Category: Society
The Unexpected Virtue of Arbitrary Sports Allegiances
I live in a baseball town. I know this because in the fall of 2011, I found myself in a divey pizza joint with a bunch of other transplants from other parts of the country watching one of the most...
Ecumenism of the Grave
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” — 1 Corinthians 15:19 Walt Whitman was one of the first in America to articulate the modern sensibility with respect to death. He...
The Lost City: What’s the use of cities in a world of states?
I once quoted to my father, who is of a Marxist disposition and considers patriotism “the last refuge of scoundrels”, the famous words of Sir Walter Scott: “Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath...
An Intercourse with Ghosts: The Unabomber, Irony, and Terror
1. To write about Theodore J. Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, is to sit for a moment with the ghosts of his victims peering over your shoulder. The dead and the maimed, both. Just as much as you try to...
Moldbug Through the Looking Glass
(Ed. Note: A version of this piece was originally published on Susannah Black’s blog Radio Free Thulcandra.) This post is dedicated, with love, to my enemies. Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings, Moldbug/Calloway, Mencius Moldbug|Curtis Yarvin (Neoreaction/California), Caroline Calloway...
Suffering Our Forefathers’ Sins: A Latino’s Reflection on White Supremacy
Two Saturdays ago mi esposa and I mourned for those devastated by the El Paso shooting. For us, this hit home. We had lived in the Lone Star State for seven years, our daughter was born there, and we have...
Possessed in America
In the wake of mass shootings over the past few years, I’ve frequently thought about Doestoevsky’s novel about terrorism in Russia, Demons, sometimes known as The Possessed. The latter, older title is bad translation but good sociology. We spend too...
Post-Liberalism and American Racism
Recently Adam Serwer published a piece in The Atlantic characterizing the current conversation about liberalism amongst American conservatives as essentially being a sustained, intellectualized temper tantrum thrown over their loss of power. Ross Douthat has done the main work in critiquing...
Against An Economy Financed by Human Bodies
By Andreas Vesalius During my teenage years, I experienced periods of intense disdain for my physicality. In becoming fully aware of my sexuality and my existence as a sexual being, I came to oppose such an existence. I envied the...
Book Review: Between Life and Death by Kathryn Butler
In their indispensable book Reclaiming the Body, Joel Shuman and Brian Volck recall a course on literature and medicine taught to 4th-year medical students. Students were asked to describe how they hoped to die with essays, and the results were...