The Pre-Political

Bernie Sanders restored economic populism to the heart of American progressive politics, even while falling short on his campaigns' promises in a few key ways. Unfortunately, some on the left seem determined not to learn from his example.

Recent developments in psychoanalysis have sent analysts searching for solutions to issues far upstream of the clinical encounter. This "social turn" in the field has led them no closer to solving social problems and further from working through the primary problems of the field itself.

As liberals debate how to make government do big things again, the Right claims the mantle of government efficiency, disingenuously. With a capable, trustworthy, and watchful bureaucracy, the New Deal's Public Works Administration did both.

Immigration is the toughest issue for the Left to solve. And the future depends on it.

The Democratic Party still appears full of cackling liberal scolds fluent in DEI jargon, even though top Democrats themselves would like now to distance themselves from this image. Why do the Dems seem yoked to woke?

From Trumpists like Rudy Giuliani declaring that "truth isn’t truth" to Jordan Peterson regularly veering perilously close to "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is," the Right is increasingly shaped by the parameters of postmodern culture.

Ignoring moral debates has led the Left to implicitly privilege being authentic over being good. This is a conceptual and moral mistake, but it is also a severe political limitation as well.

Proliferating rates of mental health diagnoses reflect a breakdown of traditional forms of authority rather than an excess of medical authority. The self-pathologizing subjects that this breakdown has produced present a barrier to emancipatory politics.

The most famous union win in American labor history was a product of the conditions and organizing momentum of the moment. But it was also made possible by structure building and collective experiences that generated class confidence.

Readings of the Holocaust as an economically-senseless manifestation of anti-Semitism obscure its reality—a brutal, messy, mostly technologically crude operation made feasible by the immense scale of the German war economy. What consolations are offered by such an interpretation?