“Foreigner! Foreigner! This is America! You’re not American! Get the fuck out!” I woke up on the 250th anniversary of my nation’s independence to the sound of some poor soul on the street having a manic episode, and its substance, such as it was, was thematically indistinguishable from that of any stump speech given by our current, duly-elected president.

A watch list for progressive masochists from Becca Rothfeld’s “The MAGA Theory of Art” in Art in America.

Just as Weimar and Nazi films pandered to white-collar workers who refused to confront a new economic reality, evangelical films pander to a rural class that clings to an outmoded notion of small-town affluence—and thereby to a bygone socio-economic order. They present the rural as a refuge from modernity, a realm that economic history has happily bypassed. To… See more →

Left to its own devices, capitalism decides if people deserve what they need, and a fundamental American disagreement is whether that’s a bug or a feature.

I got a speeding ticket the other day, my first in probably more than 25 years. After a decade and a half of not owning a car, L and I reluctantly accepted a hand-me-down Hyundai Tucson a couple years ago so we could be more nimble for the sake of our aging parents. Not coincidentally, I’ve been driving it a lot lately, making regular visits to the memory-care residence my mom now calls home, or… See more →

What the folks at LA Taco, not the LA Times, figured out was that while it was impossible to have on-the-ground reporting from sweeps happening across a metro area as colossal as LA, we live in a time where most everything is documented and uploaded to social media in near-real time. They took to compiling these social media videos and reports into a vertical video Daily Memo that simply runs down where ICE has conducted… See more →

Miller’s view, like that of his boss, is that America is even more divided than we think, and the only resolution to this state of affairs is for one side to subjugate the other.

I’m not looking forward to Erika Kirk’s continuation of her husband’s regrettable legacy, but I’ll give her credit for doing something evangelical Christians on the national stage so rarely do: what Jesus would do. Just days after the horrific murder of… See more →

It was as if National Review were running Criterion Channel. An art house streaming service with a foundation of conservative values, and somebody thought it would work. Or maybe they knew it wouldn’t, and that was the point. As I butted heads with virtually all of my colleagues, most of whom were also progressive-minded cineastes, I began to suspect the company had hired us just to tie up our expertise in a boondoggle. I wouldn’t… See more →

Reading about the Parkland jurors literally crying because they didn’t get to kill someone. This fucking country. nytimes.com/2022/10/15/us/…

I’m supposed to be en route to @OIAF_Animation right now, but had to cancel my trip last-minute. I’ve been sulking about it all day, but reading about draftees fleeing Russia really puts my stuck-at-home troubles in perspective. nytimes.com/2022/09/22/wor…

Any country where an Alex Jones is front page news for any reason is a country in trouble.