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2 weeks ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
In this case, it makes sense to begin in the middle — that is, several miles into a run in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, with the blues or hardcore or even traditional Japanese flute music blasting on the headphones. Of course, both the run and the music are finite, bookended by a start and a finish. Still, at their most sublime, they seem capable of lasting forever, as if they were nothing but middle.
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2 weeks ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
Rethinking the roots and contradictions of Trumpism (washingtonpost.com) Rethinking the roots and contradictions of Trumpism By Becca Rothfeld 2025040413300000 As Trumpism continues to spread unabated, its contradictions are metastasizing. It is a populist movement — yet it has embraced Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, as its poster child.
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3 weeks ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
This Pulitzer winner’s sentences are beautiful. Her thinking can be confused. (washingtonpost.com) This Pulitzer winner’s sentences are beautiful. Her thinking can be confused. By Becca Rothfeld 2025032817250800 It is the fate of many writers to excel at what they most despise and fail at what they most acclaim.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
There are certain places where a body finds at once that it belongs, usually by dint of origin or familiarity, sometimes by way of an inexplicable correspondence between inner world and outer landscape. The place my body recognized came as a shock to me. For 29 years, I was a creature of cities. It was not until I decamped to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a month during the pandemic that I sensed I was a natural citizen of their lunar summits.
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1 month ago | 
infobae.com | Becca Rothfeld
“Dejad que florezcan cien flores” fue el famoso eslogan que Mao Zedong utilizó para señalar una relajación del control asfixiante que el Partido Comunista Chino había ejercido durante la primera década de su reinado, pero la liberalización que presagiaba duró solo un año. De 1956 a 1957, los críticos del régimen de Mao expresaron abiertamente su disidencia. En 1957, decidió que ya había tenido suficiente, y cien flores se marchitaron en sesiones de lucha y campos de reeducación.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
“Let one hundred flowers bloom” was the famous slogan Mao Zedong deployed to signal a relaxation of the stifling control that the Chinese Communist Party had exerted for the first decade of his reign — but the liberalization it portended lasted only a year. From 1956 to 1957, critics of Mao’s regime openly expressed their dissent. In 1957, he decided he’d had enough, and a hundred flowers wilted in struggle sessions and reeducation camps.
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1 month ago | 
irishnews.com | Becca Rothfeld
IN the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, there has been much anguished discussion among the commentariat about the supposed change in the cultural winds. “Trump’s cultural victory has lapped his political victory,” wrote the New York Times’s Ezra Klein in a recent op-ed. “The election was close, but the vibes have been a rout.”Other (and in my opinion, savvier) commentators have homed in on a subtler point.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
There is a comforting myth, very much a product of a culturally Christian country, that social marginalization confers a sort of martyrdom — that outcasts and other victims of oppression are morally improved by their suffering. Evidently, circulators of this consoling story have never met a right-wing woman. The feminist philosopher, journalist and provocateur Andrea Dworkin met many, and she learned that moral deformity is one of the many indignities that attend the injustice of sexism.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, there has been much anguished discussion among the commentariat about the supposed change in the cultural winds. “Trump’s cultural victory has lapped his political victory,” wrote the New York Times’s Ezra Klein in a recent op-ed. “The election was close, but the vibes have been a rout.”Other (and in my opinion, savvier) commentators have homed in on a subtler point.
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2 months ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Becca Rothfeld
In 1967, a promising young painter told a group of documentary filmmakers that she could not bear the ugliness of the world. She intended, she explained, “to do something. Instead of beauty and power occasionally, I want to achieve a world where it’s there all the time, in every word and every brushstroke.”This fervent insistence on loveliness and intensity would guide that painter, the brilliant and iconoclastic feminist writer and activist Shulamith Firestone, over the next decade.
