ArcaMax

COVID-19 has created the ideal medium for a summer of continuous protest.

Political protests and demonstrations used to be weekend affairs during which angry leftists shouted at empty government offices before shuffling home Sunday afternoon to gear up for the workweek. With 1 out of 4 workers having filed for unemployment and many more working...Read more

Culturally informed by Roman Catholicism's expectation that regret must prompt an apology as well as penance, Western European tradition calls for a rhetorical journey by politicians who claim to have changed course. A chastened leader should explain why and how he came to his previous belief, explain the circumstances that changed his mind and ...Read more

Dear Mr. Pearlstine: Last week, you issued a statement acknowledging the role your newspaper has played in the racist oppression of people of color, according to the "LA Podcast." "The Los Angeles Times has a long, well-documented history of fueling the racism and cruelty that accompanied our city's becoming a metropolis," you wrote. You ...Read more

Few things are more terrifying than the unknown, as we are discovering as we struggle to navigate, avoid and (if we fail to avoid) survive a mysterious new virus. That goes double when reliable information is hard to come by; it is unquantifiably worse without credible leadership.

"Who ya gonna believe," Chico Marx asked, "me or your own eyes?"...Read more

I shouted the text of my latest story about the invasion from a Palm Pilot into a balky Iridium satellite phone. It was at least my third attempt, and the battery was dying. A Village Voice employee assigned to take dictation on the other side of the world interrupted me.

"I don't understand," she said, irritated. "Why don't you just go to ...Read more

The corporate conservatives who control the Democratic Party are suffering from cheaters' remorse.

The DNC and its media allies (NPR, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, etc.) subverted the will of primary voters, undermining initial front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders in order to install the worst candidate of the 20 centrists in ...Read more

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare two fundamental flaws in the American health care system.

No. 1: There's a reason that other rich countries treat health care as a taxpayer-financed social program. Employer-based health insurance was stupid pre-COVID-19 because our economy was already steadily transitioning from traditional full-time W-2 ...Read more

Did Joe Biden finger-rape Tara Reade in the Capitol in 1993? No one knows but the two of them. (Given the former vice president's obviously fragile mental state, he might not remember.)

Pending the miraculous discovery of ancient surveillance footage, we may never know the truth about this alleged sexual assault. Still, the issue is worth ...Read more

We can save the economy.

We have to throw the landlords under the bus to do it.

At this writing, 26.5 million Americans have lost their jobs to the national lockdown necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Added to those who were unemployed before the coronavirus crisis, we will soon face jobless numbers equivalent to or greater than those at ...Read more

The COVID-19 medical and economic crisis remains mostly unaddressed by both the Republican and Democratic parties. They have only passed one piece of legislation that significantly helps workers: supplementing existing state unemployment benefits by $600 per week. Those additional payments expire in four months. Until then, many people who are ...Read more

There is no room for progressives in the Democratic Party.

No matter how many votes he or she gets, no progressive will be permitted to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Progressives who try to work inside of, contribute to and support the Democratic Party have no real chance of moving its candidates or policies to the left....Read more

At least 16 million Americans have lost their jobs to the shutdown ordered to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. That staggering number does not include those who were unable to file due to crashing state websites overwhelmed by new claims, or by freelancers whom the government doesn't count as unemployed when they lose their gigs. This ...Read more

Bernie Sanders is out of the race, and with him goes the last chance for progressivism to take over the Democratic Party for a generation.

Now his supporters will decide what to do. Intransigent #BernieOrBusters will cast about for a third-party vote, write in Bernie or sit out the election in November. Other left-leaning voters will hope ...Read more

Some of my commentary about politics is presented in the form of "advice" to the ruling classes. Please understand: I don't really expect those in the ruling class to take my advice. My advice is not really directed toward them. It is a theoretical exercise.

I am really speaking to you, the people. My goal is to set a standard of behavior and ...Read more