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1 month ago | 
americanaffairsjournal.org | David Polansky |Julius Krein
REVIEW ESSAYThe Reactionary Spirit:How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the Worldby Zack BeauchampPublicAffairs, 2024, 272 pagesHayek’s Bastards:Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Rightby Quinn SlobodianZone Books, 2025, 272 pagesFollowing her defeat in the 2016 general election, Hillary Clinton published a book titled What Happened.
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1 month ago | 
wisdomofcrowds.live | Damir Marusic |Shadi Hamid |David Polansky
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -47:27Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Our special guest this week, is a political theorist and commentator who lives in Canada. A frequent contributor to Wisdom of Crowds, he joins and to discuss two excellent recent essays.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
thehub.ca | David Polansky
You need to be angrier. Of course, anger is most often not a good thing. It clouds judgment, it leads to rashness and poor decision-making. Anger in politics is worse still: it is the food of charlatans and demagogues; it encourages us to see our fellow citizens as enemies rather than just rivals or opponents in the political sphere; it produces bad policies. And yet a deficiency of anger produces its own problems.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
wisdomofcrowds.live | David Polansky
, our Canada correspondent (and more), on Justin Trudeau’s political failure, and what we can learn from it. — Santiago Ramos, Executive EditorOne of the original proposed names for Monty Python’s Flying Circus was supposedly “Whither Canada?” This once comical question is now being asked sincerely and with increasing urgency — and not just by Canadians. For the declining fortunes of the United States’ northern neighbor have reached the point that they have generated unprecedented attention.
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Jan 2, 2025 | 
washingtonexaminer.com | David Polansky
In viewing A Complete Unknown, I must admit to remaining mystified that rock biopics continue to get made at all in the wake of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the hysterically funny and tragically underseen 2007 parody of basically every rockstar biopic ever made. Indeed, so comprehensive is its satire that the titular Cox even goes through his own Dylan phase, during which he spouts pure gibberish and his own bandmates cannot figure out what is going on.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
thespec.com | David Polansky
State AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWashington D.C.West VirginiaWisconsinWyomingPuerto RicoUS Virgin IslandsArmed Forces AmericasArmed...
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
strangefrequencies.co | David Polansky
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives. And while Donald Trump has returned to the Oval Office after a four-year intermission, in a sense this nonetheless holds true for him as well. For he never really left the public eye, and a significant portion of American politics remained oriented—whether positively or negatively—toward him even in his absence from any formal position.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
fusionaier.org | David Polansky
November 14, 2024 By David PolanskyDonald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, particularly in light of Elon Musk’s highly visible support for his campaign, has again raised the question of the political significance of X (formerly Twitter). Since Musk acquired the platform in 2022, few institutions have displayed the same “Rorschach” quality.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
nationalpost.com | David Polansky
Advertisement 1 • • You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account. Article contentThe great novelist Saul Bellow once wrote: “I have developed a certain sympathy with Canada. It’s no easy thing to share a border with the USA. Canada’s chief entertainment — it has no choice — is to watch (from a gorgeous setting) what happens in our country.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
washingtonexaminer.com | David Polansky
There’s a funny moment near the end of The Wizard of Oz when the Wizard grants tokens to each of Dorothy’s companions to acknowledge all they had attained in the course of their journey. To the Scarecrow, who, you may recall, only wanted a brain, the Wizard bestows a degree. “Why, anybody can have a brain,” the Wizard tells him. “That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain.
