Nation
Rittenhouse, Homegrown Fascism & the Midwest Consensus
Kyle Rittenhouse scares me in part because I don’t understand him. He isn’t like the racist or incel mass shooters of recent memory.
Biopolitics (Fascism 2020)
Fascism has always been with the species.
The Democracy vs. The Undercommons
On the night of Joe Biden’s big speech, I prepped for the spectacle by Zooming with black alt leftists who addressed an “ensemble” very different from the Democratic Convention.
Politics of Local People
C. Liegh McIness and Benj DeMott discuss the demise of SNCC, the nature of grassroots organizations, and the character of people who end up in them in the thread below.
Fact-Check
Writing in the socialist journal Jacobin, a Mr. Savage mocked “today’s liberals” whose “default approach to combating the Right is to fact-check the Right.” Savage insists facts are stupid things outside of “narratives.” He urges liberals to stop worrying about the Right’s “malign information system.” There’s no point in calling our lies or exposing traitors or following the money. What liberals must do is ape conservatives’ “willingness to embrace populist storytelling.” No doubt Savage believes in History (and means to be on the left side of it), but his pitch for radical fabulism seems incredibly impertinent now.
Tactile Ghazal
Locked down with family, I’m blessed with touch.
People-heavy days, pets give the best touch.
The Snake in the Garden
This is not the old misogynistic story of
the mythic expulsion from the perfect garden
because we know that where knowledge is
forbidden to women there will be no perfection.
Paul’s Epistle on “Key West”
Your editor asked Wallace Stevens’ biographer, Paul Mariani, to comment on Bob Dylan’s new song “Key West”…