If Iran is "winning" in any sense whatsoever, it's in the sense that US media are helping the regime's propaganda campaign to sap the will of the American people to sustain the fight.

Sticking by my Oscars prediction that Movie I Didn't See beats out Other Movies I Didn't See for the key awards.

Some of it is gone forever, but you can still have much of this "lost America." Get off the internet. Get married. Have kids. Move to flyover country. Live life for its own sake and for your family, not for clicks. It can all be yours.

James Talarico is like that old commercial where the cowboys can't believe the salsa was made in New York City -- except Talarico was made at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Kathy Hochul to Republicans in 2022: “Just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK? You are not New Yorkers.” Kathy Hochul to Republicans in 2026: “I didn’t mean the rich ones! Come back! Be patriotic New Yorkers! Give me your money!”

We're screwed. therepublicofletters.substack.com/p/teaching-the…

Why don't kids want to wear coats anymore?

In an incredibly complex, complicated, globalized world in which your vote seldom results in accountability or problems being solved, it's not an altogether irrational choice to check out and enjoy what comforts you can while you can.

The COVID shutdowns wrecked kids as well as education, and we're going to be reckoning with the consequences for years. I see it in my own kids, who have been turned into tablet-centered drones and subjected to watered down curricula and aren't expected to do much at all.

I witnessed a ton of bullshit during COVID, and none was more rank that watching my kids, for the last 2.5 months of the 2019-20 schoolyear, receive a pretend education via an hour (if that) a week on computer and a couple of online worksheets.

It's amazing (and scary) how AI insinuates itself into your daily internet habits & thought patterns, even if you're generally on guard against and skeptical about AI. I've always googled words and phrases, but I just realized that I increasingly ask questions of search engines.

They used to push your groceries out to your car. Then they stopped it and they had the baggers. Then the baggers disappeared and so did the checkout worker. Finally we are left with self check out.

If you haven’t heard, and even if you have, Jimmy Kimmel said this about Markwayne Mullin, former Senator from Oklahoma, and our newest Secretary of Homeland Security: “We have a plumber now protecting us from terrorism.” Apparently, there has been some backlash. Plumbers were

Forget "politics." Cultivating literacy --independent literacy, the ability to read and think and write and do it all in your own head and with your own two hands, so to speak -- is the great radical act now. Be a radical.

By denying the US use of bases, European nations are admitting that they don't fear the repercussions, that they believe the US is weak or the Europeans together are stronger. And so, if the US is weak(er), then why do they want the US in Europe at all?

An important part of any war plan: do not reveal that plan to your enemies.

It has been profoundly unhealthy for American politics and foreign policy that the four presidents -- Clinton, Bush, Biden, and Trump -- who were of age during the Vietnam era avoided service or, in Bush's case, an overseas posting.

Harry Potter inspires the most insane reactions. --People who burn the books because the author believes men can't become women. --People who go crazy when you dare suggest the books aren't high literature. --People who use the series as a political lodestar.

The media can't make up its mind. The Trump administration is too Catholic. The Trump administration hates Catholics.

Trump's signature on US currency is more than a fair trade for the horrors that the Biden administration inflicted on the quarter from 2022 to 2025.