There is a strange feedback loop between our institutions and the internet: the internet spreads mental illness like a plague and our institutions codify the latest psychosis. In pop culture, this dynamic created critical barista theory, in which the language of high criticism is used to articulate pop culture preferences. Critical barista theory…

In January 2021, shortly after Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, the Central Intelligence Agency announced a “digital facelift.” The agency’s goal was to attract millennial and Gen Z applicants who might be skeptical of the organization’s mission and to “increase racial, cultur­al, disability, sexual orientation, and gender diversity so that its work­force is ‘reflective of America…

In our political culture, there is no issue quite like wokeness. The conversation it provokes tends to be about everything and nothing at the same time. It is central to our politics because Republican resistance to it is perhaps the single greatest force binding the American Right together. And while the mass messaging of Democratic politicians tends to focus…

Whatever one thinks of today’s culture wars, it is hard to deny that the various barbarians currently rattling the gates were, in some sense, created by the failure of the prior generation to live up to its promises. Old center-left bromides about growing the economy by endlessly expanding higher education now ring hollow. Retreads of…

Republicans keen to tout the supposed superiority of their preferred economic model often cite booming Sunbelt states like Texas or Tennessee as evidence that it works. They don’t talk as much about less successful red states like Kansas or West Virginia. A look at solid red Indiana and its poor performance shows the limits of…

The coronavirus pandemic has changed people’s expectations of what government can and should do. Debate around the limits of mar­kets has accelerated, creating more space for conservatives and progressives alike to put forward new ideas for reform. Many sense that the rapid expansion of federal power and spending…

In a Pew Research Center poll taken in the spring of 2020, 65 percent of Americans said the federal government was doing “too little to reduce effects of climate change.” A few months later, Pew conducted a survey of registered voters on the top issues for the 2020 presidential election. The voters placed climate change a distant eleventh…

Discovering truths hidden in plain sight may be the single greatest challenge in this era of information oversupply, but here’s a try: America’s environment is the cleanest it has ever been in our lifetime—and perhaps several lifetimes. This statement should come as no surprise, given our country’s…

World leaders recently gathered in Glasgow for “COP26,” the latest UN climate change conference. At the top of the agenda was the need for carbon mitigation actions to achieve the Paris Accord’s goals and to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. In anticipation of the confer­ence, the Euro­pean Commission released the “European Green Deal,” a package…