“To be college-educated about the West in 2026 is to have great works run through some combination of critical theory, identity politics, and post-colonial studies—the teeth used to chew our identity and our ideals. (Thankfully, there is a group of insurgents keeping the best of the West alive online, though one has to learn to separate signal from slop.) Now, if you were to ask me what the most important work of the Western canon is to our sense of shared identity, it is surely the Exodus story. That story has interesting and important details. It’s full of symbolism, yet it is also based upon peoples and cultures that once lived to tell the tale. But I want to do something risky with Exodus.” (08/03/26)
“If Washington is good at anything, it is self-celebration. Those who dominate the city constantly remind the public, especially those who live in the great beyond, the ‘flyover country’ between the coasts, of the eternal wisdom, dedication, genius, and goodness of those who have successfully climbed the capital’s well-greased pole of political rule. Never is the shameless hypocrisy on greater display than during the funerals of those who did the most to sacrifice the interests of the Americans who lack genuine representation in Washington. Such was Tuesday’s commemoration of the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R‑SC).” (08/03/26)
“Making an enemies list is creepy. Publishing the names of people you dislike to fuel political supporters’ prejudices is even creepier and potentially dangerous. That’s what New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has done with the introduction of a property tax surcharge on relatively high-value second homes linked to a searchable online database of those who could be affected. The socialist mayor’s defenders point out that tax and property information is a matter of public record in New York, but the packaged publication of surcharge targets and Mamdani’s history of calling out opponents by name suggests something nastier is going on.” (08/03/26)
“A long, long time ago (27 years, to be exact), my boss (the inimitable Mark Melcher) and I predicted that the European Monetary Union would be the death of the EU. The Euro, we wrote for our clients at a now-defunct big brokerage house, would be a disaster and would destroy everything that the post-war Europeans had spent the previous several decades working to build. Specifically, we wrote: ‘Psst! You wanna know a secret? The Euro, and the mess it represents, is going to be a social, economic and political catastrophe. Indeed, we think it is probable that the adoption of the Euro will be to 21st century Europe, what the killing of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to 20th century Europe …” (08/03/26)
“In 1925, John Maynard Keynes dismissed Marx’s Capital as an obsolete economic textbook that no serious economist would still assign. He was not being contrarian. By the time he wrote that, the marginal revolution of the 1870s had already done the intellectual work: Jevons, Menger, Walras, and later Wicksteed, Marshall, and Böhm-Bawerk had dismantled the labor theory of value that Marx’s entire economic system rested on. Among economists, the argument was over, and Marx had lost it. So why does Marx remain one of the most cited authors in the humanities and social sciences, a century and a half after his death, in fields far removed from the one where his core claims were actually tested?” (08/03/26)
“The popular rightwing network spent months building a case for the Iran War. Now they are invested in keeping up support, even if hosts have to deny reality.” (08/03/26)
“The desire to ban speech, in any form, is an example of insecurity inside society and government. Knowing that certain words or images may in some way draw revulsion and offense is a risk an individual must take. Not everyone will experience the same offense or revulsion, and some may even find arousal or delight in such words or images. It’s what makes the human experience unique and it is why free expression is a sacred thing.” (08/03/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s saying you endorse all the violence, exploitation, ecocide and abuse of the current order. Politics are always happening all around you in every moment of every day, whether you are ‘into’ it or not. Everything you do in your everyday life is pervasively shaped by local and national laws, by economic systems, by oligarchy, by propaganda, by war, by militarism, by imperialist extraction, by government regulations and the lack thereof. Saying you don’t feel like paying attention to these factors is just saying you’re fine with the way they are presently happening..” (08/03/26)
Source: Foreign Policy
by Samuel Bendett & Maria Snegovaya
“Among the various challenges that Russia has faced since its ill-conceived full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the most acute has been a severe labor shortage. Russia’s deepening demographic crisis, combined with mass emigration and recruitment of hundreds of thousands of men into the army, has sharply exacerbated the problem. … By 2030, Russia will need to bring 10.9 million people into the workforce, according to Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov, with more than 90 percent replacing retiring workers and roughly 800,000 filling newly created positions. The rapid expansion of defense production has drawn workers away from civilian sectors, intensifying competition for an already scarce workforce. … The Kremlin’s response has rested on three pillars: mobilizing underutilized domestic labor, expanding prison labor, and increasing labor migration. Each proves to be either insufficient or self-defeating. When it comes to Russia’s labor shortage, the cure is worse than the disease.” (08/03/26)
