A collection of 16 posts
America is not fallen; it is simply given to periodic bouts of insanity. The patient is tiresome; the patient is ridiculous; but the patient is stable.
Why a right-wing populist has qualms about J.D. Vance and his postliberal ideology.
Against conspiracist trends, there is an obligation on defenders of a liberal society to uphold the integrity of its intellectual methods.
This time, they always say, it could be different.
President Eisenhower’s warning deserves to be better understood.
COVID, Trump, Brexit—everybody’s had something to break their brains in recent years and some people may never recover.
Without a faith, people must find new sources of meaning, new congregations to which they can belong.
New Orleans has a starring role in many JFK conspiracy theories—as I learned during an odd but memorable street tour.
The fact that some conspiracy theories do sometimes turn out to be true helps explain why our minds are evolutionarily programmed to catastrophize.
Fascism, communism, and transhumanism all lure us into rejecting the real human condition in favor of ideological constructs.
Misinformation results from the toxic combination of these two defining features, a lack of proximity to the Territory, and viewing the world through the lens of oppression.
Vaccine refusal also correlates with a feeling of alienation from the wider culture—what sociologists call “anomie.”
Some have questioned why the buildings did not “topple over” after being struck side-on by aircraft. But the answer becomes clear once you consider the details.
By rejecting any universally applicable standards of reason, it destroys the possibility of true conversation, of learning from and compromising with each other.
The mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. So when gaps in knowledge open up, the empty spaces are filled with available explanations that, however implausible, seem morally compelling.