The Autumn of the Patriarchs One common and inaccurate picture of change assumes this thing so obvious, so potent in the present, will just continue to expand and the future will be like the present, only more so. This version ignores that individual actors and collective forces can suddenly emerge
For decades most politicians who are not outright climate deniers have sounded like "oh yes, as you mention, the building is on fire and countless beings are trapped in it, and what if in a week or so I wander over and splash a little leftover lemonade on it?
"This is how the attack by one petro-state (ours) on another (Iran's) may be turning out to be very bad for petroleum, because the only thing history loves more than a surprise party is irony." The Crisis The biggest news is always the climate news, and
Here are two short pieces about political violence and sexual violence. The first I wrote yesterday as a social media post that I've revised and improved here. The second is an excerpt from my 2020 book Recollections of My Nonexistence, and it's a meditation on the
Like a lot of you, I'm not, to say the least, a fan of billionaires as a species. Perhaps unlike a lot of you, I'm not a fan of airtight categories either: categories are leaky and a lot of what you may assume about gubernatorial candidate
In this chaotic, transformative period, a lot of realities are changing in a lot of ways, and public opinion is often either changing with it or leading the change. We are not who we were even a few years ago when it comes to opposition to "Epstein class"
What is power? It is at its most essential the ability to influence an outcome on any or all scales, to protect one's own at a minimum and to influence, even control others at a maximum. Violence is constantly misunderstood as power, and it certainly looks like power,
"Hope does not mean saying this is not bad, and it does not mean saying that we can defeat it. It just means saying we will keep showing up. That we will not give up. ...we do not know how it will unfold, and neither do those we oppose."
I have been hesitating to hit send on this one, because across the world we are all under the shadow of Trump's threat to commit war crimes that will "eradicate a whole civilization" in Iran while Iranians bravely surround threatened infrastructure with human chains. But I&
It wasn't just bigger than the previous #nokings. It was different. Here's how USA Today unpacks that: "The organizers' crowd count, not verified by independent analysts, put the total at 8 million people, topping the 7 million estimated at the previous No Kings day,
Find your #nokings march here. And while marches, protests, and demonstrations don't do the work of protecting democracy and human rights all by themselves, they're an important part of it, and very often an inspiriting one. [What follows is a thread of various media with and
On one side of the world the US and Israel are pursuing an ill-conceived attack on Iran that has hugely impacted the flow of fossil fuel in the region. This is already having a grim impact on daily life in many nations, jacking up the price of oil and gasoline,
Two stories erupted in the last twenty-four hours that have to do with antisemitism. One is deeply positive. It's a letter signed by 132 Jewish faculty and staff at UCLA rejecting the Trump Administration's definition of antisemitism while pointing out what's dangerous about this
I often say that spoken and written are two different languages with their own grammar and their own difficulties and invitations. Anyone who's ever transcribed a conversation or an interview learns that most of us speak in phrases, rather than sentences, phrases whose intention is clarified by pauses,
Donald Trump's world is a dead and lonely world, a world in which everything is for sale and nothing really means anything and no one else matters. Earlier this year, he pressed Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado into giving him her gold medal, because he does
Resistance is happening in a thousand ways from people destroying Flock cameras to judges upholding the Constitution to the pope once again spurning JD Vance's advances. Resistance in solidarity with immigrants and others under attack, resistance against surveillance, cruelty, lawlessness. Even Olympic athletes spoke up against the Administration&
In some respects, this is a golden age of journalism. Right now, a host of brilliant, dedicated souls do fantastic work reporting and interpreting the news in independent newsletters, podcasts, magazines and even mainstream media. In other ways, journalism is in an age of slop and slime and decline. Corporate
I started this out as a letter to a friend who's feeling down about where we as a nation are at in this moment, and I am still learning how this newsletter thing works so thought I could use the newsletter template to produce a private document, maybe
In many ways this society has moved toward a democracy of voices, as people who for their race or gender were shut out of systems of power and possibility – out of jury duty, professions, institutions educational and otherwise – fought to be included. But we still have so far to go,
Today marks one full year for this newsletter, and here's the 77th post (I thought once a week was going to be a lot, but there's so much going on I wrote almost 1.5 times a week over the past year). I'm so