We are often in the habit of forgetting that the map we drew of reality is not itself reality. Maps are always imperfect, and the territory keeps changing after we finish the map. When we say “the map is not the territory,” we mean to cultivate a kind of humility about the data we are […]
Times change. And us with them. Voice and Accountability Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism Government Effectiveness Rule of Law Control of Corruption Data from the World Bank: http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#reports
You learned the fairy tale in civics class. The ballot box is the one clean machine — the sacred mechanism, the great equalizer, the place where the powerful and the powerless cancel each other out one vote at a time. The peaceful transfer of power is American scripture. We even built a little ritual around […]
A new long-form data brief on how representativeness has been gerrymandered away — and the first installment of a series on how American democracy was engineered to stop being competitive. In 2024, Americans went to the polls to elect 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. 366 of those races were over before a […]
Five years ago today, a violent mob stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election. The man who incited them has since been re-elected president, which scuppered the investigation into him by Special Counsel Jack Smith. If that whiplash isn’t enough to give you vertigo, consider this: we […]
A network of exceedingly wealthy individuals and organizations have channeled their vast fortunes into influencing American politics, policy, and public opinion — they’ve formed a wealth cult. And they’ve leveraged that cult and its considerable fortune to influence and in many ways dramatically transform American politics. The most succinct way I have come up with […]
After last night’s solid trouncing of the entire GOP steez by the Democrats in elections coast to coast (p.s. don’t miss Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech — it’s a banger), the time is ripe for articulating a new vision of the American Dream. And the vision of progressive capitalism is sounding like the right tone for […]
Common Sense Review: The Original Viral Manifesto and What It Teaches Us About Revolutionary Rhetoric A reading guide for the disinformation age There’s a certain type of political document that doesn’t just argue for change—it manifests the psychological conditions that make change feel inevitable. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is the template for this genre, and […]
Critical thinking is a disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. It involves questioning ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. It requires curiosity, skepticism, and humility to […]
The term Christian nationalists brings together a number of radical religious sects seeking to overthrow the democratic republic of the United States and installing a strict theocracy, from dominionists to orthodox Catholics to Evangelicals and many more. Christian nationalist organizations work to increase the influence of religion on politics, under the invented mythology that the […]
What is cosmism: The Russian Philosophy Secretly Driving Silicon Valley’s Wildest Dreams When Elon Musk talks about making humanity a “multiplanetary species” or when tech billionaires pour millions into defeating death itself, they’re not just indulging sci-fi fantasies. They’re channeling a century-old Russian philosophy that once inspired Soviet cosmonauts—and now quietly shapes Silicon Valley‘s most […]
Twitter Timeline (aka ‘X’): From Founding to Present Few platforms have so profoundly shaped the 21st-century media and political landscape as Twitter. Launched in 2006 as a quirky microblogging experiment in Silicon Valley, Twitter rapidly evolved into a global public square — a real-time newswire, activism megaphone, cultural barometer, and political battleground all in one. […]
From history’s heroes to today’s cartoonish villains, it’s important to understand who is behind the events we revere or revile. Although I don’t subscribe to the Great Man Theory — the idea that only exceptional people largely shape the course of events — I do believe in celebrating (or vilifying!) the individuals who are known […]
Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that occur when arguments are constructed or evaluated. They are deceptive and misleading, often leading to false or weak conclusions. Recognizing and avoiding logical fallacies is essential for critical thinking and effective communication. These flaws in rhetorical logic can be observed aplenty in modern political and civil discourse. They […]
A Comprehensive Timeline of Russian Electoral Interference: From Imperial Russia to the Digital Age Russian election interference around the globe has a much longer history than most people realize, extending back centuries rather than decades. This interference has evolved alongside Russia‘s own political transformations, from imperial ambitions to Soviet ideology to modern geopolitical objectives under […]