Changed Aviation Fiction
Frank Sinatra's “Come Fly With Me” was the best-selling album in the United States for five weeks in 1958, but the irony of its popularity (or, perhaps, the source of its aspirational appeal) is that practically none of us could take up the offer to "glide, starry-eyed" on an aircraft
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Meaning of Human Suffering
There is only one thing that I dread: Not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky I mean, I got one life, right? Mine. But fuck, I want somebody else's sometimes. Sometimes I just feel like I'm fighting for a life I just ain't got time to live. I
Bad News—A Review
A review of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Encounter, 312 pages. (October 2021) In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek (where, full disclosure, she has published two of my essays), argues that elite left-wing
Sandinista! The US Left and Nicaragua
When the Sandinista insurgency overthrew the barbaric dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979, many on the international Left believed that Nicaragua had become a nation alive with political possibility. American radicals, in particular, understood the revolutionary new government led by Daniel Ortega to be a noble rebuke to the hegemony
The Good Death—Cancel Culture and the Logic of Torture
Cancellation is a public execution, during which a person is pilloried and destroyed. But while we have become used to the cycle of manufactured outrage that preludes every cancellation, the desperate public apologies, and the devastating consequences for the people whose lives are ruined, we are often at a loss
