Category: Writing

I do not like rock music and here are four reasons why

I do not like rock music. Friends have already suggested this is the tip of some iceberg of insecurity and self-hatred or un-American brain activity I’m not dealing with, so I thought I’d write about it, get my predilections and hypocrisies out in the open. What do I mean by rock, first of all? Does […]

Isaiah Berlin’s “Crooked Timber” and the “Bent Twig” of Nationalism

Obviously, there’s a ton of new writing on politics. Thoughtful, anxious books and longform essays about the right wing, especially, about nationalism, authoritarianism. I’m just beginning Kurt Anderson’s Evil Geniuses, as one example, which documents the Right’s efforts, since the late 70s, to dismantle the New Deal and create distracting culture wars as cover. Robert […]