Blog / Our America

Our America: Odi et Amo

November 14, 2016 - By Michael Thurston

At first I thought there was something weirdly conflicting, even contradictory, in my two modes of response. On the one hand, I wept with my students and held out to them the value of what we do in the classroom: coming together to read, to think, to talk, to take each other seriously, to get smarter; we enact in miniature the culture we hope for and we repudiate the anti-intellectualism, intolerance, and thuggery currently triumphant in our politics. On the other hand, I am enjoying an incandescent and coruscating rage whose brilliance derives in part from the hot-burning gases of my own hatreds...

Our America: Get Ready to Rumble

November 11, 2016 - By Jack Polidori

Editor's Note: MR inaugurates here a new blog series, "Our America." The editorial that follows is one voice among countless others, and the first of many in this series. We look forward to hearing from our friends and contributors.
 

It’s as much about the Electoral College as it is about never having graduated from college. The slimmest of margins. . . the increasingly concentrated Democratic vote (in fewer states) and. . . the revenge of the anti-nerds. That’s the short story of the 2016 Presidential election.

Yes, white working class people—overwhelmingly from non-union households—followed an orange-haired demagogue on his marauding path to the White House. Donald Trump shocked the learned class...

Why You Need to Read _Fire and Forget_

January 5, 2014 - By Jim Hicks

Let me be more specific: by “you,” I mean us. US civilians. Fire and Forget’s “short stories from the long war” are each written by an American with intimate experience of our most recent military campaigns, and you need to read them. And, yes, “campaign” is the right word.

1) Because you don’t speak their language yet, but you’re going to. The vets are coming home again; Joe and Jane have to find each other somehow. From its opening story—Jacob Siegel’s “Smile, There are IEDs Everywhere”—the single most pervasive theme...