Category Archives: Essays

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – April 2024

HARPER’S MAGAZINE – APRIL 2024:

Crime and Punishment

Can American policing be fixed?

by Ras BarakaRosa BrooksBarry FriedmanChristy E. LopezTracey L. MearesBrian O’HaraPatrick Sharkey

In May 2020, the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd sparked the largest wave of civil unrest in U.S. history. An estimated twenty-three million people took to the streets, calling for the reformation, defunding, disarming, or even abolition of police departments. Protesters pointed to policing’s disproportionate targeting of black and brown communities, its role in creating the world’s largest carceral state, and its increasing reliance on military weapons and tactics. Defenders of law enforcement countered that a militarized police force is necessary to regulating the most heavily armed civilian population on earth. These defenders claimed that racism…

Jacob’s Dream

MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius

by Frederick Kaufman

Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzo’s, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. Despite a protracted hunger strike and 317 days isolated in a cell, Jacob’s prison sentence of forty-one months for obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6, 2021, had been shortened owing to good behavior, and he was let out about a year early on supervised release.

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – March 2024

HARPER’S MAGAZINE – MARCH 2024: The new issue features ‘The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem’ – How Big Tech is losing the wars of the future…

The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem

How Big Tech is losing the wars of the future

Illustrations by Yoshi Sodeoka
Illustrations by Yoshi Sodeoka

by Andrew Cockburn

“Artificial intelligence may indeed affect the way our military operates. But the notion that bright-eyed visionaries from the tech industry are revolutionizing our military machine promotes a myth that this relationship is not only new, but will fundamentally improve our defense system—one notorious for its insatiable appetite for money, poorly performing weapons, and lost wars. In reality, the change flows in the other direction, as new recruits enter the warm embrace of the imperishable military-industrial complex, eager to learn its ways.”

The Case Against Children

Illustrations by María Jesús Contreras

Among the antinatalists

by Elizabeth Barber

“People would rather be enthusiastic collaborators in a global project than be skeptics of its fundamental integrity. Antinatalism implies or counts on our eventual extinction, and thinking this way is painful.”

Arts/Politics: The Atlantic Magazine – March 2024

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The Atlantic Magazine – February 13, 2024: The latest issue features ‘To stop a school shooter’ – the case of the contested Basquiats; uncancel Woodrow Wilson; and start-up cities. Plus Michael R. Jackson, the despots of Silicon Valley, Raina Telgemeier, the James Bond trap, “Africa & Byzantium,” Marilynne Robinson, and more.

TO STOP A SHOOTER

photo of building with "Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School" on it, behind trees against cloudy gray sky

Why would an armed officer stand by as a school shooting unfolds? By Jamie Thompson

It was the early afternoon of Valentine’s Day 2018, and the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was full of kids exchanging stuffed animals and heart-shaped chocolates. Scot Peterson, a Broward County sheriff’s deputy, was in his office at the school, waiting to talk with a parent about a student’s fake ID. At 2:21 p.m., a report came over the school radio about a strange sound—firecrackers, possibly—coming from Building 12. Peterson stepped outside, moving briskly, talking into the radio on his shoulder. Then the fire alarm rang. Peterson, wearing a sheriff’s uniform with a Glock on his belt, started running.

A Trove of ‘Lost Basquiats’ Led to a Splashy Exhibition. Then the FBI Showed Up.

A man looking at a large portrait of Basquiat in museum gallery with two paintings hanging in the background.

Why is it so hard to root out fakes and forgeries?

By Bianca Bosker

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – February 2024

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – FEBRUARY 2024: This issue features ‘Israel’s War Within’ – The battle for a country’s soul; The Trials of Trucking School; Marilynne Robinson Reads Genesis…

Israel’s War Within

An Israeli paratrooper at the Western Wall, 1967 © Micha Bar-Am/Magnum Photos

On the ruinous history of Religious Zionism

by Bernard Avishai

In August 1975, I stood outside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, witnessing a fevered demonstration against Henry Kissinger, then the American secretary of state. Thousands of young men in knitted kippahs chanted and danced in circles, their arms wrapped around one another, their voices echoing off the stone building. They were mainly West Bank settlers, I was informed, part of a fledgling movement called Gush Emunim—in effect, the Young Guard of the National Religious Party (NRP).

Lost Highway

The trials of trucking school

by Emily Gogolak

“If you have to change friends, that’s what you gotta do,” our instructor, Johnny, told the twelve of us sitting in a makeshift classroom in a strip mall outside Austin. “They’re gonna be so jealous, because you’re gonna be bringing home so much money. Encourage them to get their CDL, too.”

A CDL is a commercial driver’s license, and if you pay attention, you’ll find variations on the phrase cdl drivers wanted everywhere: across interstate billboards, in small-town newspapers, on diner bulletin boards, on TV, and, most often, on the backs of semitrucks. Each of us had come to the Changing Lanes CDL School to answer that call.

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – January 2024

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – JANUARY 2024: This issue features ‘Behind the Iron Curtain’ – Caviar, counterculture, and the cult of Stalin reborn; A Life in Psychedelics; Sex and Grue in Ancient Rome, and more…

Behind the New Iron Curtain

Caviar, counterculture, and the cult of Stalin reborn

by Marzio G. Mian,Translated by Elettra Pauletto

Russia has become, to observers in the West, a distant, mysterious, and hostile land once again. It seems implausible, in the age of social media, that so little should be known about the country that has shattered the international order, but the shadows surrounding Russia have only grown since the days of the Soviet Union. Of course, it is one thing to observe the country from the outside; it is another to try to understand how Russians experience the war and react to sanctions from within, and what they hope the future holds. If Russia seems to have become…

The Museum of Broken G.I. Joes

When soldiers come home

by Matt Farwell

Essays & Reviews: The Point Magazine – Winter 2024

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The Point Magazine (December 17, 2023) – The latest issue features ‘Entering History’ – Leave it to Zadie Smith to include a political Rorschach test in her latest novel; ‘Within the Pretense of No Pretense’ – Technology was the wonder of our age. It seemed to promise us power, and we took this power for our own; Venice Architecture Biennale – The city of Venice may very well be, as the architecture theorist Manfredo Tafuri once claimed, “an unbearable challenge to the world of modernity,”, and more….

Entering History

Leave it to Zadie Smith to include a political Rorschach test in her latest novel. In one of The Fraud’s pivotal encounters, set in 1875, […]

Within the Pretense of No Pretense

Technology was the wonder of our age. It seemed to promise us power, and we took this power for our own

Arts/Politics: The Atlantic Magazine – January 2024

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The Atlantic Magazine – December 7, 2023: The latest January/February 2024 issue features ‘IF TRUMP WINS’ – A second Trump presidency won’t just mirror the first. It will be much worse. In The Atlantic’s January/February issue, two dozen writers warn what could happen if Donald Trump is reelected, from destroying the rule of law to abandoning NATO and reshaping the international order.

TRUMP ISN’T BLUFFING

A black-and-white photo of the lower half of Trump's face while he's speaking

We’ve become inured to his rhetoric, but his message has grown darker.

By David A. Graham

“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Donald Trump said this past November, in a campaign speech that was ostensibly honoring Veterans Day. “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UNDONE

black-and-white photo of Bill Barr and Ben Carson conferring with each other with audience in background
Bill Barr and Ben Carson: not fans of disparate-impact theory

How Trump could unwind generations of progress

By Vann R. Newkirk II

In late 2020, even as the instigators of insurrection were marshaling their followers to travel to Washington, D.C., another kind of coup—a quieter one—was in the works. On December 21, in one of his departing acts as attorney general, Bill Barr submitted a proposed rule change to the White House. The change would eliminate the venerable standard used by the Justice Department to handle discrimination cases, known as “disparate impact.” The memo was quickly overshadowed by the events of January 6, and, in the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was never implemented. But Barr’s proposal represented perhaps the most aggressive step the administration took in its effort to dismantle existing civil-rights law. Should Trump return to power, he would surely attempt to see the effort through.

Trump’s Plan to Police Gender

His campaign is promising a more repressive and dangerous America.

A War on Blue America

In a second term, Trump would punish the cities and states that don’t support him.

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – December 2023

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 2023: This issue features The Hofmann Wobble – Wikipedia and the problem of historical memory; Your Mind’s in the Hands of Everything – Letting go of Philip Roth; Risky Disco – A sensory workshop bridges the gap; Occult Murder and Gospel Thrillers, and more…

The Hofmann Wobble

Wikipedia and the problem of historical memory

by Ben Lerner

At twenty-six, in 2006, the year before the iPhone launched, I found myself driving a red Subaru Outback—the color was technically “claret metallic,” the friend who’d lent me the car had told me, in case I ever wanted to touch up the paint—on Highway 12 in Utah. I was heading to the East Bay after a painful breakup in New York. I remember, wrongly, that I was listening to a book on tape, a work by a prominent linguist, as I moved through the alien landscape, jagged formations of red rock towering against a cloudless sky.

Your Mind’s in the Hands of Everything

Letting go of Philip Roth

by Hannah Gold

It is difficult to predict when one will spend the night at a hotel in Newark, let alone three, and uncommon to agree to such a scenario willingly. If you live there already, you stay home. If you’re there for a professional engagement, your boss made you go. If your flight has been canceled, you go there as a last resort. Whereas, though I felt compelled to be there, I couldn’t point to an authority outside of myself that had forced my hand. The room had been booked a week in advance.

Arts/Politics: The Atlantic Magazine – December 2023

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The Atlantic Magazine – December 2023 issue: For the first time since the publication of our first series of stories on Reconstruction, in 1901, The Atlantic is examining “the enduring consequences of Reconstruction’s tragic fall at a moment—yet another moment—when the cause of racial progress faces sustained pressure”…

This Ghost of Slavery

A play of past and present

By ANNA DEAVERE SMITH

The Questions That Most Need Asking

The Atlantic revisits Reconstruction

.By JEFFREY GOLDBERG

Why Is America Afraid of Black History?

No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.

By LONNIE G. BUNCH III

How Black Americans Kept Reconstruction Alive

The federal government abandoned Reconstruction in 1877, but Black people didn’t give up on the moment’s promise.

By PENIEL E. JOSEPH

The Arts: Brick Literary Journal – Autumn 2023

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BRICK LITERARY JOURNAL (AUTUMN 2023)

  • Leanne Betasamosake Simpson goes to the breathing lands
  • Paul Holdengräber and Merve Emre visit Mrs. Dalloway
  • Douglas Kearney rescues the earth from the world
  • Jessica Moore on the smarginatura of motherhood
  • Jan Zwicky approaches Wittgenstein’s silence
  • Tina Campt defines Black gravity