Something that isn’t discussed much about the Democrats’ 43-day shutdown of Washington is that it demonstrated their scant interest in government as distinct from their insatiable hunger for tactical leverage and power. It’s obvious on one level that people who stop a government from functioning aren’t interested in government. But there are details beneath the […]
The country of Georgia deepened its authoritarian turn last week after charging eight opposition figures with “sabotage,” “calling for the overthrow of the government,” and “helping a foreign country in hostile activities,” a reference to links with the United States. Many of the country’s politicians, along with roughly 70 other opponents of its government, are already […]
Part of being a student — even an old one, like me — is spending time in the library. As I write this, I am sitting in the Firestone Library at Princeton University, looking up at a wall festooned with names of honored, illustrious alumni and super-rich donors, two categories that do not always, or […]
I am always on the lookout for historians who can fashion well-worn stories from the past into sparkling new dramas filled with cliffhangers and near-catastrophes that keep me turning pages in taut expectation of an outcome decided centuries ago. Author Scott Ellsworth provides just that in Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the […]
Godzilla has terrorized the Land of the Rising Sun for decades. Known as a kaiju (monster) in Japan, and King of the Monsters in the United States, Godzilla’s fearsome roar and atomic breath is a child’s nightmare come to life. It’s fought with and against other gigantic creatures. It’s struck fear in the hearts of […]
Until it closed last year, Monarch Novelties was the only souvenir store in Washington, D.C., that sold campaign memorabilia exclusive to the three presidential elections of the 1960s. The store was an oddity, a decaying building on 14th Street that, for more than 80 years, trafficked in eccentricities: not just Kennedy– and Nixon-era nostalgia but […]
Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has argued that during the Biden years, Army basic training became too soft and lost some of its hardcore edge. He wants basic training to toughen up. Which brings us to a phenomenon in the Army I’ll call the Hardcore Paradox: Soldiers enjoy comfort and dislike pain, stress, and […]
Arundhati Roy dedicated her debut novel, The God of Small Things, to two people who, it was safe to assume, were her nearest and dearest: “For Mary Roy who grew me up,” she wrote, “Who loved me enough to let me go.” The other dedicatee was more cryptically designated: “For LKC, who, like me, survived.” […]
“Nobody wants this!” Oscar Martinez of The Office insists to the documentary camera crew on the hunt for what became of the Dunder-Mifflin crew 12 years after the long-running program went off the air. “Don’t you guys have enough after nine years?” Evidently, no, Oscar. We need more. Much more. The Paper, which began streaming […]
Wednesday is Constitution Day, the date on which that venerable document was signed by the delegates to the convention that drafted it. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it’s worth asking ourselves whether we are still capable of keeping the republic it created. The United States was the first nation in the history of […]
