All articles filed in Critique

by Matt Bernico. For some, faith-motivated politics looks like far-right evangelical Christianity. Others find ways to go to church every Sunday while remaining unconcerned about drone-striking children in the Middle East. Others yet interpret the faithful life as giving it all up to join the guerillas. Because of all of this, it’s helpful to look to some modern-day saints to light the way.

by Tyler Walicek. A recent post from the premiere satirical destination for out-of-touch liberals, McSweeney’s “Internet Tendency,” is structured as a series of letters from one “Amber” to her ex-“Bernie Bro” boyfriends, each of them repellent (to her) in their own distastefully “alternative” way.

by Steven Monacelli. Replete with all forms of profiteers—contractors, weapons manufacturers, think tanks, and lobbyists—war remains to this day a lucrative business. The products are meant to destroyed. The losses are socialized, while the gains remain private.

by Mel G. Last night, I dreamt of bombs dropped on babies. I woke to the echoes of screaming children in my ears, nearly an hour before my alarm. It’s hard to accurately describe the violent combination of rage and dismay that I felt this morning, the images of broken bodies of innocents fading away in the dark of pre-dawn. 

by M.K. Anderson. Now that three major candidates have added this policy to their platforms, disability activists from across the political spectrum are alarmed. We, as Marxists, should be as well. We must oppose this policy for what it is: an attempt to foist eugenics on the country to cover up the violence of capitalism.

by Shane Burley. Nøkken And The Grim embody just about every feature of a dark music subculture that makes many uncomfortable. Paganism, romanticism, anti-modernity, deep ecology—a miasma of radical expressions that tend to hew either leftist or very, very far to the right. This is why so many have written off the neofolk genre entirely as the work of fascists.

by Tyler Walicek. Big structural Bailey. Over the last few days, these words have come to haunt me. The phrase tolls in my head, an incantation that conjures no spell but my own bafflement. It’s ingenious in its complete vacuity. Big. Structural. Bailey.

by A.M. Gittlitz. In the Pampas, the vast prairies of southern Latin America, there’s a tale that stretches back to colonial times: the legend of the luz mala, or the bad light. It appears just above the ground, in the hills, or in the sky, a foreboding and spectral fireball of fluorescent white, red, blue, or green that follows solitary travelers.

by Steven Monacelli

If philosopher Will Durant’s assertion that “we are what we repeatedly do” is true, then let’s face it: we are becoming increasingly machine-like through our near-constant interactions with technology.