Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

There’s a group of people I used to hold in contempt, for whom I now feel a higher degree of respect and sympathy. I’m talking about Bigfooters, or “Squatchers,” or whatever you want to call the folks who passionately hunt for the elusive cryptid. I owe them an apology.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not a believer. In fact, I’m an obstinately skeptical person by nature. If I were walking through an old Civil War cemetery at night and suddenly saw a mustachioed Union commander standing before me, my first thought would be that…

In much the same way that a virus will mutate over time to increase its immunity against various treatments, so too do bad internet arguments.

Realizing how quickly the “big tech censorship” narrative crumbles under scrutiny, some defenders of Donald Trump and the “anything goes” social media app Parler have refined their case. Sure, they say, it’s not technically a First Amendment issue. The government isn’t trying to censor anybody (in fact it’s the head of government being booted in this instance). But it’s still a free speech issue, insofar as letting these big companies set and enforce their own…

There’s a growing disconnect between the more academic definitions of “Left” and “Right,” and what these labels are commonly understood to mean. If you ever attended a university and took an intro-level Poli-Sci class, you were probably taught that the political Right supports things like free markets, fiscal restraint, and property rights, while the Left tends to support more government intervention in the economy. But as is often the case, academia may be a bit out of touch with the real world here.

Even before last week’s armed insurrection on Capitol Hill, the American Right’s relationship with the free market…

After a week of surprising victories followed by (sadly less surprising) chaos and violence, there has been some renewed speculation about the future of the Republican Party and the American Right more broadly. Following the election, the conventional wisdom had been that while President Trump was on his way out, the authoritarian populist movement he invigorated was here to stay. After the attempted violent overthrow of the government on January 6th, however, some are clinging to hope that maybe the GOP will finally distance itself from Trump and his ilk. I’m hopeful but pretty skeptical.

Victimhood is a huge part…

It’s almost become a cliché to state that we are living through unprecedented times. As Covid-19 continues its merciless resurgence, and the soon-to-be former president desperately tries to overturn a democratic election in what can only be described as a dictatorial coup attempt, it’s understandable that many of us would like to simply take a break from politics, unplug and unwind over the holidays as we hope for a return to relative normalcy under the incoming Biden administration.

Yeah… that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Ousting the orange authoritarian was a big deal — an incredible amount of needless human…

There’s a term that originally comes from the field of social psychology, but has since been co-opted by right-wing internet people. The term is “virtue signaling.” It’s typically used to mean something like “political correctness,” or the act of being sanctimonious about a particular social issue so that one can feel morally or intellectually superior to others. While I can see why some people might find this kind of thing annoying, I tend to worry much more about the opposite extreme, or what I guess you’d call “malice signaling.”

This is the act of being the most obnoxious, mean-spirited jerk…

Vote for the one who will do the most good

What if the way we’ve been conditioned to judge presidential candidates is all wrong?

U.S. presidential politics leans heavily on personality. This fact was on gross display during the last debate (if you can even call it that), where an old man and a preteen boy in an old man’s body rambled, yelled, and scoffed at each other for 90 minutes while hardly saying anything of substance. Joe Biden was able to land a few rhetorical jabs on the president. But why does this matter?

There are understandable reasons why…

If the latter isn’t settled, the former is irrelevant

The fundamental question Americans face at the ballot box this year is whether the United States should continue the project of liberal democracy, or if we should follow in the footsteps of Russia, Hungary, Venezuela, and other nations run by authoritarian strongmen. I sincerely wish this were an exaggeration. Unfortunately, the Trump presidency has only continued raising red flag after red flag. The world leaders Trump admires, and the policies he’s attempting to replicate, are overwhelmingly authoritarian.

In light of this, it’s time we started paying more attention to where our…