Archive - The Mess We've Made

Get ready for Happy Pol Pot Day!

Since the world is now upside down, I figure we should start celebrating the birthdays of history's worst dictators, tyrants, criminals, & mass…

Feb 21 •

American Citizens Have One Superpower

And it's time to use it.

Feb 7 •

January 2024

A Dystopian Tale for Our Time

Tyranny and civil war come to a society very much like ours

Jan 30, 2024 •

February 2022

Saturday, February 26, 2022

The news from Ukraine these past few days has been truly depressing—the kind of depressing that, for me, turns a pint of ice cream and two shots of…

Feb 27, 2022 •

Thursday, February 24, 2022

This is a continuation of the discussion I began on February 9 on our extreme polarization, shifting attention from Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized to…

Feb 24, 2022 •

Friday, February 11, 2022

My friend Rita read my newsletter from Wednesday and sent me Thomas Edsal’s column on a similar theme that appeared in Wednesday’s New York Times…

Feb 11, 2022 •

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

When we were kids, and when politics came up in conversation, my mom would often repeat a saying she got from her father: “When Republicans are in…

Feb 9, 2022 •

January 2022

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Jan 20, 2022 •

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Jan 5, 2022 •

November 2021

About "The Mess We've Made"

The starting premise of this newsletter is something that we all know in our bones: that public life in the United States today is an absolute mess.

Nov 26, 2021 •

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