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“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing. And the police aren’t allowed to do their job… if you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day… if you had one really violent day…one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word will get out, and it will end immediately.” — Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Excuse me, Mr. Trump? I know you don’t usually take questions from the audience at these rallies, but seeing as how we’re deep into hour four, and you haven’t landed the plane on a single sentence, you’ve started in, well, quite a spell, I’m hoping exceptions might be made.

September marked the 23rd anniversary of al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the United States, which left nearly 3,000 people dead. For the two decades since then, I’ve been writing, often for TomDispatch, about the ways the American response to 9/11, which quickly came to be known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, changed this country. As I’ve explored in several books, in the name of that war, we transformed our institutions, privileged secrecy over transparency and accountability, side-stepped and even violated longstanding laws and constitutional principles, and basically tossed aside many of the norms that had guided us as a nation for two centuries-plus, opening the way for a country now in Trumpian-style difficulty at home. Even today, more... Read more

A customer walks out of the troll store without buying a troll.

ERIC: What the fuck did you say to him?

HARPER: He wanted a Firefighter Troll. I said we’re out of stock.

ERIC: Is this kindergarten? Do you need a juicy box?

Harper’s eyes well up.

ERIC: When a customer asks about a Firefighter Troll, you tell him we have a Firefighter Troll, and it comes with a Dalmatian Troll and a plush Firefighter Troll Fire Truck, and it will all be ready by MONDAY. You better be running down the street to get him. Go, go, go!

Harper runs out the door.

ERIC: Our budget is one thousand dollars for raw materials for the trolls. We’re on a KNIFE’S EDGE here with these Scandinavian troll dolls that we craft with LOVING CARE.

A dinner party at Yasmin’s house.

The backdrop to Rachel Reeves’ budget yesterday is a country riven by vast and growing inequality, rising poverty and falling incomes for most. According to a recent report by Oxfam, the top 1 percent in Britain has more wealth than 70 percent of the population combined. The UK’s wealth gap, a measure of the difference between the […]

- by David Russell

Read at Psyche

- by Philip Goff

Read at Aeon