Marx’s 19th century remark that history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy and then as farce, helps us makes sense of the seemingly surreal politics of the contemporary Republican Party. As Kyle Paoletta notes in his insightful Harpers essay “The Race For Second Place”, the 2024 Republican primaries have been a complete “farce” (the tragedy, of course, being the 2016 primaries). Everything about this year’s Iowa Causus and the New Hampshire primary, Paoletta reported from Des Moines and Manchester, was untrue. There wasn’t even really a race for second place. The only story was Trump, who not only didn’t show up, but barely acknowledged either the primaries or the Republican party itself. It was classic farce. but behind the absurdity of these 2024 primaries, Paoletta predicts, are tectonic shifts in American democracy which will shape the political geography of the 21st century.
Kyle Paoletta’s reporting and criticism has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, New York Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, n+1, The Believer, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Baffler, High Country News, and Boston. His first book, American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest, will be published by Pantheon in early 2025. Kyle holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and previously worked at GQ and New York Magazine. He is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This was the week that the world dramatically changed: Keith Teare celebrates the beginning of the end of the pre AI age
A classic novel that not only shaped America but also captured the authentic voice of the African-American South: Peter Slen on Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God", an anthropological
Why genuine neutrality was mostly a myth in the Second World War: Neill Lochery on the flight of Nazi treasure through "neutral" countries after the war
How to write poetry on a smartphone: Best-selling poet and TikTok sensation Whitney Hanson on the anxiety of her generation and why social media makes physical events more "real"
The dark truth of Mexico as a mostly truant state terrorized by subsistence gangsters and haunted by hollow people: Azam Ahmed on the story of a missing daughter, a violent Cartel and a mother's quest
Do great leaders make history or does history make great leaders? Moshik Temkin on the art of leadership from FDR, Malcolm X and MLK to Trump and Biden
How to accurately reconstruct the entire 13.9 billion year history of the universe: David Helfand on the power of atomic science to unveil the mysteries of unreachably remote time and space
Turning Mrs Dalloway into a novel set in the New York City of April 2017: Lisa Gornick on writing a New York story in the philistine age of the Taliban and Donald Trump
An Unprincipled Man for our Unprincipled Times: Rob Copeland on Ray Dalio, the billionaire Big Brother of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet
How early 21st century America resembles late 19th century Russia: John Gray on our post-liberal future
The double life of America's most notorious agent of betrayal: Major Garrett on Robert Hanssen, the FBI spy and weaver of a web of lies, both outrageously large and pathetically small
How to make the most of college: Ben Wildavsky on the art of using college to build a career
Why the American mass incarceration system is jarringly unamerican: Ben Austen on parole, prison and the near impossibility of change in the current American criminal justice system
In defense of literary flyover country: Peter Slen on Willa Cather's "My Antonia", the 1918 novel that captured the ideal of immigrant middle America
Orwell and his women: Bethanne Patrick on new feminist takes on George Orwell - the man , the husband and the writer.
Guilty by seven crimes and death by a thousand verticals: Keith Teare on Sam Bankman-Fried and Palo Alto, Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak, and Space X and X
How to get more women in science right now: Lisa Munoz on implicit bias, leaky pipelines, tokenization and other explanations for the persistent gender gap in science
Did the KGB really invent the idea of the Palestinian nation in the 1960s? Pierre Rehov on Iranian financed sleeper-cells in US universities and why he admires Hamas' "evil mind"
Overcoming the politics of black grief and white grievance in America today: Juliet Hooker on why American democracy is in desperate need of an radical expansion of its political imagination
A remarkable American hero at a time in which many Americans are no longer comfortable with the heroic ideal: Ronald C. White on the life of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the unlikely hero of Gettysbur
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The emPOWERed Half Hour
The Power of Storytelling
NABOR® TALKS
U.S Property Podcast
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money