- From the Editors: Our Land
On Leaning Virgins and picture postcards.
- “As Having Life”: Reflections on the Gem of the Mall by James Wrona and Elizabeth Murphy
With more veterans of today’s wars returning to a world that does not understand, nor sufficiently treat the physical and psychological injuries they face, and more dying at home—by their own hands—than in combat in Afghanistan, Junger’s appeal to honesty holds great potential.
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Making Slavery Safe: Jefferson and Monticello, in conversation with Henry Wiencek
In the Declaration of Independence, and in some of his other writings, Jefferson spoke words and created formulas of freedom that embodied our deepest desires, so they are adaptable to almost any cause. The civil rights movement, for example, was able to fly the Jeffersonian banner—and the great irony is that that is the last movement that he would have wanted to see his banner floating over.
- You are Watching “The Bachelor” by Dan Monaco
Television, paired with the sustained business trends towards consolidation and cost-cutting in which it is enmeshed, has in this century, facing threats from new technologies, begun to more ruthlessly play to its strengths by bringing to the fore and focusing more intently on those areas where it has always been at its strongest, most advantageous, and most powerful.- On the Plane with Hillary Clinton: in conversation with Kim Ghattas
And of course Americans officials say that they continue to press for respect of democracy and human rights. But for people who feel the U.S. isn’t delivering for them, it’s because they believe the U.S. isn’t doing the right thing from their perspective. People who are on the receiving end of decisions made in Washington often don’t get this clash between American values and interests.
- Fiction: Installations by Ilya Kliger
Visitors report that the temperature inside this last version of the installation is so low they now and then catch a glimpse of their own breath. At least the woman is dressed appropriately for the cold, they note. Those who see other manifestations of the room, on the other hand, wonder whether she is dressed too warmly.
- Digital Proletariat: The Spectacle of the “Internet”
and Labor’s Dispossession by Michael Pepi
Our deep enchantment with digital technology relies on its inherent spectacle. From there it devolves into futuristic techno-utopianism, served up cold by way of “hacker superiority” or the hagiography of tech visionaries.
- The Enslaved Genre: Why Cinema Sticks to its Root Principles—Inequality and Injustice
by G.K. Peatling
Cinema as an art form cannot transcend underlying social injustices and inequalities. Love and loss, which are supposed to be the main themes of the medium, and which usually dominate its core narratives, require a base of rights respectively to be enjoyed and endured.
- Poetry by Charles Weld, Michael Ruby, and Simon Perchik