A24 Films Like all good human sacrifice stories, Midsommar asks that simple, time-honored question: What happens when you realize you’re not just an individual—filled with hopes and fears and your own unique personality—you’re also a thing, just some meat for the pyre? Ari Aster’s film begins in winter, a foreboding snowy night when Dani Ardor (Florence Pugh) learns that her sister has killed herself and their parents in a murder-suicide. All she’s left with is her feckless boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), who’s already been looking for a way to break up with her for months. Christian, an anthropology student, is secretly planning a trip to Sweden to his friend Pelle’s (Vilhelm Blomgren) hometown, Hårga, to witness the town’s once-in-90-years midsommar ceremony with some other students, but Dani gets wind of it and invites herself along. Pelle’s brother has brought along two friends of his own, an engaged couple from … [Read more...] about “Midsommar” Is Here to Scare the Socialism Scaremongers
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When Did the U.S. Start Calling Itself “America,” Anyway?
Battle of Manila Bay, Philippines, May 1, 1898, the first major engagement of the Spanish–American War. Those are Spanish vessels on fire. Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Adapted from How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. America, as a shorthand for the United States, has a way of raising hackles around the globe. The Americas stretch from Canada to South America’s southern cone. Why should one country, accounting for a third of their population and less than a quarter of their land, have a nomenclatural claim on the whole hemisphere? To many in the United States, such complaints—as voiced by Canadians and Chileans and any number of the 600 million other Americans—seem misplaced. America is right there in the full name of the country. What else would you call it? Yet the United States hasn’t always gone by America. That name rose to its current ubiquity only in the 20th century. It did so in response to the United … [Read more...] about When Did the U.S. Start Calling Itself “America,” Anyway?
Who Was Naive About Bernie Sanders Meeting the Sandinistas?
Contras on patrol in 1983 in northern Nicaragua. Bernie Sanders worried that US interventions would bring about a "Vietnam-type war" in Central America.Steven Clevenger/Corbis via Getty This was adapted from Jonathan M. Katz’s newsletter, The Long Version. To get the backstory behind big international stories delivered to your inbox, subscribe at katz.substack.com. On December 4, 1984, a dump truck carrying volunteer government coffee pickers was ambushed in northern Nicaragua. The attackers, rebel soldiers known as Contras, ripped through the truck with machine-gun fire and grenades, and they fired a rocket launcher into its tires. When the truck rattled to a stop, the Contras climbed aboard. They opened fire into the mangle of the living and dead, and stabbed those still moving with their bayonets—setting aside a 19-year-old woman to kidnap. Then they set the truck on fire. Roger Briones, a coffee picker who had fallen out and survived by playing dead, later testified: … [Read more...] about Who Was Naive About Bernie Sanders Meeting the Sandinistas?
The Key to Covering the 2020 Election: More Women
Mother Jones When We Lead Panel Event |April 11, 2019 | The New School Tishman Auditorium| New York New YorkNicole Fara Silver From the #MeToo movement to the fight for workplace equality to the dystopian abortion bills popping up around the country, male supremacy is plainly on the agenda in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. How should the media, particularly women in media, cover such a fraught moment? To help guide us toward an answer, Mother Jones’ race and justice reporter, Jamilah King, recently hosted two live events in New York City that brought together five women journalists of various ages and backgrounds. First, Jamilah spoke with Jessica Yellin, CNN’s former White House chief correspondent, at The Wing DUMBO, a women-only space in New York City, to discuss Yellin’s new novel, Savage News; the 2020 presidential election; the not-so-secret bro culture of cable news; and life after TV news. This is the first time in 20 years she … [Read more...] about The Key to Covering the 2020 Election: More Women
A High-Brow Breitbart Wants to Become the New Home of Trumpism
A block away from the former Capitol Hill headquarters of Breitbart News — known in Washington as the “Breitbart embassy” — sits a second-floor apartment its occupant calls “the Consulate.” Here, surrounded by memorabilia of the British empire, two right-wing entrepreneurs — a protege of Steve Bannon’s and a social media activist — are rebooting a dilapidated conservative publication from around a dining room table.Story Continued Below This month, the duo relaunched the 75-year-old Human Events, once Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper. Their efforts to reinvent it as a thriving digital media enterprise driven by “tabloid intellectualism” represent the latest test of whether President Donald Trump’s haphazard insurgency can mature into a durable political movement. “It’s Trump as a philosophy, not Trump as a man,” said co-founder Raheem Kassam — the posh, bespectacled, former editor … [Read more...] about A High-Brow Breitbart Wants to Become the New Home of Trumpism