Bad Faith Times

We Must Not Fall For the Bad Faith of RFK, Jr.

I have what you might call an earnestness detector: I can and always have been able to tell when someone is saying what they mean, dealing in unsullied good faith, and when someone is crafting narratives with a foundation of bad faith, arguments they do not mean but must deploy

The Overactive Conservative Imagination Is Killing Us

In my youth, I was a libertarian – sort of. Not a full-blown “public roads are tyranny” libertarian, but I had a strong presumption that government action was bad unless proven otherwise. One of the things that persuaded me in that direction was Penn and Teller’s show, Bullshit. It was

Bernie’s Gleaming Good Faith Exposes the Right’s Wretched Bad Faith

In a political landscape ruled by good faith, Bernie Sanders’ almost adorably earnest political messaging would draw MAGA freaks to him like a tractor beam. Sanders, after running the two most important presidential campaigns in American history, is still the only major political figure (politely) raging against our brutal, soulless

Capital's Footsoldiers Will Do Anything To Fuck Over The Poor

House Republicans, in their bad-faith attempt to pretend they give a shit about the nation’s debt, are once again pushing the nation to the brink of financial catastrophe. Forgetting how badly this blew up in their faces during the Obama years, Republicans are refusing to raise the country's debt

Yes, It Is Virtue Signaling

My belief that schoolchildren should not be mowed down by automatic weapon-wielding madmen is unshakeable, unwavering. Many describe my long-held stance against mass murder in U.S. schools as "resolute." I have never once considered I could be wrong on this issue, or that I need to stop for a

The Heartbreaking Bad Faith of Roger Waters

The older, richer, more cynical dog offered counsel to the younger, greener, more idealistic dog, and I sat in my car and listened and heard the words of every adult I knew in that senior dog, and I knew I was the younger dog. I dreaded becoming his jaded, hopeless

The Bad Faith of American Meritocracy

The United States has had one constant story about itself: That it is, above all else, a land of opportunity. A true meritocracy. Anyone, regardless of where you come from, has the same opportunity to climb the metaphorical social ladder through hard work, talent, and merit. While meritocracy may seem

Everyone Is Tired Of All This Woke Shit

I like to imagine chronically online Republican staffers in frenzied meetings with lawmakers, begging and pleading with them to use the barely-coded power of “woke” in every social media post and cable TV interview and stump speech and press release and congressional address. Keep saying woke, these internet-addicted staffers say,

Our Low-Simmering Civil War

There’s too much good TV for there to be a real, all-out Second American Civil War. Until the never-ending stream of fantastic shows – and movies and video games and whatever other media serves as your soma – dries up, there will be no war between brothers (and sisters). No matter

Capitalism Is Enclosing On Everyone And Everything

We see it every day and don’t notice it. In our digital lives, where Twitter Blue offers to artificially inflate your reach, for a monthly fee. On vacation with our families, where theme parks allow you to skip long lines, for a price. In our political lives, where bad

Wisconsin's Right-Wing Coup Is About To Be Undone

It's going to be so fucking sweet to see the right wing's best-laid plans go to shit in Wisconsin. Liberal justices on Tuesday night took control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time since 2008. Janet Protasiewicz’s runaway victory over crybaby right-wing judge Daniel Kelly secures a

These Democrats Are Running Roughshod Over Republicans With No-Faith Politics

You would think providing food for children would be a bipartisan issue, or even a nonpolitical one. You would, of course, be wrong about this. Making sure kids get food every day was the goal of Minnesota Democrats when they took it upon themselves to pass legislation providing free school

The Parental Rights Movement Is a Fascist Trojan Horse

Our politics will never recover from COVID. The COVID-19 pandemic was the first time in modern history Americans were asked to make sacrifices for their fellow citizen, and the request turned millions of otherwise-normal people into raving mad lunatics, driving them headlong into the nation’s ascendant fascist movement – a

There Is No Anti-Wokeness Without Bad Faith

Unless your friends and family have been vacuum sealed and protected against the brain-altering venom of the Culture Wars, you know “woke” has, quite tragically, become a catchall term for anything a conservative doesn’t like. Anything that scares or annoys a reactionary is woke. Women fighter pilots flying jets

One Weird Trick To Turn Libertarians Into Socialists

Fascist puppet master Peter Thiel last week helped trigger a run on Silicon Valley Bank that now threatens the foundation of the global economy, and every time I log on to Twitter for updates on the cascading effects of Thiel's highly suspicious actions, tech bros sound less like Ayn Rand

The Bad Faith Machine Cannot Be Unplugged

The agitation, the sense of persecution, the standoffishness, the directionless anger: I always know when my dad has been binging conservative media. It’s not unlike dealing with a relative who struggles with alcohol or drugs. My dad, when he’s pumping far-right propaganda into his boomer, low-information brain 16

Canada Has A Defense Mechanism Against Bad-Faith Fascists

I was on my way to a ski lodge in Quebec, desperately trying to avoid a maze of potholes on a snowy, slick road, my kids excitedly chatting in the backseat, my wife giving me directions, when the radio grabbed my attention with a report so foreign I nearly drove

I’m Begging Marjorie Taylor Greene To Keep Operating In Good Faith

It can most generously be called a strain of laziness that runs through the conservative movement, or most accurately described as an everlasting authoritarian impulse: The deep yearning for struggle to end, to be done with politics, to stop with the messiness of representative democracy. Probably by now you had

The Bad-Faith Anti-War Movement Is Driving Me Insane

It was February 2003 and we were so steadfastly certain of our rightness in opposing the Iraq War as not only a strategic blunder on the part of the U.S. government, but as a profoundly immoral attack that would surely kill hundreds of thousands or millions of innocents. We

Class Dealignment Is Real, And It's Spectacularly Bad

It’s the most romantic political notion: A working class coalition putting aside their cultural and racial and religious differences to elect legislators who will ram through explicitly pro-worker policies and save us from the yawning darkness of creeping fascism in the United States. I get the appeal, truly. The

Friday On Our Minds

My pledge to you, the good and decent Bad Faith Times subscriber, is to soon get back to writing about the never-ending loop of bad faith politics that makes our culture go around and around. I'm in Arizona this week covering the Super Bowl, as you may or may not

The Politics Of A Wood Chipper

Last year I wrote a follow-up to my maturely titled 2017 e-book, 69 Ways to Own The Libs. Owning The Libs Across America was an update on how right-wing media ecosystem had changed during the Trump years, and how the pandemic had completely altered the brain chemistry of every Republican

I'm Not Afraid Of Cops

A cop’s flashlight shined in my wincing eyes as I was questioned about my sobriety, about guns and drugs in the car. A police dog sniffed around the passenger door of my Mercury Sable. Chatter on the police radio was the night’s only sound. It was two in

Alexander Hamilton And Our Crisis of Bad-Faith Politics

That we're in the midst of a nonstop political crisis is hardly a secret. There are certainly villains to blame for our ever-worsening predicament, but it seems some unlikely heroes are also partly to blame. Including, dare I say, Alexander Hamilton, the man on the ten dollar bill, the face

Is It Bad Faith Or A 'Fog Of Ideology And Error'?

I believe in my bones that failing to identify a person's bad-faith arguments is the missing ingredient in our deteriorating, endlessly confusing, and ultimately futile 21st century cultural and political discourse. Those on the left – far more prone to earnestly believe in causes and to (foolishly) assume everyone operates similarly