Why We Should All Quit Social Media
In the aftermath of the 6 January 2020 siege of the US Capitol, the two dominant news stories have been Trump’s impending impeachment and the role of big tech in…
Share
Culture & Media
242 posts
Curt Jaimungal and Desh Amila’s Documentary “Better Left Unsaid”
There has been gathering momentum among those who wish to question what is rapidly becoming the contemporary orthodoxy: the Critical Social Justice movement. First people began to notice that something…
Share
Not Quite the Satire You’re Looking For: “Somewhere in Europe” by P. J. Vanston
“It’s like a cross between Catch-22 and Lucky Jim for the Brexit generation,” declares a blurb on the back cover of P. J. Vanston’s 2020 comic novel Somewhere in Europe.…
Share
In Defence of Argument: “Intellectual Freedom and the Culture Wars” by Piers Benn
In the closing pages of Intellectual Freedom and the Culture Wars, Piers Benn writes: I was motivated to write this book because there was something that mattered to me, that…
Share
Joseph Henrich’s “The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”
Writing from Islamic Spain in 1068, scholar Said ibn Ahmad describes the different nations of the world. Some, like the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, Indians and Jews, he writes, have…
Share
The Art of I: Why Contemporary Poetry Is So Bad
Old Lady Barkeep found a mistress To comfort Hitler in his distress When all plans went to ruin. But for prestigious, high style wooin’, Disclosure to the public’s viewin’, Even…
Share
Dostoevsky’s Critique of the Modern World
Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest novelists of all time—a reputation that is well earned. Most writers would be content to write one masterpiece; two would be an exceptional…
Share
The Novel Virus: In Defense of Fiction
As 2020 draws to a close, there is a pre-echo of normalcy in the air, the possibility of a return to a glorious summer even as we head into what…
Share
Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s Presidency
After Trump was elected, sales of George Orwell’s 1984 rocketed. In January 2017, around the time Trump was inaugurated, 1984 was the no. 1 best-selling book on Amazon and it…
Share
Conservative Cancel Culture: Paul E. Gottfried et al’s “The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism”
It’s been said that when Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the Soviet military elite had been so hollowed out by Stalin’s purges that the Red Army had trouble mounting…
Share
Julian Assange and the Cowardice of the Modern Media
Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who broke the story about widespread NSA surveillance, recently resigned from the Intercept, the media outlet he co-founded, citing the publication’s increasing ideological homogeneity…
Share
Lesbians, Witches and Nukes: “Other Girls Like Me” by Stephanie Davies
Stephanie Davies’ recent memoir Other Girls Like Me is a moving, deeply personal account of one of the great protest movements against nuclear weapons. Davies was a warrior in her…
Share
The Infrastructure of Deplatforming: Loomer versus Twitter
What can be studied is always a relationship or an infinite regress of relationships. Never a ‘thing.’—Gregory Bateson, 1978 In 1984, sociologists Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker published a paper…
Share
The Philosophy of Rupture: Wolfram Eilenberger’s “Time of the Magicians: The Invention of Modern Thought, 1919–1929”
When it comes to intellectual history, Central Europe in the 1920s presents a paradox. It was an era when revolutionary thought—original and iconoclastic ideas and modes of thinking—was almost the…
Share
Words Don’t Hurt, Ideas Do.
I am often told that, as a writer, I should recognize the power of words. As a crafter of poetry and prose, they tell me, surely I must understand the…
Share
The History Wars
In September 2020, President Trump caused a stir by announcing a 1776 Commission to “restore patriotic education” to US schools. The idea of the national government writing history in such…
Share
Brave New Literary World
I recently saw a tweet by writer Thomas Chatterton Williams that said, “We are going to need very brave novelists again.” My first reaction was that he’s right. My second…
Share
Why Joe Rogan Should Host the Presidential Debates
The first presidential debate of the 2020 US election cycle took place on 29 September. For over ninety minutes, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden traded barbs…
Share