Culture
Weekend Edition: Something new about this version of the same old violence?
The ways that our accelerating and evolving political violence feels familiar and the subtle ways it feels new are clues to our history and to a different future.
Democracy
Weekend Edition: Redistricting or realignment?
The ongoing argument over mid-census redistricting as a regular political strategy may have irreversible consequences well-beyond the short-term strategic gains both Republicans and Democrats are seeking.
Weekend Edition: The Disenchanted, the Misenchanted, and the Re-enchantment of America
How we think about what's not working in our civic life might offer a very different long-term path to something better even while the short-term demands we live in and confront our unrelentingly dysfunctional present as directly as we can.
Democracy
The Nine Revolutions of Democracy
How Micah Bornfree's Unified Theory of Revolution combined with a dimension of time might could help us make sense of the work confronting us and keep us moving toward the nation we need.
The Supreme Court as culturemaker
The highest court in the land not only decides our most fundamental constitutional questions, their power to choose which cases they hear at all fundamentally shapes our civic culture and discourse in largely silent ways.
Democracy
The wisdom of Octavia Butler we need right now
Why continuing to try to predict the future in a moment of impossibly heavy uncertainty might be one of our keys to changing course.
The work ahead
If damage is the strategy, then the cracks are our guide to the work our democracy needs from us, win or lose.
A real solution buried in a War Game
The most important insight might not be anything that happens in the simulated Situation Room but what kept one of the characters from ending up on the wrong side of the "war".
The exceptional outsider democratists
A wonderful, posthumous gift from David Graeber invites us to think differently about the roots of democratic culture and the functioning of democratic communities.
Weekend Edition: A little bit, right now, everywhere, every day
The 2022-ness of what we're living through started well before this cycle, and we need to embrace both a longer horizon and new everyday, always-on approach to our civic life to find a new path.
Newsletter
What do we mean when we say "democracy"?
Examining where, how, and for whom democracy shows up in culture can point us toward where and how we need to engage new conversations about reclaiming our democracy.
Newsletter
Habit is not the same as tradition
We need to talk about what we're really talking about when we talk about the filibuster: our desperate need for our leaders to govern.