Justice under siege | The Spectator

Disinfo-nation: the new censorship is here to stay

Lying is the great American pastime. We’ve been at it ever since some of the Pilgrim fathers shined on some of the folks back home with tales of the Eden they had found on the barren coast of Massachusetts: For fish and fowl, we have great abundance; fresh cod in the summer is but coarse meat with us; our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night, with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter; we have mussels; and ... As the American Socrates, P.T. Barnum, may once have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Or he may have not said. The Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel in 1894 said he said it, but P.T. denied it.

Amber Duke

Has the patriot economy’s moment finally arrived?

It’s Saturday. You just rolled out of your MyPillow Giza Dream sheets, spent a little extra time trimming your beard with your Jeremy’s Razor, and brewed yourself a fresh cup of MAGA Dark Roast COVFEFE. You call your best friend on your Patriot Mobile cellphone to shoot the breeze. Hell, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Go ahead and crack open an Ultra Right beer and waste away the afternoon. Welcome to life in the patriot economy — the parallel economy being developed by conservative entrepreneurs and investors. Or at least an exaggerated version of it. The idea of the patriot economy is fueled by two convictions. The first is that the right needs its own economic infrastructure so consumers aren’t forced to buy goods from “woke” corporations.

Nomi Kaltmann

Will Orthodox Judaism accept female rabbis?

Bracha Jaffe, an American-Israeli, spent decades working in tech, focusing on software development and raising her family in Israel. But following a midlife career shift and a move to New York, she now also works as an assistant rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a large Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx. Every day, she plays a key role guiding congregants during life cycle events, such as births and deaths. She teaches classes and visits the sick. “I think it’s still true that when someone says ‘Rabbi,’ what comes to mind is an older male, perhaps with a white beard,” she says. With her blonde bob, ever-present smile and warm demeanor, Jaffe is a far cry from this stereotype.

Teresa Mull

College-town blues

College towns are “decimating the GOP,” reported Politico in July, the reason being, in part, that “more college students and more faculty tend to be a recipe for more Democratic votes.” The college-town blues are a phenomenon with which I’m quite familiar. I live in Philipsburg, an old lumber and coal-mining town about twenty-five miles from State College, home to Pennsylvania State University. Though we’re in the same county, “the mountain” separates us physically, and as for politics... well, at last month’s Rush Township supervisors meeting, an old-timer floated the idea of seceding from Centre County (his main concern being that Centre County requires emissions testing on vehicles, and neighboring red counties don’t).

David Christopher Kaufman

Is the era of the corporate DEI officer coming to an end?

Barely three years after the death of George Floyd, it appears the era of the corporate DEI officer is rapidly coming to an end. Or at least experiencing a major contraction. Across American business, the number of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion roles grew by 55 percent following the protests of summer 2020, reported the Society of Human Resource Management. At the start of 2022, the entire DEI “industry” was worth an estimated $9.4 billion. In 2023, it’s a very different story. According to the workplace trends consultancy Revelio Labs, DEI jobs shrank by one-third last year. The key problem with the DEI industrial complex is not the idea that American workplaces should be more representative of America — but the means often used to achieve those ends.

Ben Judah

Europe is not a museum

The temperature, at last, is starting to drop — and for Europeans that only means one thing: peak season is over. The crowds in the piazzas and on the beaches are starting to thin. And in the tavernas that were TikTokked you can finally think about getting a table. It’s time. Like the clockwork of migrating swallows — the Americans are going home. And knowing you can finally count on a breeze and far fewer strong-dollar spenders than a few weeks earlier, a stingier tipping class of European grande bourgeoisie in West London or the 8ème arrondissement — that has long since given up on July and August for the Mediterranean — is now contemplating a holiday. It’s still, however, at least conversationally, Europe season in the United States for a few more weeks.

Zoe Strimpel

Fear and complacency in Taiwan

On a recent trip to Taiwan as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I knew that war with an increasingly belligerent China is a daily possibility. Chinese ships are in constant circulation in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese aircraft unceasingly fly near the island, getting close to Taiwanese air space. Beijing’s increasingly threatening language about forced “unification” seems to bring a catastrophic attack closer. Genuine fear fluttered in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August last year when China launched three days of drills that paid no regard to what they called the “imaginary” median line, which divides Chinese from Taiwanese territory.

Bridget Phetasy

Real America is the middle seat in coach

There is a lot of talk about “Real America” these days: what it means, who populates it and what those people represent. Is it the “coastal elites” who inhabit the cities? Is it the people in the “flyover states”? The commentators doing the talking and writing about these mythical Real Americans and their concerns are usually very wealthy. At the very least, they’re flying business or first class. Many of them fly private. To me, Real America is the middle seat in coach. I’ve always loved chatting with people when I travel. (Yes, I’m one of “those people” but don’t worry, I can take a hint.) My ex-husband recently passed away and I was headed home for a thirty-six-hour trip to attend his funeral.

Kevin Dahlgren

Homelessness in black and white

I stood across the street from Seattle’s City Hall, next to a long line of tents. There were more than fifteen of them, no more than a few feet apart. In between the tents, furniture and trash was piled high. The encampment took up the entire sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to walk in the street and triggering nonstop honking from passing cars. In a parking lot on the corner, people from a local mutual aid group stood at a booth, handing out food and water. They had signs making clear their views: “Stop the Sweeps,” “You sweep we strike,” “Fuck Capitalism,” “Equity now!” and “Smash Fascism.” This particular aid group were self-identified anarchists.

Roger Kimball

Has America lapsed into a gerontocracy?

Although I write at high summer, by the time you read this another school year will be upon us. I wonder: do students still read T.S. Eliot? They should. A lot of what he wrote continues to reverberate with significance. Consider, to take just one example, these lines from his poem “Gerontion.” History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving.Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Gives too soonInto weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed withTill the refusal propagates a fear.

Sam Patten

Confessions of a Russiagate survivor

As the latest special counsel files new charges against former president Donald Trump, it’s beginning to look like legal crusades in America are more important than political ones. Locking up one’s political opponents is the sort of thing they used to do in Ukraine, after all, or the totalitarian state of which Arthur Koestler wrote in Darkness at Noon. Just a few years after claims of Russian collusion with the winning candidate of America’s 2016 presidential election were debunked, it is ironic that a Russian’s critique of our political culture nearly half a century ago captures our current predicament so clearly.

Daniel McCarthy

The rise of the popcons

The Republican Party has to come to grips with populism. Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the race for the 2024 presidential nomination makes that clear, as does the fact that the next-most popular candidate, Ron DeSantis, also has a populist streak. In fact, the GOP’s base has subscribed to one flavor of populism or another since at least as far back as the start of the Cold War. In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-hunting had a pronounced class dimension — elite officials in “striped pants” were a frequent target. By the end of the 1960s, Richard Nixon was appealing to the “silent majority” against a radical campus counterculture. The Moral Majority and other religious right groups of the 1980s and 1990s exhibited a form of Christian populism.

Ben Domenech

Inside the progressive war on the Supreme Court

In the basement of a Washington, DC restaurant, 200 ticket-purchasing fans have gathered to witness the live recording of a multifaceted conversation about the villainy and corruption of the Supreme Court, and one justice in particular. It only seems appropriate to order the shrimp and grits: it costs $19.99 and comes with a white-wine tomato sauce. This may seem rather hifalutin, but it also comes in a glass mason jar that references tired hipster kitsch — perfectly suitable for a live podcast hosted by Slate.

Bill McMorris

Summer vacation fatigue

Alexandria, Virginia I entered summer with the following list of tasks: convert the shed into an office; discard several tons of debris from the storage room; assemble that Amish treehouse that’s been sitting in the yard; chop down the ash tree. A gust of wind took down the crabapple tree right before the Memorial Day barbecue. On the guest list: my younger brother, who moonlights as an unlicensed contractor; my wife’s cousin who built his own home; and Terry Schilling, who constructed a luxury treehouse. A normal man would have leaned on such a guest list to get the work done for him. A writer self-conscious about his manliness would make a show of chopping the tree up with the dull blade of a cheap chainsaw.

Spectator Editorial

Stuck watching the Trump show

There is one thing about which both Donald Trump and his most vociferous critics are happy: the 2024 election is gearing up to be all about him. The former president is hamming up his victim status on a score-settling vengeance tour that he hopes will propel him back to the White House. His huge poll lead suggests it is a winning strategy — at least in the Republican primary. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are vain enough to have persuaded themselves that their legal and electoral crusade against the former president amounts to the most important fight in the history of the Republic.

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