The truth is going out of business as technology turns us into a folk-story society, ripe for influence by a demagogue. On Friday night, after I appeared on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show to talk about my essay “Lessons on media policy at the slaughter-bench of history,” the number of subscribers to this newsletter exploded and…

Contemplating the purpose of the press after the Trump revolution. A single election can be an accident: Maybe the economic fundamentals were bad, the opposing party ran a weak candidate, a few thousand votes in a swing state swung a weird direction, the FBI announces it’s investigating your emails right before everybody starts voting. These…

The fight for freedom is a war on boredom. Voting is a fundamentally mystical phenomenon. Even in church you pray to God with other people. When I visit the ballot box later today, I’ll be communing with the public alone. The writer Osita Nwanevu, reacting to Trump aide Stephen Miller’s musings on the mystique of…