Skip to content

Magical Thinking

Columns

2017: A Spy Odyssey
January 25, 2017
Trump’s people know they do not have the full support of the security state, and this is why they are making early demands for loyalty. But speculation runs rampant about how much potential insubordination there could be in the CIA.

Round-up of Recriminations
November 10, 2016
Recriminations will abound in the days to come. The finger-pointing won’t stop for months, years, maybe decades. After all, it’s not every day global empires collapse from within, tweet by inexorable tweet. Given the scale of the disaster, we should expect the arguments to ...

Protocols of Moron
September 20, 2016
What do you get when you combine an atomized, alienated public that possesses a deep and justifiable mistrust in institutions with a floundering press-political-entertainment complex that’s desperate to hold our nanoscopic attention spans? You get a nation of half-assed ...

Primary Lessons in Propaganda
March 30, 2016
All propaganda is not advertising, but all advertising is propaganda. With “sponsored content” becoming the norm, corporations hiring “reporters” to cover themselves, and media organizations hiring political operatives to deliver the news, the notion that ...

Donald Trump, Trickster God
March 04, 2016
The witch-doctors of the electoral season have utterly failed in their essential task; that is, to explain the alarming spectacle that has befallen the land like a sudden eclipse. Political reporters, consultants and pundits are flailing in astonishment as “the unthinkable ...