Features Archives

Friday

October 20, 2023

Why ‘dirty’ coal is vital to a ‘clean’ green future

The Central and Western regions of Pennsylvania are known for their majestic, untamed landscapes. Seen from on high, you’d think the forested wilderness here was yet untouched. Though that’s far from the truth, the area has, for the past few decades, for better and worse, been largely forgotten — except by the people who live, work and play among the lands and waters scarred and poisoned by abandoned deep-coal mines and unreclaimed strip mines. The Allegheny section of the Appalachian Mountain range resembles an accordion poised in compact, scrunched-up, ready-to-perform mode.

Josie Cox

The secret lives of New York’s doormen

The first test was the audacious cockroach that sidled into our apartment about three days after we moved in. Hardly enough of a native Manhattanite to calmly swat it and flush it and go on eating my pizza, I pollyannaish-ly sprinted downstairs instead. “Excuse me,” I breathlessly announced to the crossword-solving bald guy manning the front desk — I hadn’t even had the courtesy of introducing myself to him yet. “There’s a cockroach in my living room.” Visibly unimpressed but with an air of professional politeness that almost hid what he actually wanted to say (“suck it up, princess”), he looked up at me sympathetically: “The exterminator comes Tuesdays.” It was Friday.

Luke Niforatos

Americans are watching legal weed’s promise go up in smoke

When Colorado became the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use in 2014, expectations were as high as its users. For decades activists, investors and lobbyists assured Americans that the legalization of marijuana would displace the black market, generate an influx of tax revenue to finance schools and hospitals, halt senseless arrests and improve racial equity, all without attracting the attention of kids. In the run-up to legalization in Colorado, officials projected a $70 million jump in tax revenue from the hundreds of marijuana and THC products in newly minted dispensaries and licensed shops and budgeted accordingly. They learned quickly that the expectations didn’t live up to the reality, bringing in around $44 million in its first full year in operation.

Wednesday

September 13, 2023

Spectator Editorial

Welcome to the new counterculture

The mantle of song of the summer generally belongs to whichever hit Americans heard the most in clubs and bars, at cookouts or on their way to the beach: the earworm that dominated the airwaves and was the soundtrack to their fun in the sun. But as temperatures cool, the most talked-about song of the summer of 2023 wasn’t a mega-hit from a superstar, but a stripped back political ballad by a previously unknown country musician from southern Virginia. Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” is an angry song for a restive country — and, astonishingly, given Anthony’s status as a complete outsider, it shot to number one in the charts. His rise is unprecedentedly steep: never before has an artist with no prior chart history debuted in the top spot.

oliver anthony rolling stone counterculture

Winston Marshall

The quest for an authentic bite of Americana

Finally I found an authentic bite of Americana. Or so I thought. The rodeo. A blaze of bucks and broncos, boots and bulls, shining golden in the dusk of the Teton mountain range. Jackson, Wyoming, far away from the raging culture wars and as unapologetically American as a bald eagle’s middle finger. A proud, if out-of-tune, “Star Spangled Banner” stirred me enough that for a moment I forgot I was English. The crackle and hollering, the stirrups and steers. This was real, I believed. Weeding through an air-conditioned continent of screens, plastic and corporate advertisements, I had found her at last: America. But then slipped the veneer. The rodeo barrelman — a ringmaster in clown maquillage — squawked at us down a dusty PA system. “Where are you from?...

Bill McMorris

Why Democrats and Republicans are so worried about third parties

In the closing months of the 2022 midterms North Carolina residents began receiving text messages and phone calls from unfamiliar numbers, a ritual all too familiar to a swing-state voter. The benevolent voice on the line had seen the recipient’s name on a petition to allow the Green Party on the ballot and wanted to ensure the signature was on the up and up. With validity confirmed the anonymous caller would reveal himself to be a Green Party representative. “If the Green Party is on the ballot, it’ll take votes away from Democrats, giving Republicans a huge advantage. It will help them win North Carolina in 2022 and 2024. There’s far too much at stake to let this happen. Are you interested in asking to have your name removed from this petition or leave it as is?

Henry Olsen

Why we’re all populists now

Fifteen years ago, populist politicians and parties were seen as a reactionary blip which would soon fade. They are instead not only still present but rapidly gaining strength and power across the developed world. It’s well past time to wonder if populist sentiments will fade. It’s rather time to consider the heretofore unthinkable: perhaps populism will be to the twenty-first century what labor union-backed social democracy was to the twentieth. All of us grew up in the world that social democracy created, so it’s hard to grasp that it has not always been with us. But that’s not so. As late as the 1890s, social democratic parties were either weak or non-existent in most of the (admittedly small) democratic world. That changed quickly as industrialization gained steam.

Bridget Phetasy

Battle cry of the politically listless

As we head into yet another election season, faced with what looks like an inevitable Trump-Biden rematch, it’s hard not to despair at the divided state of the nation. A quick scan of the political landscape, and the condition of our cities, leaves me struggling — everything seems fractured. It’s like a broken mirror: the shattered remains are all reflecting back at each other, bouncing light everywhere. We live in an America that seems familiar, but only because it’s composed of the broken shards of something that once was. There is a lot of talk about how America is in decline. This was a central theme in the first GOP debate. It was presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis’s opening line: “Our country is in decline, this decline is not inevitable, it’s a choice.

Amber Duke

The Youngkin blueprint

Virginia Beach, Virginia “Please run. We need you to save our country. Please.” A man pleads with Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, referring to speculation that Youngkin may jump into the 2024 GOP presidential primary — and that Republican donors are encouraging him to do so. Youngkin responds, with a laugh: “I’m busy.” The governor is, indeed, quite busy. It is late August and he has just finished up one of his “Parents Matter” listening sessions, this one in Virginia Beach. Youngkin has been traveling the Commonwealth and hearing directly from parents to fulfill one of his biggest 2021 campaign promises: protecting the rights of parents from government overreach in matters concerning their children.

Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya

We’re fighting the Covid censors

On July 4, our Independence Day, Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to immediately cease contact with social media companies, which it had been urging to censor protected free speech. Evidence unearthed in the Missouri v. Biden case, in which we are co-plaintiffs, has revealed a vast federal enterprise dictating to social media companies who and what to censor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General’s office, the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House itself were all closely involved.

Matthew Walther

Why the new right is like the old left

F.H. Bradley, perhaps the most self-aware philosopher who ever lived, once dismissed metaphysics as “the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.” Bradley (whose favorite pastime was using pictures of Gladstone for target practice with his revolver in his rooms at Merton College, Oxford) qualified his negative assessment of the intellectual life by pointing out that philosophy was itself one of those irrepressible instincts — a nicely circular way of putting it. This is more or less how I feel about journalism. I don’t expect anything from readers except the occasional quiet chuckle and a general sense of not having wasted their time. I am certainly not in the business of changing hearts and minds.

Teresa Mull

The problem facing US cemeteries

On a hillside on the outskirts of my town is an expansive cemetery where more than 20,000 of Philipsburg’s ancestors have been laid to rest since 1869. For decades, its thirty or so acres have been cared for by three dedicated men who dig and fill graves, mow and trim the grass, repair equipment, patch and plow roads, maintain old headstones and gather leaves “for next to nothing,” as Paul Springer puts it. This work must “go on constantly,” says Paul, but changes in the mores surrounding death mean “generating the income necessary to support these activities is becoming impossible.” Paul is my friend and one of those indispensable do-ers small towns across the country rely on to keep things ticking.

Neal Pollack

Doombragging: the rise of sustainable boasting

A post came across my social media feed last week that looked like half the posts in my social media feed: a smiling Caucasian couple at an outdoor restaurant table with palm trees in the background. But the caption was more unusual: “The world is suffering beyond measure — but we have to find moments to be grateful for good health, good food and nice weather. Hoping for good news every day. (Heart emoji).” On the one hand, this is very true: we do have to find moments to be grateful for good health, good food and nice weather. But why the first part? Is the world really suffering beyond measure? And if it is, why do you need to mention that in a post that features you and your spouse going out for what looks like a pleasant meal?

Ben Domenech

Dobbs needn’t be a Pyrrhic victory for Republicans

It was the elephants that were the problem. Pyrrhus loved them, of course — he had two dozen of the mighty beasts, outfitted with war towers and dressed to impress. But when it came time for an assault on the city-state of Argos, they wouldn’t fit through the small gates, leading to chaos and delays as the towers had to be taken apart and mounted again on the other side. When Pyrrhus finally realized he was facing stronger opposition than expected, he decided retreat was wiser, but a botched message to his son’s forces out- side the city led them to attack. The Pyrrhic elephants ran into each other on the streets. One fell and blocked a key gate, another went wild when its rider was killed. Amid the chaos, Pyrrhus was knocked from his horse and decapitated.

Elbridge Colby

World events are not going America’s way

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the world situation is grim for America. And it could actually get far worse. Why, then, are many of our national leaders acting as if things are going well? We need not doubling down but fundamental change. That starts with understanding that we are in serious trouble. The war in Ukraine, which is manifestly the Biden administration’s priority, is sadly likely to be protracted. While the Ukrainian counteroffensive is still ongoing, the best analysis indicates that the war has become a struggle of attrition. Russia is substantially mobilizing its economy and society for a long-haul war effort — and its armed forces appear to have at least partially adapted from their earlier failures.

Daniel McCarthy

NATO’s post-Cold War strategy has been a disaster

NATO is fighting for its life — and dying. The alliance has only grown larger as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now Finland is a member — and Sweden is on its way to becoming one. Ukraine and Georgia would like to join, too. All this is a sign of failure, however, not success. Whichever way one looks at the picture, NATO’s post-Cold War strategy has been a disaster. Either NATO did not expand far enough, fast enough — to the point of including Ukraine and thereby preventing the Russian invasion — or NATO’s continual expansion gave Russians reason to fear that they were being boxed in.

Peter Jones

The lessons of ancient Rome’s dangerous doctors

"I died of a surfeit of doctors,” read one Roman funerary inscription. But where did this surfeit come from? Let Pliny the Elder (d. AD 79) explain. Pliny devoted book twenty-nine of his Natural History (a vast encyclopedia of Roman life) to the history of medicine. Claiming that no discipline “undergoes more frequent changes, and none is more profitable either,” Pliny pointed the finger at Greek doctors. These had been welcomed into Rome from the third century bc with their fancy philosophical ideas — all different — which their eloquence persuaded people immediately to adopt in place of the good old experience-based Roman herbal treatments, overseen by the trusty master of the house.

Josie Cox

The rise of the lazy-girl job

To anyone who’s ever dismissed Gen Z as a cluster of feckless snowflakes, or shunned them as gritless, superficial posers raised on instant gratification and social-media filters; to anyone who thinks this juvenile rabble will never amount to more than bitter complainers about rising house prices and corrupt capitalism — I implore you! Take a moment to consider that these zoomers, these mini millennials, these whiny warriors of wokeland, have just instigated the labor market trend we didn’t know we needed: the rise of the lazy-girl job. If you instinctively recoil at any new phrase with “girl” in it — “hot girl summer,” “girlboss” — I’m right there with you.

William D. Cohan

How does Michael Klein do it?

Soon after the stunning news broke on June 7 that LIV Golf and the PGA were burying the hatchet, dropping the litigation between them and joining forces, my phone started blowing up. My Wall Street sources were nearly dumbstruck. The deal itself was a stunner, of course, conducted so secretly by the leaders of both the PGA and LIV that the professional golfers who make the two warring organizations possible had been clueless about what was happening. But that’s not what my people wanted to discuss. All they wanted to talk about was how Michael Klein — a longtime Wall Street investment banker with an eponymous advisory firm, M. Klein & Co. — had once again tapped into his deep relationships with Saudi leaders and was representing them in the LIV merger with the PGA.

Friday

August 18, 2023

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.