Weird Bedfellows Weird Bedfellows
In their defense of “tradition” against the liberating potential of architecture, Prince Charles and Xi Jinping find unlikely common ground.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Michael Sorkin
A Q&A With Marilynne Robinson A Q&A With Marilynne Robinson
The novelist discusses religion, history, language and the importance of moral scrutiny.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts
Some Disturbingly Relevant Legacies of Anticommunism Some Disturbingly Relevant Legacies of Anticommunism
The impact of Cold War anticommunism on our national life has been so profound that we no longer recognize how much we’ve lost.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Victor Navasky
Michael Moore for President Michael Moore for President
If nominated, I will run. If elected, I will serve.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Michael Moore
Game Not Over Game Not Over
Despite the Gamergate backlash, a new generation of activists is working to end the racial, sexual and gender stereotypes promoted by the video-game industry.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Helen Lewis
The Populist Moment Has Finally Arrived The Populist Moment Has Finally Arrived
Occupy Wall Street put inequality at the center of our politics. Only an independent movement will keep it there.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Robert L. Borosage
The Case for Disengagement in the Middle East The Case for Disengagement in the Middle East
It is time to walk away and leave the region to its own bad behavior.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Kai Bird
Why Are Liberal Democracies So Bad at Creating Economic Equality? Why Are Liberal Democracies So Bad at Creating Economic Equality?
The “Third Wave” of democracy in the Global South went hand in hand with the spread of policies that hobbled the fight for greater economic equality from the outset.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Walden Bello
‘Why Do They Hate Us?’ ‘Why Do They Hate Us?’
It’s too easy to condemn the right’s populist attacks on Muslims—especially with so many left-wing atheists and liberal hawks joining the party.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Moustafa Bayoumi
The Plain Sense of Things The Plain Sense of Things
December 6, 1952 After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the lessened floors. The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition In a repetitiousness of men and flies. Yet the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined. The great pond, The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves, Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge, Required, as a necessity requires. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) published ten poems in The Nation between 1936 and 1952.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Wallace Stevens