Caricature of Donald Trump

The United States of America is decadent and depraved

Core Topics, Media & Culture, Open Government

“We cannot blame everything on Donald Trump, much though we might want to,” writes James Traub. “In the decadent stage of the Roman Empire, or of Louis XVI’s France, or the dying days of the Habsburg Empire so brilliantly captured in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, decadence seeped downward from the rulers to the ruled. But in a democracy, the process operates reciprocally. A decadent elite licenses degraded behavior, and a debased public chooses its worst leaders. Then our Nero panders to our worst attributes — and we reward him for doing so.”

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Steve Bannon

Harvey Weinstein and Steve Bannon: The troubled business relationship revealed

Civil Liberties, Core Topics, Media & Culture

“In the week since bombshell allegations against film mogul Harvey Weinstein became public, the Breitbart website has been all over the scandal as an opportunity to showcase liberal hypocrisy in Hollywood. One thing missing from its coverage, though, is the role that its executive chairman Steve Bannon once played for Weinstein,” writes Eriq Gardner.

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You Again? Stop the "alt right", neo-Nazis, and white supremacists

The best way to fight neo-Nazis is to… laugh?

Civil Liberties, Core Topics, Media & Culture

The Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat writes: “Hate is marching in the streets. Some of the same groups that marched in Charlottesville are growing in the Northwest. A local author has argued the best thing to do to confront it all is to … show up and mock them.” The local author Westneat talked to is none other than David Neiwert, the respected creator of Orcinus and an expert on right wing extremism and eliminationists.

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