It takes a village to set the tone, temperament and direction of a society. Sometimes the village elders demonstrate the capacity to exercise a modicum of intelligence, honesty and restraint. Unhappily, in our time, in the United States, neither intelligence nor honesty nor restraint nor any other ...

Fear, hate, revenge, ignorance, pettiness, apathy and many other common human foibles drive much of the noise-making in modern American public affairs. Ever-quickening authoritarian goose-steps in recent decades, the most recent decade in particular, have morphed into decisive leaps towards outright...

We failed to dodge the bullet.

In the early afternoon this past Sunday, I listened to a discussion between four authors — the writer Naomi Klein and New Yorker staff writers Kyle Chayka, Andrew Marantz, and Jia Tolentino — on a topic billed as the “Digital Culture Wars.” The discussio...