The Do-Nothing Discipline
How political science fell into the thrall of fundamentalist forecasting.
From the Archives
Columns
The Artificial Intelligentsia
“Sandhogs,” they called the laborers who built the tunnels leading into New York’s Penn Station at the beginning of the last century. Work distorted their humanity, sometimes literally. Resurfacing at the end of each day from their burrows beneath the Hudson and East ...
Zealots of the Blockchain
As “money,” Bitcoin fulfills essentially none of money’s functions; as “currency,” its massive volatility has made it all but unusable.
Right Into the Abyss
The GOP is less a political party than a cult.
Presidential Confusion
January 2018
Imagine being a presidential scholar in this moment when the highest office in the land has been captured by a barely literate showman.
Downward Spiral
A fan’s notes on the decline of the NFL.
All Politics is Local
A schlubby man with a vaguely foreign accent, sitting on a crudely crafted set, appears nine times a week on 173 television stations across the nation, parroting Trump administration talking points and defending the president.
In one commentary, he fended off criticism of ...
The Lost Art of Staying Put
A million new reasons to travel are manufactured every moment. Pageants, banquets, fairs, and jamborees.
The Problem with Muzak
We should call this what it is: the automation of selling out.
President Lisa Simpson
October 2017
Lover of austerity economics, mouthpiece of an educated elite. Behold the future: President Lisa Simpson.
The President of Blank Sucking Nullity
August 2017
Any attempt at psychologizing Trump should begin and end here: he is a blank sucking void of vanity and appetite.
What We Do Is Secret
Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!