This is more than just my verdict on an election season that was served up in carefully scripted images, videos, and soundbites. The larger truth is that we are living in a time when all disputes and engagements take on this fabricated quality.

Instead of doing something tangible or constructive or even persuasive, instigators work to create a meme—... See more

Senator Josh Hawley, who along with his colleague Ted Cruz was among the most prominent proponents of the bogus fraud claims that animated the insurrection, is preoccupied with painting himself as a victim of “Orwellian” behavior, after the publishing house Simon & Schuster dropped plans to publish his new book, The Tyranny of Big Tech. (Hawley

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What bothers me most about this inflammatory language is that it provides ideological cover for only the shittiest of knee-jerk solutions. In the Progressive era, Beauregard observes, commentators believed problems could at least be fixed. Terms like “crisis,” “doom loop,” and “urban death” carry a far more intractable connotation or at least sugge... See more