Tag Archives: Opinion

Arts & Literature, Entertainment, Essays, Opinion, Reviews, Society

HOW COMEDY KILLED SATIRE

The weapon that wounded kings and emperors is now just another punchline between commercials.

By Michael Cummins, Editor, September 1, 2025

In the long arc of literary history, satire has served as a weapon—precise, ironic, and often lethal. It was the art of elegant subversion, wielded by writers who understood that ridicule could wound more deeply than rhetoric. From the comic stages of Athens to the viral feed of TikTok, satire has always been a mirror turned against power. But mirrors can be polished, fogged, or stolen. Today, satire has been absorbed into the voracious machinery of entertainment. Its sting has dulled. Its ambiguity has been flattened. It no longer provokes—it performs.

But what did it once mean to laugh dangerously? In Athens, 423 BCE, Aristophanes staged The Clouds. Socrates appeared not as a revered philosopher but as a dangling charlatan in a basket, teaching young Athenians to twist language until truth dissolved. The joke was more than a joke. It ridiculed sophistry, intellectual fads, and the erosion of civic virtue. The audience laughed, but the laughter was perilous—Socrates himself would later be tried and executed for corrupting the youth. To laugh was to risk.

Two centuries later, in Rome, Juvenal sharpened satire into civic indictment. His Satires accused senators of corruption, women of decadence, and citizens of surrendering their dignity for “bread and circuses.” The phrase endures because it captured a political truth: distraction is the oldest tool of power. Juvenal’s lines were barbed enough to threaten exile. Was he clown or conscience? In truth, he was both, armed with venom.

What happens when laughter moves from the tavern into the church? During the Renaissance, Erasmus wrote The Praise of Folly, putting words of critique into the mouth of Folly herself. Popes, princes, pedants—all were skewered by irony. Erasmus knew that Folly could say what he could not, in an age when heresy trials ended in fire. Is irony a shield, or a sword? François Rabelais answered with giants. His sprawling Gargantua and Pantagruel gorged on food, sex, and grotesque humor, mocking scholasticism and clerical hypocrisy. Laughter here was not polite—it was unruly, earthy, subversive. The Church censored, readers copied, the satire lived on.

And what of Machiavelli? Was The Prince a straight-faced manual for power, or a sly parody exposing its ruthlessness? “Better to be feared than loved” reads as either strategy or indictment. If satire is a mirror, what does it mean when the mirror shows only cold pragmatism? Perhaps the ambiguity itself was the satire.

By the seventeenth century, satire had found its most enduring disguise: the novel. Cervantes’s Don Quixote parodied the exhausted chivalric romances of Spain, sending his deluded knight tilting at windmills. Is this comedy of madness, or a lament for a lost moral world? Cervantes left the reader suspended between mockery and mourning. A century later, Alexander Pope wrote The Rape of the Lock, transforming a petty quarrel over a stolen lock of hair into an epic drama. Why inflate the trivial to Homeric scale? Because by exaggerating, Pope revealed the emptiness of aristocratic vanity, exposing its fragility through rhyme.

Then came the most grotesque satire of all: Swift’s A Modest Proposal. What kind of society forces a writer to suggest, with impeccable deadpan, that poor families sell their children as food? The horror was the point. By treating human suffering in the cold language of economics, Swift forced readers to recognize their own monstrous indifference. Do we still have the stomach for satire that makes us gag?

Voltaire certainly thought so. In Candide (1759), he set his naïve hero wandering through war, earthquake, and colonial exploitation, each scene puncturing the optimistic doctrine that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Candide repeats the phrase until it collapses under its own absurdity. Was Voltaire laughing or grieving? The satire dismantled not only Leibnizian philosophy but the pieties of church and state. The novel spread like wildfire, banned and beloved, dangerous because it exposed the absurdity of power’s justifications.

By the nineteenth century, satire had taken on a new costume: elegance. Oscar Wilde, with The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), skewered Victorian morality, marriage, and identity through dazzling wordplay and absurd plot twists. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” Wilde’s characters remind us, a line as sharp as Swift’s grotesqueries but dressed in lace. Wilde’s satire was aesthetic subversion: exposing hypocrisy not with shock but with wit so light it almost floated, until one realized it was dynamite. Even comedy of manners could destabilize when written with Wilde’s smile and sting.

And still, into the modern age, satire carried power. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 in 1961 named the absurd circularity of military bureaucracy. “Catch-22” entered our lexicon, becoming shorthand for the paradoxes of modern life. What other art form can gift us such a phrase, a permanent tool of dissent, smuggled in through laughter?

But something changed. When satire migrated from pamphlets and novels to television, radio, and eventually social media, did it lose its danger? Beyond the Fringe in 1960s London still carried the spirit of resistance, mocking empire and militarism with wit. Kurt Vonnegut wrote novels that shredded war and bureaucracy with absurdist bite. Yet once satire was packaged as broadcast entertainment, the satirist became a host, the critique a segment, the audience consumers. Can dissent survive when it must break for commercials?

There were moments—brief, electrifying—when satire still felt insurgent. Stephen Colbert’s October 2005 coinage of “truthiness” was one. “We’re not talking about truth,” he told his audience, “we’re talking about something that seems like truth—the truth we want to exist.” In a single satirical stroke, Colbert mocked political spin, media manipulation, and the epistemological fog of the post-9/11 era. “Truthiness” entered the lexicon, even became Word of the Year. When was the last time satire minted a concept so indispensable to describing the times?

Another moment came on March 4, 2009, when Jon Stewart turned his sights on CNBC during the financial crisis. Stewart aired a brutal montage of Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow, and other personalities making laughably wrong predictions while cheerleading Wall Street. “If I had only followed CNBC’s advice,” Stewart deadpanned, “I’d have a million dollars today—provided I’d started with a hundred million dollars.” The joke landed like an indictment. Stewart wasn’t just mocking; he was exposing systemic complicity, demanding accountability from a financial press that had become entertainment. It was satire that bit, satire that drew blood.

Yet those episodes now feel like the last gasp of real satire before absorption. Stewart left his desk, Colbert shed his parody persona for a safer role as late-night host. The words they gave us—truthiness, CNBC’s complicity—live on, but the satirical force behind them has been folded into the entertainment economy.

Meanwhile, satire’s safe zones have shrunk. Political correctness, designed to protect against harm, has also made ambiguity risky. Irony is flattened into literal meaning, especially online. A satirical tweet ripped from context can end a career. Faced with this minefield, many satirists preemptively dilute their work, choosing clarity over provocation. Is it any wonder the result is content that entertains but rarely unsettles?

Corporations add another layer of constraint. Once the targets of satire, they now sponsor it—under conditions. A network late-night host may mock Wall Street, but carefully, lest advertisers revolt. Brands fund satire as long as it flatters their values. When outrage threatens revenue, funding dries up. Doesn’t this create a new paradox, where satire exists only within the boundaries of what its sponsors will allow? Performers of dissent, licensed by the very forces they lampoon.

And the erosion of satire’s political power continues apace. Politicians no longer fear satire—they embrace it. They appear on comedy shows, laugh at themselves, retweet parodies. The spectacle swallows the subversion. If Aristophanes risked exile and Swift risked scandal, today’s satirists risk nothing but a dip in ratings. Studies suggest satire still sharpens critical thinking, but when was the last time it provoked structural change?

So where does satire go from here? Perhaps it will retreat into forms that cannot be so easily consumed: encrypted narratives layered in metaphor, allegorical fiction that critiques through speculative worlds, underground performances staged outside the reach of advertisers and algorithms. Perhaps the next Voltaire will be a coder, the next Wilde a playwright in some forgotten theater, the next Swift a novelist smuggling critique into allegory. Satire may have to abandon laughter altogether to survive as critique.

Imagine again The Laughing Chamber, a speculative play in which citizens are required to submit jokes to a Ministry of Cultural Dissent. Laughter becomes a loyalty test. The best submissions are broadcast in a nightly “Mock Hour,” hosted by a holographic jester. Rebellion is scripted, applause measured, dissent licensed. Isn’t our entertainment already inching toward that? When algorithms decide which jokes are safe enough to go viral, which clips are profitable, which laughter is marketable, haven’t we already built the laughing chamber around ourselves?

Satire once held a mirror to power and said, “Look what you’ve become.” Aristophanes mocked philosophers, Juvenal mocked emperors, Erasmus mocked bishops, Rabelais mocked pedants, Cervantes mocked knights, Pope mocked aristocrats, Swift mocked landlords, Voltaire mocked philosophers, Wilde mocked Victorians, Heller mocked generals, Stewart mocked the financial press, Colbert mocked the epistemology of politics. Each used laughter as a weapon sharp enough to wound authority. What does it mean when that mirror is fogged, the reflection curated, the laughter canned?

And yet, fragments of power remain. We still speak of “bread and circuses,” “tilting at windmills,” “truthiness,” “Catch-22.” We quote Wilde: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” We hear Voltaire’s refrain—“all is for the best”—echoing with bitter irony in a world of war and crisis. These phrases remind us that satire once reshaped language, thought, even imagination itself. The question is whether today’s satirists can once again make the powerful flinch rather than chuckle.

Until then, we live in the laughing chamber: amused, entertained, reassured. The joke is on us.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Essays, Government, Law, Opinion, Politics

SHADOW GOVERNANCE, ACCELERATED

How an asynchronous presidency exploits the gap between platform time and constitutional time to bend institutions before the law can catch up.

By Michael Cummins, Editor, August 30, 2025

On a sweltering August afternoon in Washington, the line to the federal courthouse wraps around the block like a nervous necklace. Heat shimmers off the stone; gnats drift in lazy constellations above the security checkpoint. Inside, air-conditioning works harder than dignity, and the benches fill with reporters who’ve perfected the face that precedes calamity. A clerk calls the room to order. The judge adjusts her glasses. Counsel step to the lectern as if crossing a narrow bridge over fast water. Then the question—plain, improbable—arrives: can a president’s social-media post count as legal notice to fire a governor of the Federal Reserve?

What does it mean when the forum for that answer is a courtroom and the forum for the action was a feed? The gulf is not merely spatial. One realm runs on filings, exhibits, transcripts—the slow grammar of law. The other runs on velocity and spectacle, where a single post can crowd out a dozen briefings. The presidency has always tested its borders, but this one has learned a new technique: act first in public at speed; force the law to catch up in private at length. It is power practiced asynchronously—governance that unfolds on different clocks, with different rewards.

Call it latency as strategy. Declare a cause on a platform; label the declaration due process; make the firing a fact; usher the lawyers in after to domesticate what has already happened. The point is not to win doctrine immediately. The point is to harvest the days and weeks when a decision stands as reality while the courts begin their pilgrimage toward judgment. If constitutional time is meticulous, platform time is ruthless, and the space between them is policy.

In the hearing, the administration’s lawyer stands to argue that the Federal Reserve Act says “for cause” and leaves the rest to the president’s judgment. Why, he asks, should a court pour old meanings into new words? The statutory text is lean; executive discretion is broad. On the other side, counsel for Lisa Cook speaks a language almost quaint in the rapid glare of the moment: independence, notice, a chance to be heard—dignities that exist precisely to slow the hand that wields them. The judge nods, frowns, asks what independence means for an institution the law never designed to be dragged at the pace of a trending topic. Is the statute a rail to grip, or a ribbon to stretch?

When the hearing breaks, the stream outside is already three headlines ahead. Down the hill, near the White House, a combat veteran strikes a match to the hem of a flag. Fire crawls like handwriting. Two hours earlier, the president signed an executive order urging prosecutions for acts of flag “desecration” under “content-neutral” laws—no frontal attack on the First Amendment’s protection of symbolic speech, only an invitation to ticket for the flame, not the message. Is that a clever accommodation to precedent, or a dare?

The veteran knows the history; anyone who has watched the long argument over Texas v. Johnson does. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that burning the flag as protest, however detestable to many, is speech. Yet symbolic speech lives in real space, and real space has ordinances: no open flames without a permit, no fires on federal property, no damage to parks. The order makes a temporal bet: ticket now; litigate later. The government may lose the grand constitutional fight, but it may win smaller battles quick enough to chill an afternoon’s protest. In the gap between the moment and the merits, who blinks first?

Back at the courthouse, a reporter asks a pragmatic question: even if the president can’t fire a Fed governor for mere allegations, will any of this matter for interest rates? Not in September, the expert shrugs. The committee is larger than one vote, dissent is rare. But calendars have leverage. February—when reappointments can shift the composition of the body that sets the price of money—looms larger than any single meeting. If the decision remains in place long enough, the victory is secured by time rather than law. Isn’t that the whole design?

Administration lawyers never say it so plainly. They don’t have to. The structure does the talking. Announce “cause” in a forum that rewards proclamation; treat the announcement as notice; act; then invite the courts to reverse under emergency standards designed to be cautious. Even a win for independence later may arrive late enough to be moot. In the arithmetic of acceleration, delay is not neutral; it is bounty.

If this sounds like a single episode, it is not. The same rhythm animates the executive order on flag burning. On paper, it bows to precedent; in practice, it asks police and prosecutors to find neutral hooks fast enough to produce a headline, a citation, an arrest photo. Months later, the legal machine may say, as it must, that the burning was protected and the charge pretextual. But how many will light a match the next day, knowing the ticket will be instant and the vindication slow?

And it animates something quiet but immense: the cancellation of thousands of research grants at the National Institutes of Health because proposals with words like “diversity,” “equity,” or “gender” no longer fit the administration’s politics. A district judge calls the cuts discriminatory. On the way to appeal, the litigation splits like a river around a rock: one channel to test the legality of the policy guidance, another to ask for money in a tribunal known mostly to contractors and procurement lawyers. The Supreme Court steps in on an emergency basis and says, for now, the money shouldn’t flow. Why should taxpayers pay today for projects that might be unlawful tomorrow?

Because science does not pause on command. Because a lab is not a spreadsheet but a choreography of schedules and salaries and protocols that cannot be put on ice for a season. Because a freeze that looks tidy in a docket entry becomes layoffs and abandoned lines of research in ordinary rooms with humming incubators. The Court’s concern is neat—what if the government cannot claw back dollars later?—but the neatness ignores what time does to fragile ecosystems. What is a remedy worth when the experiment that needed it has already died?

It is tempting to divide all this along ideological lines, to tally winners and losers as if the story were primarily about whose agenda prevails. But ideology is not the tool that fits. Time is. One clock measures orders, posts, firings, cancellations—the moves that define a day’s narrative. Another measures notice, hearing, record, reason—the moves by which a republic persuades itself that force has been tamed by law. When the first clock is always fast and the second is always slow, acceleration becomes a kind of authority in itself. Isn’t that the simplest way to understand what’s happening—that speed is taking up residence where statute once did?

Consider again the hearing. The administration’s brief is lean, the statute is shorter still, and the claim is stark: “for cause” is what the president says it is. To demand more—to import the old triad of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” to insist on a pre-removal process—is, in this telling, to romanticize independence and hobble accountability. Yet independence is not romance. It is architecture—an effort to keep central banking from becoming another branch of daily politics. If “for cause” becomes a slogan that can be made true after the fact by the simple act of saying it early and everywhere, what remains of the cordon the law tried to draw?

The judge knows this, and also knows the constraints of her role. Emergency relief is meant to preserve the status quo, not rewrite the world. But what is the status quo when the action has already been taken? How do you freeze a river that has been diverted upstream? The presidency practices motion, and then asks the judiciary for patience. Can a court restore a person to an office as easily as a timeline restored a post? Can an injunction rewind a vote composition that turned while the case wound its way forward?

Meanwhile, in the park across from the White House, the veteran’s fire has gone out. The citations are not for speech, officials insist, but for the flame and the scarring of public property. Somewhere between these statements and the executive order that prompted them sits the puzzle of pretext. If a president announces that he seeks to stop a type of speech and urges prosecutors to deploy neutral laws to do so, isn’t the neutrality already contaminated? The doctrine can handle the distinction. But the doctrine’s victory will arrive, at best, months later, and the message lands now: the state is watching, and the nearest hook will serve.

The research world hears its own version of that message. Grants are not gifts; they are contracts, explicit commitments that enable work across years. When a government cancels them mid-stream for political reasons and the courts respond by asking litigants to queue in separate lines—legality here, money there—the signal is not subtle. A promise from the state is provisional. A project can become a pawn. If the administration can accelerate the cut, and the law can only accelerate the analysis, who chooses a life’s work inside such volatility?

There are names for this pattern that sound technocratic—“latency arbitrage,” “platform time versus constitutional time”—and they are accurate without being sufficient. The deeper truth is simpler: a republic’s most reliable tools to restrain power are exactly the tools an accelerated executive least wants to use. Notice means warning; hearing means friction; record means reasons; reason means vulnerability. If you can do without them today and answer for their absence tomorrow, why wouldn’t you?

Well, because the institutions you bend today may be the ones you need intact when the wind shifts. A central bank nudged toward loyalty ceases to be ballast in a storm and becomes a sail. A public square patrolled by pretext breeds fewer peaceful protests and more brittle ones. A research ecosystem that learns that politics can zero out the future will deliver fewer cures and more exits. Isn’t it a curious form of victory that leaves you poorer in the very capacities that make governing possible?

Which brings the story back, inevitably, to process. Process is dull in the way bridges are dull—unnoticed until they fail. The seduction of speed lies in its drama: the crispness of the order, the sting of the arrest, the satisfying finality of a cancellation spreadsheet. Process is the opposite of drama. It is the insistence that power is obliged to explain itself before it acts, to create a record that can be tested, to bear, on the front end, the time it would rather push to the back. Why does that matter now? Because the tactic on display is not merely to defeat process, but to displace it—to make its protections arrive as afterthoughts, paper bandages for facts on the ground.

There are ways to close the gap. The law can require that insulated offices come with front-loaded protections: written notice of cause, an opportunity to respond, an on-the-record hearing before removal becomes effective, and automatic temporary relief if the dispute proceeds to court. The Department of Justice can be made to certify, in writing and in real time, that any arrest touching expressive conduct was green-lighted without regard to viewpoint, and courts can be given an expedited path to vacate citations when pretext is shown—not in a season, but in a week. Mid-cycle grant cancellations can trigger bridge funding and a short status-quo injunction as the default, with the government bearing the burden to prove genuine exigency. Even the Supreme Court can add small guardrails to its emergencies: reasoned, public minutes; sunset dates that force merits briefing on an actual clock rather than letting temporary orders congeal into policy by inertia. Would any of this slow governance? Yes. That is the point.

These are technical moves to answer a political technique, temporal fixes for a temporal hack. They do not hobble the presidency; they resynchronize it with the law. More than doctrine, they aim to withdraw the dividend that acceleration now pays: the days and weeks when action rules unchallenged simply because it happened first.

The images persist. A clerk emerges from chambers carrying two cardboard boxes heavy enough to bow in the middle: motions, exhibits, transcripts—the record, dense and unglamorous, the way reality usually is. The clerk descends the marble steps carefully because there is no other way to do it without spilling the case on the stairs. Across town, another draft order blinks on a screen in a bright room. One world moves on arms and gravity; the other moves on keystrokes and publish buttons. Which will shape the country more?

It is easy to say the law can win on the merits—often, it can. It is harder to say the law can win on time. If we let the presidency define the day with a cascade of acts and then consign the republic’s answer to months of briefs and polite argument, we will continue to confuse the absence of immediate correction with consent. The choice is not between nimbleness and stodginess; it is between a politics that cashes the check before anyone can read it and a politics that pauses long enough to ask what the money is for.

And so, one more question, the kind that lingers after the cameras have left: in a government becoming fluent in acceleration, can we persuade ourselves that synchronization is not obstruction but care? The future of independence, of speech, of public knowledge may turn less on who writes the next order than on whether we are willing to match speed with proportionate process—so that when power moves fast, law is not a distant echo but a present tense. Outside the courthouse, the air is still hot. The boxes are still heavy. The steps are still steep. There is a way to carry them, and there is a way to drop them, and the difference, just now, is the measure of our self-government.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Economics, Essays, Opinion, Society, Technology

ADVANCING TOWARDS A NEW DEFINITION OF “PROGRESS”

By Michael Cummins, Editor, August 9, 2025

The very notion of “progress” has long been a compass for humanity. Yet, what we consider an improved state is a question whose answer has shifted dramatically over time. As the Cambridge Dictionary defines it, progress is simply “movement to an improved or more developed state.” But whose state is being improved? And toward what future are we truly moving? The illusion of progress is perhaps most evident in technology, where breathtaking innovation often masks a troubling truth: the benefits are frequently unevenly shared, concentrating power and wealth while leaving many behind.

Historically, the definition of progress was a reflection of the era’s dominant ideology. The medieval period saw it as a spiritual journey toward salvation. The Enlightenment shattered this, replacing it with the ascent of humanity through reason, science, and the triumph over superstition. This optimism fueled the Industrial Revolution, where thinkers like Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer saw progress as an unstoppable climb toward knowledge and material prosperity. But this vision was a mirage for many. The same steam engines that powered unprecedented economic growth subjected workers to brutal, dehumanizing conditions. The Gilded Age enriched railroad magnates and steel barons while workers struggled in poverty and faced violent crackdowns.

Today, a similar paradox haunts our digital age. Meet Maria, a fictional yet representative 40-year-old factory worker in Flint, Michigan. For decades, her livelihood was a steady source of income. But last year, the factory where she worked introduced an AI-powered assembly line, and her job, along with hundreds of others, was automated away. Maria’s story is not an isolated incident; it’s a global narrative that reflects the experiences of billions. Technologies like the microchip and generative AI promise to solve complex problems, yet they often deepen inequality in their wake. Her story is a poignant call to arms, demanding that we re-examine our collective understanding of progress.

This essay argues for a new, more deliberate definition of progress—one that moves beyond the historical optimism rooted in automatic technological gains and instead prioritizes equity, empathy, and sustainability. We will explore the clash between techno-optimism—a blind faith in technology’s ability to solve all problems—and techno-realism—a balanced approach that seeks inclusive and ethical innovation. Drawing on the lessons of history and the urgent struggles of individuals like Maria, we will chart a course toward a progress that uplifts all, not just the powerful and the privileged.

The Myth of Automatic Progress

The allure of technology is a siren’s song, promising a frictionless world of convenience, abundance, and unlimited potential. Marc Andreessen’s 2023 “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” captured this spirit perfectly, a rallying cry for the belief that technology is the engine of all good and that any critique is a form of “demoralization.” However, this viewpoint ignores the central lesson of history: innovation is not inherently a force for equality.

The Industrial Revolution, while a monumental leap for humanity, was a masterclass in how progress can widen the chasm between the rich and the poor. Factory owners, the Andreessens of their day, amassed immense wealth, while the ancestors of today’s factory workers faced dangerous, low-wage jobs and lived in squalor. Today, the same forces are at play. A 2023 McKinsey report projected that up to 30% of U.S. jobs could be automated by 2030, a seismic shift that will disproportionately affect low-income workers, the very demographic to which Maria belongs.

Progress, therefore, is not an automatic outcome of innovation; it is a result of conscious choices. As economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson argue in their pivotal 2023 book Power and Progress, the distribution of a technology’s benefits is not predetermined.

“The distribution of a technology’s benefits is not predetermined but rather a result of governance and societal choices.” — Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Redefining progress means moving beyond the naive assumption that technology’s gains will eventually “trickle down” to everyone. It means choosing policies and systems that uplift workers like Maria, ensuring that the benefits of automation are shared broadly rather than being captured solely as corporate profits.

The Uneven Pace of Progress

Our perception of progress is often skewed by the dizzying pace of digital advancements. We see the exponential growth of computing power and the rapid development of generative AI and mistakenly believe this is the universal pace of all human progress. But as Vaclav Smil, a renowned scholar on technology and development, reminds us, this is a dangerous illusion.

“We are misled by the hype of digital advances, mistaking them for universal progress.” — Vaclav Smil, The Illusion of Progress: The Promise and Peril of Technology

A look at the data confirms Smil’s point. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global share of fossil fuels in the primary energy mix only dropped from 85% to 80% between 2000 and 2022—a change so slow it’s almost imperceptible. Simultaneously, global crop yields for staples like wheat have largely plateaued since 2010, and an estimated 735 million people were undernourished in 2022, a stark reminder that our most fundamental challenges aren’t being solved by the same pace of innovation we see in Silicon Valley.

Even the very tools of the digital revolution can be a source of regression. Social media, once heralded as a democratizing force, has become a powerful engine for division and misinformation. For example, a 2023 BBC report documented how WhatsApp was used to fuel ethnic violence during the Kenyan elections. These platforms, while distracting us with their endless streams of content, often divert our attention from the deeper, more systemic issues squeezing families like Maria’s, such as stagnant wages and rising food prices. Yet, progress is possible when innovation is directed toward systemic challenges. The rise of microgrid solar systems in Bangladesh, which has provided electricity to millions of households, demonstrates how targeted technology can bridge gaps and empower communities. Redefining progress means prioritizing these systemic solutions over the next shiny gadget.

Echoes of History in Today’s World

Maria’s job loss in Flint isn’t a modern anomaly; it’s an echo of historical patterns of inequality and division. It resonates with the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when railroad monopolies and steel magnates amassed colossal fortunes while workers faced brutal, 12-hour days in unsafe factories. The violent Homestead Strike of 1892, where workers fought against wage cuts, is a testament to the bitter class struggle of that era. Today, wealth inequality rivals that gilded age, with a recent Oxfam report showing that the world’s richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020. Families like Maria’s are left to struggle with rising rents and stagnant wages, a reality far removed from the promise of prosperity.

“History shows that technological progress often concentrates wealth unless society intervenes.” — Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress

Another powerful historical parallel is the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Decades of poor agricultural practices and corporate greed led to an environmental catastrophe that displaced 2.5 million people. This is an eerie precursor to our current climate crisis. A recent NOAA report on California’s wildfires shows how a similar failure to prioritize long-term well-being is now displacing millions more, just as it did nearly a century ago.

In Flint, the social fabric is strained, with some residents blaming immigrants for economic woes—a classic scapegoat tactic that ignores the significant contributions of immigrants to the U.S. economy. This echoes the xenophobic sentiment of the 1920s Red Scare. Unchecked AI-driven misinformation and viral “deepfakes” are the modern equivalent of 1930s radio propaganda, amplifying fear and division.

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us, often reviving old divisions.” — Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Yet, history is also a source of hope. Germany’s proactive refugee integration programs in the mid-2010s, which trained and helped integrate hundreds of thousands of migrants into the workforce, show that societies can choose inclusion over exclusion. A new definition of progress demands that we confront these cycles of inequality, fear, and division. By choosing empathy and equity, we can ensure that technology serves to bridge divides and uplift communities like Maria’s, rather than fracturing them further.

The Perils of Techno-Optimism

The belief that technology will, on its own, solve our most pressing problems is a seductive but dangerous trap. It promises a quick fix while delaying the difficult, structural changes needed to address crises like climate change and social inequality. In their analysis of climate discourse, scholars Sofia Ribeiro and Viriato Soromenho-Marques argue that techno-optimism is a distraction from necessary action.

“Techno-optimism distracts from the structural changes needed to address climate crises.” — Sofia Ribeiro and Viriato Soromenho-Marques, The Techno-Optimists of Climate Change

The Arctic’s indigenous communities, like the Inuit, face the existential threat of melting permafrost. Meanwhile, some oil companies tout expensive and unproven technologies like direct air capture to justify continued fossil fuel extraction, all while delaying the real solutions—a massive investment in renewable energy. This is not progress; it is a corporate strategy to delay accountability, echoing the tobacco industry’s denialism of the 1980s. As Nathan J. Robinson’s 2023 critique in Current Affairs notes, techno-optimism is a form of “blind faith” that ignores the need for regulation and ethical oversight, risking a repeat of catastrophes like the 2008 financial crisis.

The gig economy is a perfect microcosm of this peril. Driven by AI platforms like Uber, it exemplifies how technology can optimize for profits at the expense of fairness. A recent study from UC Berkeley found that a significant portion of gig workers earn below the minimum wage, as algorithms prioritize efficiency over worker well-being. Today, unchecked AI is amplifying these harms, with a 2023 Reuters study finding that a large percentage of content on platforms like X is misleading, fueling division and distrust.

“Technology without politics is a recipe for inequality and instability.” — Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

Yet, rejecting blind techno-optimism is not a rejection of technology itself. It is a demand for a more responsible, regulated approach. Denmark’s wind energy strategy, which has made it a global leader in renewables, is a testament to how pragmatic government regulation and public investment can outpace the empty promises of technowashing. Redefining progress means embracing this kind of techno-realism.

Choosing a Techno-Realist Path

To forge a new definition of progress, we must embrace techno-realism—a balanced approach that harnesses innovation’s potential while grounding it in ethics, transparency, and human needs. As Margaret Gould Stewart, a prominent designer, argues, this is an approach that asks us to design technology that serves society, not just markets.

This path is not about rejecting technology, but about guiding it. Think of the nurses in rural Rwanda, where drones zip through the sky, delivering life-saving blood and vaccines to remote clinics. This is technology not as a shiny, frivolous toy, but as a lifeline, guided by a clear human need. History and current events show us that this path is possible. The Luddites of 1811 were not fighting against technology; they were fighting for fairness in the face of automation’s threat to their livelihoods. Their spirit lives on in the European Union’s landmark AI Act, which mandates transparency and safety standards to protect workers like Maria from biased algorithms. In Chile, a national program is retraining former coal miners to become renewable energy technicians, demonstrating that a just transition to a sustainable future is possible.

The heart of this vision is empathy. Finland’s national media literacy curriculum, which has been shown to be effective in combating misinformation, is a powerful model for equipping citizens to navigate the digital world. In Mexico, indigenous-led conservation projects are blending traditional knowledge with modern science to heal the land. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote, true progress is about a fundamental expansion of human freedom.

“Development is about expanding the freedoms of the disadvantaged, not just advancing technology.” — Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom

Costa Rica’s incredible achievement of powering its grid with nearly 100% renewable energy is a beacon of what is possible when a nation aligns innovation with ethics. These stories—from Rwanda’s drones to Mexico’s forests—prove that technology, when guided by history, regulation, and empathy, can serve all.

Conclusion: A Progress We Can All Shape

Maria’s story—her job lost to automation, her family struggling in a community beset by historical inequities—is not a verdict on progress but a powerful, clear-eyed challenge. It forces us to confront the fact that progress is not an inevitable, linear march toward a better future. It is a series of deliberate choices, a constant negotiation between what is technologically possible and what is ethically and socially responsible. The historical echoes of inequality, environmental neglect, and division are loud, but they are not our destiny.

Imagine Maria today, no longer a victim of technological displacement but a beneficiary of a new, more inclusive model. Picture her retrained as a solar technician, her hands wiring a community-owned energy grid that powers Flint’s homes with clean energy. Imagine her voice, once drowned out by economic hardship, now rising on social media to share stories of unity and resilience. This vision—where technology is harnessed for all, guided by ethics and empathy—is the progress we must pursue.

The path forward lies in action, not just in promises. It requires us to engage in our communities, pushing for policies that protect and empower workers. It demands that we hold our leaders accountable, advocating for a future where investments in renewable energy and green infrastructure are prioritized over short-term profits. It requires us to support initiatives that teach media literacy, allowing us to discern truth from the fog of misinformation. It is in these steps, grounded in the lessons of history, that we turn a noble vision into a tangible reality.

Progress, in its most meaningful sense, is not about the speed of a microchip or the efficiency of an algorithm. It is about the deliberate, collective movement toward a society where the benefits of innovation are shared broadly, where the most vulnerable are protected, and where our shared future is built on the foundations of empathy, community, and sustainability. It is a journey we must embark on together, a progress we can all shape.

Progress: movement to a collectively improved and more inclusively developed state, resulting in a lessening of economic, political, and legal inequality, a strengthening of community, and a furthering of environmental sustainability.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Essays, Opinion, Podcasts, Politics, Reviews

Liberal Dissent: “What Happens After Reason?”

The following essay is a review of the “More From Sam” podcast titled: “Democracy, Populism, Wealth Inequality, News-Induced Anxiety, & Rapid Fire Questions”. It was written by AI and edited by Intellicurean.

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“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
—Voltaire

Sam Harris’s More From Sam podcast has long stood out as a calm, reasoned voice in a world increasingly shaped by outrage and misinformation. In his July 8, 2025 episode—“Democracy, Populism, Wealth Inequality, News-Induced Anxiety, & Rapid Fire Questions”—Harris returns to familiar ground, tackling the unraveling of liberal values in an age of emotional politics and tribal division. What he offers isn’t comfort, but clarity.

From the start, the episode takes on the loss of public discernment. Harris points to the obsession with conspiracy theories like the endlessly speculated Epstein “client list” or the Pentagon’s baffling explanation that some UFO sightings were the result of hazing rituals. These aren’t just oddities to Harris—they’re symptoms of a deeper cultural problem: a public so overwhelmed by distraction and distrust that fantasy starts to feel like truth.

Harris approaches these problems methodically. His message is simple but sobering: we’ve become more interested in emotional comfort than in facts, and more drawn to spectacle than to skepticism. That message might remind listeners of Voltaire, who famously fought against dogma with wit and courage. Harris doesn’t use satire—his tone is more restrained—but his purpose is similar: to defend reason when it’s under threat.

One of the episode’s strongest points is its framing of liberal democracy as a system designed not to be perfect, but to fix itself. Harris draws from philosopher Karl Popper’s idea of the “open society”—a society that can learn from its mistakes and adapt. That kind of flexibility, Harris argues, is being lost—not through dictatorship, but through the erosion of reason from within.

One of his main concerns is how some well-meaning liberals end up defending illiberal ideas. He warns that in the name of inclusion or tolerance, we can lose sight of core liberal values like free speech and open debate. This critique often appears in discussions around campus culture or global politics, and while it’s a theme Harris has returned to before, he insists it remains vital. Protecting liberal ideals sometimes means saying no—even when it’s uncomfortable.

When it comes to immigration, Harris raises tough questions. He suggests more rigorous ideological screening—using digital research, even green card revocation in extreme cases—to guard against threats to secular democracy. He draws a striking analogy between admitting Islamists and admitting Nazis, not to provoke, but to highlight what he sees as a dangerous inconsistency. The comparison is sharp and may turn some listeners away, but it reflects Harris’s commitment to intellectual honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.

The second half of the episode shifts to populism, which Harris sees not just as anger at elites, but as a deeper rejection of standards and truth. He criticizes media personalities like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, calling them “outdoor cats” who roam wherever they like without much care for accuracy. In Harris’s view, they aren’t promoting ideas—they’re selling outrage.

There’s a dark humor in how Harris presents some of this—like the absurdity of the Pentagon’s “hazing” theory—but overall, his tone is serious. He’s less interested in jokes than in showing how far off track our public conversations have drifted.

Still, Harris has blind spots. When he discusses economic inequality, he acknowledges the problem but quickly dismisses progressive solutions like public grocery stores or eliminating billionaires as “crazy Marxist things.” That quick rejection may leave listeners wanting more. The frustration behind those ideas is real, and even if the proposals are extreme, they speak to growing inequality that Harris doesn’t fully explore. His alternative—”the best version of capitalism we can achieve”—sounds good, but he offers little detail about how to get there.

In moments like these, Harris can come across as a bit detached. His claim that the modern middle class lives better than aristocrats once did is probably true in terms of data—but it’s not always helpful to people dealing with rent hikes or medical bills. Reason, Harris believes, can guide us through today’s chaos. But reason doesn’t always provide comfort.

That’s the deeper tension at the heart of this episode. Harris is clear-headed and principled, but sometimes emotionally distant. He names the problems, sketches out a framework for thinking, and offers a kind of orientation—but he doesn’t try to offer easy answers or emotional reassurance.

And maybe that’s the point. In a political culture dominated by drama and spectacle, More From Sam feels like a calm lighthouse in a storm. Harris doesn’t pretend to solve every problem. But he helps us name them, sort through them, and hold on to the idea that clear thinking still matters. That might not be everything—but it’s something. And in times like these, it may be one of the few things we can still count on.

Analysis, Economics, Financial, Opinion, Profiles, Reviews

REVIEW: “A BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL AND AN EVEN BIGGER DEBT: THREE PERSPECTIVES”

The following is an in-depth analysis of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” written by ChatGPT from important, bi-partisan fiscal, economic and political sources, all listed below:

If there is one unassailable truth in American political life, it is that no grand legislative gesture arrives without the promise of prosperity—and the prospect of unintended consequences. Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on July 4th, stands as a monument to this dynamic: a sprawling package of permanent tax cuts, entitlement retrenchments, and fresh spending, all wrapped in a populist bow and accompanied by the familiar refrain that the deficits will somehow pay for themselves.

To understand the bill’s import—and its likely fallout—it helps to consider three vantage points. The first is that of Milton Friedman, who would see in these provisions a laboratory for the free market, tempered by fiscal illusions. The second is Paul Krugman’s, for whom this is a brazen experiment in upward redistribution. The third is David Stockman’s, whose uniquely jaundiced eye discerns an unholy alliance of crony capitalism and debt-fueled political theatre.

Friedman, the Nobel laureate and evangelist of free enterprise, might first commend the bill’s unapologetic tax relief. A permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts is precisely the sort of measure he once called “a way to restore incentives, reduce distortions, and reward enterprise.” For Friedman, a tax system ought to be predictable, broad-based, and minimally intrusive. In this sense, the bill’s elimination of taxes on tips and overtime income, coupled with higher thresholds for the estate tax, will likely increase the incentive to work, save, and invest.

Yet Friedman would be quick to warn that no tax cut exists in a vacuum. The real test of fiscal virtue, he always argued, is not in slashing tax rates but in restraining spending. This bill, by combining aggressive tax cuts with continued defense expansions and only partial reductions to social spending, falls short of the discipline he prescribed. The result, Friedman would say, is a structural deficit that will eventually require either inflation or future tax hikes. “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” he liked to remind audiences. This is a lunch billed to generations unborn.

Krugman, viewing the same legislation, would perceive not a triumph of market freedom but an egregious abdication of public responsibility. He has long argued that the most misleading idea in modern politics is the notion that tax cuts inevitably pay for themselves. As the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring shows, the bill is likely to add over $3 trillion to the national debt in the next decade, even after accounting for higher GDP. Krugman would note that the permanent nature of the cuts deprives lawmakers of future leverage and crowds out investments in education, infrastructure, and health.

More pointedly, Krugman would argue that the bill’s distributional impact is regressive by design. Expanded deductions for capital gains and estates, the restoration of a higher SALT cap, and corporate incentives all tilt the benefits toward the affluent, while Medicaid cuts and SNAP work requirements fall hardest on those with the least. In Krugman’s view, this is not simply poor economics but a moral failing: a return to what he calls “the era of Dickensian inequality, dressed up in the rhetoric of growth.”

Yet the critique most likely to sting is the one that David Stockman would deliver. Unlike Krugman, Stockman began as a champion of supply-side tax reform. But he has since become its most unflinching critic. To him, the “Big Beautiful Bill” represents the final stage of a fiscal derangement decades in the making: a bipartisan addiction to borrowing and a refusal to reckon with arithmetic. “This is not capitalism,” Stockman might write, “it’s a simulacrum of capitalism—an endless auction of political favors financed by the Fed’s printing press.”

Stockman would remind readers that when he served as Reagan’s budget director, the expectation was that tax cuts would be offset by deep spending restraint. Instead, deficits ballooned and discipline eroded. The new bill, with its eye-watering cost and lack of credible offsets, is an even more flamboyant departure from any pretense of balance. Stockman would likely deride the Republican celebration as a form of magical thinking, no more credible than the illusions peddled by Democrats. In his telling, the bill is both symptom and accelerant of a broader collapse of fiscal sanity.

All three perspectives converge on a single point: the bill’s enormous impact on the debt trajectory. According to estimates from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the legislation could push the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio past 145% by 2050—an unprecedented level for a peacetime economy. While proponents insist that higher growth will mitigate the burden, the Tax Foundation’s dynamic scoring suggests the additional output will cover only a fraction of the revenue loss.

Friedman would insist that economic growth requires both lower taxes and leaner government. Krugman would counter that social stability and productivity demand sustained public investment. Stockman would argue that the entire paradigm—borrowing trillions to finance giveaways—has become a bipartisan racket. Despite their ideological divergences, all three would agree that the arithmetic is merciless. Eventually, debts must be serviced, entitlements must be funded, and the dollar’s credibility must be defended.

What remains is the question of public memory. In the years ahead, as interest payments rise and fiscal constraints tighten, politicians will doubtless blame one another for the bill’s consequences. The narrative will fracture along familiar lines: Republicans will claim the tax cuts were sabotaged by spending; Democrats will argue the spending was hobbled by tax cuts. Independents will declare that neither side ever intended to balance the books. But the numbers, as Friedman and Krugman and Stockman all understood in their own ways, are immune to spin.

There is an old line, attributed variously to Keynes and to an anonymous Treasury mandarin, that the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Perhaps, in this case, Washington can remain irrational longer than the public can remain attentive. But eventually, the bill will come due—not only the legislation signed on Independence Day, but the larger bill for decades of self-deception.

A big, beautiful bill indeed. And perhaps, in the fullness of time, an even bigger, less beautiful reckoning.

Key Elements of the Bill

  • Permanent tax cuts (≈ $4.5 trillion): Extends nearly all parts of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including individual rate brackets, expanded standard deduction, plus new deductions—no taxes on tips/overtime (through 2028), boosted SALT deduction ($40k cap for five years), larger child/senior credits, plus expansions like auto loan interest write-offs and “Trump Accounts” for parents apnews.com+15ft.com+15crfb.org+15.
  • Major spending cuts: $1–1.2 trillion in savings via Medicaid cuts (work requirements, provider taxes), SNAP/state cost-shifts, rollback of clean energy incentives .
  • Increased enforcement and defense: $150 B added to defense, another $150 B+ for border/ICE enhancements; ICE funding grows tenfold – now largest federal law enforcement budget .
  • Debt-ceiling hike: Allows a $4–$5 trillion statutory increase in borrowing authority as.com+3en.wikipedia.org+3reuters.com+3.

📊 Economic & Fiscal Outlook

🏛️ Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

🏦 CRFB & Budget Advocates

  • Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) puts the Senate’s reconciliation version at $4.1 trillion added debt through 2034—and warns a permanent version could add $5.3–5.5 trillion en.wikipedia.org.
  • CRFB also flags that Social Security and Medicare’s projected insolvency deadlines are now accelerated by roughly one year .

🧮 Tax Foundation

  • Estimates that permanent tax measures could yield a +1.2% GDP boost over the long run, but also slash federal revenue by $4 trillion (dynamically)—meaning growth would only cover ~19% of the revenue loss en.wikipedia.org+15en.wikipedia.org+15reuters.com+15.
  • Shorter-term growth boost around +0.6% by 2027, but turns mildly negative (–0.1%) by 2034 once fiscal constraints bite taxfoundation.org.

🌍 International Outlook (Moody’s, Reuters)

💬 Media & Policy Experts

  • Reuters warns of a “debt spiral,” with rising interest costs jeopardizing Fed independence .
  • FT, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist describe it as the largest GOP tax/deficit expansion since Reagan, dubbing it a “reverse Robin Hood”—favoring corporations and wealthy over vulnerable groups .
  • Economists at Yale, Penn warn severe health-care cuts could increase preventable mortality and financial distress en.wikipedia.org+1ft.com+1.

🔍 Bottom Line Summary

MetricEstimate
Deficit Increase (2025–34)$3.3–4.1 T (CBO: ≈ $3.4T; CRFB Senate: ≈ $4.1T)
Debt-to-GDP TrajectoryRising, potentially 145–200% by 2050
GDP Growth Impact+0.6% by 2027, fading to –0.1% by 2034
Revenue Loss~$4–5 T over a decade (dynamic)
Insured Loss & Social Costs~11 M fewer insured; Medicaid/SNAP and health impacts significant
  • Neutral consensus: Deficit historians, nonpartisan agencies agree debt will balloon sharply in absence of offsetting revenues or spending reversals.
  • Growth trade-off: While tax relief offers modest short-term growth, it does not offset long-run fiscal burdens.
  • Debt consequences: Higher mandatory interest costs, credit rating erosion, pressure on policy flexibility, and future tax hikes or spending cuts loom.

🧠 Final Take

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” delivers sweeping tax cuts, spending reductions in social safety nets, and major border/defense expansions—all rolled into one 940-page, $4–5 trillion fiscal package. Bipartisan institutions like the CBO, CRFB, Tax Foundation, and independent watchdogs align on its massive impact:

  1. Adds trillions to the deficit, sharply escalating national debt.
  2. Offers modest, short-term output gains, but risks longer-term economic drag.
  3. Amplifies fiscal risk, stokes interest burden, and could strain future budgets.
  4. Contains explicit regressive elements—favoring higher-income households and corporations over lower-income families and health-care access.

Here are the three writers whose vantage points are considered:

1️⃣ Conservative / Republican

Milton Friedman

Why he stands out:

  • Nobel Prize–winning economist and prolific writer whose work shaped modern conservative and libertarian economic thought.
  • Champion of free markets, limited government, and monetarism (the idea that controlling the money supply is key to managing the economy).
  • His books and columns influenced Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and remain foundational in debates about taxes, deficits, and regulation.
    Major Works:
  • Capitalism and Freedom (1962) – argued that economic freedom underpins political freedom.
  • Free to Choose (1980, with Rose Friedman) – a best-selling defense of deregulation, school vouchers, and lower taxes.
  • Columns for Newsweek and extensive public outreach (including the PBS series Free to Choose).

2️⃣ Liberal / Progressive

Paul Krugman

Why he stands out:

  • Nobel Prize–winning economist and prominent columnist who shaped liberal economic commentary from the 1990s onward.
  • A sharp critic of supply-side tax cuts, deregulation, and austerity.
  • Influential in Democratic policy debates on stimulus spending, inequality, and health care.
    Major Works:
  • The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) – traced the rise of inequality and made a moral case for progressive taxation and social insurance.
  • End This Depression Now! (2012) – argued forcefully for Keynesian stimulus after the Great Recession.
  • Columns in The New York Times, where he has been one of the most-read voices on economic policy.

3️⃣ Independent / Centrist

David Stockman

Why he stands out:

  • Former Reagan budget director who later became an iconoclastic critic of both parties’ fiscal excesses.
  • He helped design the Reagan tax cuts, but later turned against supply-side orthodoxy and big deficits.
  • His writings blend libertarian skepticism of big government with scathing critiques of Wall Street bailouts and crony capitalism.
    Major Works:
  • The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed (1986) – a landmark insider account of budget battles and exploding deficits.
  • The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America (2013) – an encyclopedic denunciation of central banking, stimulus, and fiscal irresponsibility.
  • Regular commentary and op-eds across financial and political publications (The New York Times, Zero Hedge, The Atlantic).
Essays, Opinion, Politics

‘Populists Are Gaining Power And Keeping It. What Comes Next?’

POLITICO MAGAZINE (April 13, 2025) by Anthony J. Constantini:

In 2017, President Donald Trump was almost the only nationalist populist leader in the West. Liberal democracy — its protection at home and its promotion abroad — was the political default across America and Europe. The United States’ marquee conference for hard-right conservatives, CPAC, featured only one major foreign speaker that year, Britain’s Nigel Farage, who had just resigned as leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party after a successful Brexit campaign.

Eight years later, Trump has been joined on the world stage by a plethora of right-wing populists, and nationalism has gone mainstream. CPAC 2025 was a verifiable international event, with guests ranging from Argentina’s President Javier Milei to Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico to Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, among many others.

But while it’s clear that nationalism is having a moment, for now it’s just that: a moment.

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Making the West great again will not just aid populists politically. It will do something more important: Inspire Westerners on both sides of the Atlantic for decades to come. Youth throughout America and Europe, instead of being told they are members of a paradisical global society, will be brought up understanding they are part of an ancient and storied civilization. The countries which make up that civilization will have disagreements. But like a family, they will understand that they all share one common, civilizational home.

One worth fighting for.

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Anthony J. Constantini writes about foreign policy and international political movements. He is a PhD candidate in American history at the University of Vienna.

Economics, Essays, Opinion, Politics

‘Make Europe Great Again’

NATIONAL REVIEW MAGAZINE (March 27, 2025) by David Frost:

Just over five years ago, shortly after Boris Johnson won a decisive election victory in Britain and two weeks after Britain finally left the European Union, I gave a speech in Brussels titled “Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe.”

It hit many British front pages the next day. Partly that was because the speech set out Britain’s uncompromising negotiating position for the next stage of the Brexit talks. But equally it was because it was the first attempt to set out and give renewed intellectual legitimacy to the cause of leaving the EU and of reviving British nationhood. I wanted the British people to hear, after years of being told that to leave the EU was to vote against the modern world, that there was in fact a rational, reputable, and practically deliverable case for national independence. And I wanted Europeans to understand our thinking properly and consider what it meant for them too.

I argued that what we were seeing in Europe was a clash of two revolutions in governance. The first was the creation of the EU itself. As I put it, this was “the greatest revolution in European governance since 1648: a new governmental system overlaid on an old one, purportedly a Europe of nation-states, but in reality the paradigm of a new system of transnational collective governance.”

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I don’t of course expect many in Europe to heed my call. The recent European thrashing around on geopolitics, and the refusal to face Europe’s relative impotence to affect outcomes in Ukraine, suggest that the current leadership of most European countries is unable to see things straight or do more than respond to day-to-day challenges. But the problems will not go away. If conservatives don’t put forward their own clear vision for Europe, then the instinctual movements of the EU and its leaders will dominate. European conservatives are unlikely then to find themselves in a “nation called Europe,” but they will be in a political construct that by design will stop them from fulfilling their conservative goals. The sooner they face up to that, the better. Changing things is, after all, a major task. It took the EU 70 years to get to this point. It will take a long time to reverse it. Better start soon.

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This article appears as “For a Conservative Europe” in the May 2025 print edition of National Review.

David Frost – Lord Frost of Allenton was the minister for EU relations and chief negotiator for Brexit in Boris Johnson’s government. He is now a Conservative Party member in Britain’s House of Lords. His essay is an edited version of a speech given at the Danube Institute, Budapest, on March 4.

Addictions, Behavior, Essays, Opinion

Opinion Essay: ‘The Price We Pay Betting On Sports’

THE NEW YORK TIMES (February 9, 2025); By Carl Erik Fisher

When we think about any addiction, we tend to focus on people who are utterly consumed by it — those whose lives are visibly falling apart. Yet gambling challenges our usual assumptions about addiction and risk, as its harms extend far beyond the most severe cases.

Consider a young man from my therapy practice, a former college athlete, who isn’t bankrupt or in crisis but feels stuck in a cycle of unhealthy online sports betting. He repeatedly deletes the betting app from his phone, only to reinstall it days later at the prompting of a well-timed email, a group bet with friends or simply the ads plastered across every sports arena. He does fine at work and mostly keeps to the dollar limits he sets, but his internal preoccupation, restlessness and chasing of losses just feel bad. He wouldn’t call himself addicted, but he doesn’t feel healthy, either. At the very least, he has the creeping sense that he’d feel better if he put his attention and energy toward something more meaningful.

Serious gambling addiction is devastating. Beyond financial ruin, it increases the risk of physical health problems, domestic violence and family rupture. Every year, 2.5 million American adults suffer from severe gambling problems. Many suffer invisibly, silently wagering away their lives on cellphones, perhaps in the very same room as their family and friends.

These severe cases demand attention, but focusing only on them obscures something important. As a physician and someone in recovery from alcohol and stimulant addiction myself, I’m concerned by how we have been conditioned to see addiction in all-or-nothing terms. Beyond the millions of Americans who meet the criteria for gambling disorder, five million to eight million more have a mild to moderate gambling problem that still affects their lives — like my patient. Since the federal ban on sports betting was struck down in 2018, sports gambling in the United States has exploded, with annual wagers now approaching $150 billion.

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Dr. Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist at Columbia University. He’s the author of “The Urge: Our History of Addiction.”