Keen On America

Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people’s language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial workin...

Why are the Democrats losing the American working class? According to Joan Williams , it’s because they are failing to prioritize economic concerns of working-class Americans. In her new book Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back , Williams argues that Democrats lost the 2024 election because of their over-preoccupation with the interests of college educated Amer...

In Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us , best selling writer Anna Malaika Tubbs reveals the secret history of American patriarchal values. Tubbs argues this patriarchy is the central narrative thread of American history. She emphasizes that patriarchy affects everyone differently according to their race, class, and gender - thereby creating a "gendered hierarchy" that excludes many...

History, Marshall Poe wrote in December 2023, shows that Israel will never win a “war of occupation”. Eighteen months later, with Israel on the brink of a full scale occupation of Gaza, Poe’s argument is even more relevant. the Gaza war, the historian warns, is turning into Israel’s Vietnam - an unwinnable occupation that will only bring shame on the invaders. Trust Poe on the Vietnam analogy. His...

So why did Harris lose in 2024? For one very big reason , according to the progressive essayist Bill Deresiewicz : “because she represented the exhausted Democratic establishment”. This rotting establishment, Deresiewicz believes, is symbolized by both the collective denial of Biden’s mental decline and by Harris’ pathetically rudderless Presidential campaign. But there’s a much more troubling pro...

“That he not busy being born is busy dying”, Dylan noted in “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” , his grim 1965 masterpiece about reinvention. Sixty years later, at a time when “ everything is technology ”, these words have particular resonance in Silicon Valley. As That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare and I discuss in our weekly roundup of tech news, every Big Tech firm - from OpenAI and Ai...

Is spying an un-American activity? Not according to Jeffrey Rogg , whose new book, The Spy and the State, tells the story of American intelligence from the Revolutionary War to the present day. Rogg explores America's ambivalent relationship with espionage, arguing that spying is often viewed as "un-American" and yet necessary. he discusses key figures in American intelligence history such as OSS...

Walmart just announced it would be raising prices because of tariffs. So is that a good argument against Trump’s autarkic trade policies? Perhaps. But, as the Professor of Innovation at the University of Cambridge, Tim Minshall, points out, the global system of manufacturing is a complex thing. He argues that while countries shouldn't attempt complete manufacturing self-sufficiency, maintaining so...

Something doesn’t smell right about generative AI. Earlier this week, we had a featuring a former Google researcher who described large language models (LLMs) as a “con”. Then, of course, there’s OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who critics both inside and outside OpenAI, see as a little more than a persuasive conman. Scam or not, the biggest technical problem with LLMs, according to Peter Vos, who invented...

It’s probably not news that today’s Supreme Court runs on crazy conservative grudges and even crazier patrimonial fringe theories. But according to Leah Litman , Crooked Media podcaster and author of Lawless, the Supreme Court in Trump’s America is most defined by what she memorably identifies as “bad vibes” (ie: feelings and anxieties). Litman argues these vibes r eflect Republican anxieties abou...

Rather than apple pie, addiction might be defining quality of 21st century American life. That, at least, is the view of Mattea Kramer , author of Untended , a contemporary novel about addiction in small town America. She argues that individualistic American capitalism has caused an plague of addiction - in everything from drugs and alcohol to technology and egoism. Kramer sees community as the on...

Is AI a big scam? In their co-authored new book, The AI Con , Emily Bender and Alex Hanna take aim at what they call big tech “hype”. They argue that large language models from OpenAI or Anthropic are merely what Bender dubs "stochastic parrots" that produce text without the human understanding nor the revolutionary technology that these companies claim. Both Bender, a professor of linguistics, an...

The traditional notion of western civilization is premised on the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Other less Eurocentric historians, like the Silk Road author Peter Frankopan, point to the role of China in shaping classical Europe. But, in The Golden Road , the Scottish-Indian historian William Dalrymple , challenges this "Silk Road" narrative, arguing India was Rome's primary trading partner a...

“Who’s Cheating?” asks Keith Teare in his weekly summary of tech news. Keith is defending a Columbia University student who was punished for openly used AI in his classes. As Arthur C. Clark famously noted, advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and so its use is often viewed as cheating by the old regime. But, as Keith and I agree, the $80,000 annual fees that universities are now c...

Not everyone will like this argument. Jason Riley , the Wall Street Journal columnist and author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that affirmative action policies have been counterproductive for Black Americans. He contends that Black Americans were making faster economic and educational progress before affirmative action policies began in the late 1960s. Riley claims these policies primaril...

As a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin, the Chapman University economist Mark Skousen might be a bit biased. That said, Skousen makes an entertaining case in his new book, The Greatest American , for Franklin as being the most innovative and versatile of the Founding Fathers. Skousen acknowledges Franklin's contradictions: his transition from slave owner to abolitionist, his notoriety as a la...

Much has been made of the hallucinatory qualities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT product. But as the Wall Street Journal ’s resident authority on OpenAI, Keach Hagey notes, perhaps the most hallucinatory feature the $300 billion start-up co-founded by the deadly duo of Sam Altman and Elon Musk is its attempt to be simultaneously a for-profit and non-profit company. As Hagey notes, the double life of this dou...

What is the ideological alternative to Trumpism? In The Purposeful Warrior , Michigan’s Democratic candidate for Governor, Jocelyn Benson , offers “a road map for shattering the status quo and standing up for ourselves, our communities, and our country”. Benson’s book, with its focus on common decency, could certainly be read as an ideological alternative to transactional Trumpism. But The Purpose...

There are few more respected economic analysts in the world than the Financial Times Chief Economic Commentator Martin Wolf . Yesterday, we ran a conversation with Wolf about the survival of American democracy. Today, we talk Trumpian economics, particularly tariff policy. Wolf characterizes Trump's trade policies as historically unprecedented in their scale, comprehensive nature, and unpredictabi...

I’ve been in London this week talking to America watchers about the current situation in the United States. First up is Edmund Fawcett , the longtime Economist correspondent in DC and historian of both liberalism and conservatism . Fawcett argues that Trump’s MAGA movement represents a kind of third way between liberalism and conservatism - a version of American populism resurrected for our anti-g...

What’s it like to have to work physically hard to make a living in America today? In A Living , the writer and physician Michael Stein shares conversations with his working-class patients. He explores how work shapes identity, provides meaning beyond income, and impacts upon physical and mental health. Stein promotes the dignity of physical labor, noting that many workers find deep satisfaction in...

Does the United States of America still have anything going for it? According to the Arizona based Larry Aldrich , co-author of the upcoming What’s Right About America , there remains much to celebrate about his country’s foundational strengths, its resilience in the face of sometimes daunting challenges, and its continued innovation. He argues that America's focus on individual empowerment and th...

Is any criticism of Israel, by definition, anti-semitic? Not according to Uri Kaufman who, in his new book American Intifada , examines what he calls the "new antisemitism" following the Gaza war. That said, Kaufman nonetheless believes that progressive institutions and figures like Obama and the New York Times manifest a form of antisemitism by holding Israel to different moral standards than oth...

In today’s discussion with David Masciotra about the first hundred days of Trump 2.0 I made the (Freudian) error of referring to it as a “hundred years”. It certainly feels like a hundred years . So how should the Democrats respond to Trump’s avalanche of illiberalism? Masciotra argues they should emulate Ted Kennedy's forceful 1987 rhetoric against Robert Bork, focusing on the existential threats...

Few analysts are more familiar with the politics of both contemporary Turkey and the United States than my old friend , the distinguished Turkish political scientist Soli Ozel . Drawing on his decades of experience in both countries, Ozel, currently a senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne, explains how democratic institutions are similarly being challenged in Trump’s America and Erdogan's Turkey...