A lot of things happened in 2018, but most importantly, Current Affairs published a lot of new articles and essays. However, with 10 news events happening every 10 seconds these days, things tend to slip away. So I wanted to collect some of the bits of Current Affairs that the editors are most proud of.
We published six gorgeous print issues this year, from which many of these came. You can order the available back issues in our store or subscribe so that you’ll get:
- Jan. 5 — My Resolutions — I began the year with some resolutions. Update: I broke nearly all of them. I did succeed in going to the gym regularly. But I’m not any better at email. I hereby renew all these resolutions for 2019.
- Jan. 16 — Who Cares About Inequality? — David Adler on how the super-rich somehow became opponents of “inequality.”
- Jan. 17 — Meat and the H-Word — I look at the unbelievable scale of suffering among non-human animals, and carefully consider the ways in which we justify turning a blind eye to the pain of others.
- Jan. 13 — Trump Exceptionalism Will Kill Your Brain Cells — Why it’s important to see Trump as horrible, but not uniquely horrible.
- Jan. 19 — The Curse of Bipartisanship — Luke Savage on why there’s nothing inherently good about “bipartisanship” if it just means “liberals and conservatives agreeing that a bad thing is actually a good thing.”
- Jan. 19 — Bring On The Sensitivity Readers — Vanessa A. Bee on why it’s important to have people checking books to make sure they don’t say anything appallingly offensive or ignorant.
- Jan. 19 — Requiem For An Agency — I look at the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has done great things and yet is under attack by the Trump Administration.
- Jan. 31 — The Nice Cop — During his high school years in St. Paul, Nick Slater was friends with the cop who killed Philando Castile. Here, he reflects on how an ordinary person could do something so monstrous.
- Feb. 9 — Everything You Love Will Be Eaten Alive — I review the book Vanishing New York and talk about how “efficiency” wages war on romanticism and mystery.
- Feb. 12 — Laissez Le Sex Work Rouler — Vanessa A. Bee on the policies that help keep sex workers safe, and the ones that definitely don’t.
- Feb. 12 — The Middle Ages Were Pretty Interesting, Actually — Brianna Rennix dives into the much-misunderstood history of the Middle Ages, finding that they were, well, pretty interesting.
- Feb. 12 — Does Caring About Other People Mean You Have To Be A Joyless Ascetic? — I try to consider whether it’s morally justified to participate in Mardi Gras during a time of suffering.
- Feb. 19 — Why Equality Is Indispensable? — There are those that think “inequality” is not actually an inherently bad thing. I think they are wrong!
- Feb. 20 — Could You Be A New York Times Columnist? — Lyta Gold tests you to see if you have what it takes to have a column in the Paper of Record.
- Feb. 21 — What Kills People — I examine the rhetoric about how “guns don’t kill people, people do” and “good guys with a gun stop the bad guys.”
- March 1 — Don’t Use The Right’s Assumptions To Make The Left’s Arguments — I look at how easy it is to implicitly accept conservative premises that are actually objectionable.
- March 4 — A Tale Of Two Atrocities — Brianna Rennix gives a moving and disturbing account of atrocities in the U.S. and Guatemala.
- March 11 — The Politics Of Shame — Briahna Joy Gray on whether, and when, it makes sense to “shame” people.
- March 11 — The Cruelties of Coulter — Brianna Rennix puts herself through the experience of reading Coulter’s Adios America in order to understand how appeals to xenophobia are crafted.
- March 12 — Socialism As A Set Of Principles — I give my own take on what “socialism” means.
- March 14 — The Intellectual We Deserve — I look at the “thought” of Canadian psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson and conclude that there isn’t much there.
- March 19 — The Centrist’s Guide To History — Lyta Gold takes us on a time-traveling tour through moderation across the ages!
- March 22 — Inclusion In The Atrocious — Eli Massey and Yasmin Nair on the ways that unjust institutions use “inclusion” to downplay the systemic injustice of their deeds.
- April 11 — Joe Biden’s Record On Racial Integration Is Indefensible — Asher Smith on how Biden has misrepresented what he did on racial justice issues in his early years.
- April 14 — Alone In America — Elle Hardy looks at the epidemic of loneliness and despair in America, which even Prince could not escape.
- April 30 — Quiz: Which Dystopia Have I Found Myself In? — Lyta Gold introduces you to four possible futures.
- May 3 — You Should Care About The Bank Exactly As Much As It Cares About You — K.M. Lautrec points out that companies will happily screw you over when it suits them, so you should happily screw them over when it suits you.
- May 10 — The Real ‘Dangerous’ Ideas — I respond to the Intellectual Dark Web by listing the ideas that are actually suppressed and ignored these days.
- May 13 — The Dismal Frontier — Lyta Gold reviews the latest entry in the Star Trek franchise, and laments the decline of Star Trek‘s utopianism. Featuring a wonderful comic illustrated by Pranas Naujokaitis.
- May 23 — Everyone Needs The Right To Sue Their Employer — Sparky Abraham and Oren Nimni talk about how people’s right to seek redress for wrongdoing is being eroded. Features an amusing sample letter you can send a company about their arbitration clause!
- May 21 — Propaganda 101: How To Defend A Massacre — I take a close look at a New York Times op-ed justifying the killing of Palestinian protesters in order to show how rhetoric can be used to obscure the reality of atrocities.
- May 24 — Why Hopelessness Is Conservative — Conservatives want you to think you can’t change anything. Don’t listen to them.
- May 28 — In Defense of Social Justice — Social justice is much-maligned, but personally I’m for it!
- June 4 — Death and the Drug War — Brianna Rennix and I look at how drug policy creates tens of thousands of corpses on both sides of the border, both through violence in Mexico and overdoses in the U.S. Featuring a beautiful illustration by Mexican artist Ale de la Torre.
- June 5 — Politics and the American Trucker Song — Emily Bartlett Hines on a fun, neglected sub-genre.
- June 7 — Judging The Judges — Brianna Rennix and Oren Nimni on why judges are silly and should be mocked
- June 10 — How To Make Everyone In Your Vicinity Secretly Fear And Despise You — I review hedge fund manager Ray Dalio’s fascinatingly tyrannical book Principles, which is in part a manual for making your employees feel like shit.
- June 17 — There Is No Right To Vote — Vanessa A. Bee and Oren Nimni make a crucial point: The right to vote still does not meaningfully exist.
- June 23 — There Is Still Only One Clear Way To Get Rid Of Trump — In February 2016, I wrote that unless the Democrats nominated Bernie Sanders, Trump would be president. For 2020, I think they need to avoid making the mistake of not nominating Bernie.
- June 23 — Mardi Gras In Theory And Practice — I had my first Mardi Gras in New Orleans this year. It was incredible! Here’s my first-person account.
- June 26 — How Student Debt Worsens Gender And Race Injustice — Sparky Abraham on the links between economic issues and everything else.
- June 28 — Dismantling The ‘West’ — Classicist Dan Walden shows how the notion of the “West” has been constructed and why it’s nonsense that obscures the realities of human culture.
- June 28 — Things You Can Do Beyond Calling Your Congressperson — Brianna Rennix and Oren Nimni give practical advice for those who oppose Trump’s immigration policies.
- June 29 — How The Supreme Court Pretends To Be Reasonable — I look at how Supreme Court justices use specious and inconsistent reasoning to support their preferred ideological outcomes.
- July 4 — How Horrific Things Come To Seem Normal — I dive into the New York Times archives to see how the paper covered the rise of the Nazis, including the paper’s 1920s headline “Hitler Virtually Eliminated.”
- July 8 — Murder Most Genteel — Brianna Rennix looks at murder mysteries and how they differ from, well, actual murders.
- July 8 — What We Did — I look at the Vietnam War, and the way that documentarians like Ken Burns overlook the true scale of the atrocities that were caused by U.S. actions.
- July 9 — There Is Nothing Inherently Wrong With State Ownership — Matthew Bruenig provides a quick and definitive case that government ownership of industry can be completely fine.
- July 11 — Literature of the Left — I go through my favorite bits of leftist writing from history.
- July 20 — Abolishing ICE Is Just The First Step — Immigration lawyer Caitlin Bellis talks about what we need in order to have a fair set of immigration policies.
- July 23 — Why Public Libraries Are Amazing — I show why even though libraries aren’t exactly socialism, they’re still pretty great.
- Aug. 1 — And We’ll Never Be Lonely Any More — A very short piece about being sad. A lot of people replied and said they found this article comforting even though it’s very short. Includes a wonderful illustration by Christopher Matthews.
- Aug. 6 — The Rules of Monopoly — Vanessa A. Bee on the importance of antitrust.
- Aug. 6 — Why Everyone Should Oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s Nomination — This is from before the allegations against Kavanaugh came out, so it’s just about his judicial record, which is bad enough! I like this because it explains my core objections to conservative “textualism.”
- Aug. 11 — What Is Education For? — Sparky Abraham and I review libertarian Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education and offer some ideas for what the education system ought to look like.
- Aug. 21 — Why Nordic ‘Socialism’ Won’t Work In The U.S. — We were fortunate enough to have conservative commentator Ben Shapiro pen a guest column for us on Scandinavian social democracy.
- Aug. 23 — The Humans of Palestine — A beautiful, hilarious travelogue of the West Bank from Nick Slater.
- Aug. 28 — Black Memory in the Age of Trump — Historian Robert Greene II on the legacy of Reconstruction today.
- Aug. 30 — The Problem of Private Ambulance Services — David Anderson on what happens when emergency medical services are operated capitalistically.
- Aug. 31 — The City of Dreams — Me on the value of the utopian impulse.
- Aug. 31 — Abortion and the Left — Brianna Rennix and I look at why abortion is so politically contentious and try to find clearer ways to think about the “pro life” versus “pro choice” dichotomy.
- Aug. 31 — Steven Pinker: Grief Counselor — A comic about the Harvard psychologist’s hilariously naive optimism.
- Aug. 31 — Fresh Hot Takes On Gender — Lyta Gold and Brianna Rennix give you their controversial gender theories.
- Sept. 6 — 11 Billionaires Who Need Shaming — Lyta Gold and Lizzy Price present some of the country’s most shameful plutocrats!
- Sept. 9 — Shutting Down The Memory Factory — What I felt when the last video store in town closed.
- Sept. 17 — Ranked: 10 Paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes — Lyta Gold and Brianna Rennix give their unsparing critical assessment of some classical paintings.
- Sept. 24 — Why We Take ‘Sides’ — I talk about why I’m okay with having a “left-wing” magazine rather than an “objective” one.
- Sept. 27 — The Fear That Comes Over Me — I disclose my deepest fears.
- Sept. 29 — How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying — I do a deep dive into Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate testimony to definitively show that he committed perjury and cannot be confirmed to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is subsequently confirmed to the Supreme Court.
- Oct. 2 — Dave Rubin and the Shrinking of Politics — Aisling McCrea looks at “classical liberal” YouTuber Dave Rubin and shows how he limits people’s ideological horizons.
- Oct. 3 — The Color of Economic Anxiety — Malaika Jabali visits Milwaukee to find out whether “economic anxiety” is real. It is, but its victims often go unmentioned.
- Oct. 8 — The Current Affairs Guide To New Orleans — Cate Root and I give the lowdown on how to have a good time when you’re in the city. Remember to tip the band!
- Oct. 11 — Being Mr. Reasonable — Eli Massey and I dissect the thoughts of Sam Harris, who insists he is very rational but actually turns out not to be.
- Oct. 13 — Never Trust The Cato Institute — How the libertarian think tank distorts reality to make free markets appear more functional than they actually are.
- Oct. 26 — Tearing Down The Wall Street Journal’s Mansion — Economist Rob Larson gives a hilarious look at the housing section of the ruling class newspaper.
- Oct. 29 — The Limits of Liberal History — I make the case that you can’t talk about American history without mentioning the labor movement.
- Nov. 5 — The Field Guide to Socialist Animals — Lyta Gold looks at the socialist habits of non-human creatures! Featuring gorgeous illustrations by Nick Sirotich.
- Nov. 6 — What You Have To Fear From Artificial Intelligence — Ryan Metz warns about the coming of new types of dystopian technology
- Nov. 11 — Lessons from ‘The Great War’ — Historian Abel Sterling looks at what World War One means 100 years after Armistice Day.
- Nov. 19 — Understanding Hawai’i — Dave Wong looks at the history, culture, and contradictions of his home state.
- Nov. 24 — The Disappearance — Our first-ever piece of fiction, from Lyta Gold!
- Nov. 26 — Self-Care Won’t Save Us — Aisling McCrea on the limits of encouraging individuals to solve systemic problems.
- Nov. 29 — Responding To ‘The Left Case Against Open Borders’ — Brianna Rennix and make the case for why leftists need to be committed to the free movement of people.
- Dec. 8 — Can The Working Class Speak? — Maximilian Alvarez looks at the way working class people are silenced, and the feelings that his dad always left unspoken.
- Dec. 9 — I’m Sorry But This Is Just Sheer Propaganda — I look at how the media covered the death of George H.W. Bush, and why it conforms with Noam Chomsky’s “manufacturing consent” theory.
- Dec. 10 — Home For The Gilets Jaunes Days — Vanessa A. Bee visits her family in France amid the yellow vest upheaval, and tries to figure out what it means.
- Dec. 13 — Why Is The Center For American Progress Betraying The Left? — I look at the curious activities of CAP, a “progressive” think tank intent on stopping “populism.”
- Dec. 16 — Why This Shitting Peasant Is The Christmas Symbol We Need Today — Nick Slater introduces us to the delightfully vulgar “caganer,” a Catalonian Christmas icon that he argues should be more widely known and adopted.
- Dec. 20 — Toward The Wiki Society — I give an example of a successful experiment in cooperative democracy: Wikipedia.
- Dec. 24 — The 25 Worst Headlines of 2018 — Lyta ends the year with a round-up of the worst takes of 2018.
This is just a highlight reel. We published many, many more wonderful articles this year, and I recommend having a dig through our archives. The print editions had lots of stuff that isn’t available online, including activities and games plus letters from the editor. If you haven’t already subscribed, you must!
In addition to all of this, there was the Current Affairs podcast! Starting in May, we managed to put out dozens of wonderful episodes thanks to the skills of Podmaster Pete Davis and his crack team of editors. Every other week, we produced a “main” episode featuring a panel discussion, then we also did a whole slew of bonus episodes for Patreon donors. Check out the latest episode, a delightful interview with Glenn Greenwald about animal welfare. Support us on Patreon to get instant access to bonuses about subjects as varied as: Christmas movies, Greek mythology, Russian literature, pet peeves, prison abolition, football, Elon Musk, reality shows, rich people, and sooooooo much more.
We also published three Current Affairs books this year. First, Interesting Times, a giant collection of my work from the last couple of years, of which I am very proud. Then, The Current Affairs Rules for Life, which collects our “takedowns” of awful right-wing pundits and defends the idea of social justice. Finally, and most importantly, The Current Affairs Big Book of Amusements, an overstuffed collection of weird and wonderful tidbits from the magazine including games, puzzles, comics, flowcharts, diagrams, fake ads, and soooooo much more. I did most of the graphic design for this myself and worked harder on it than I have on any other book. I am so proud of it, and I think it’s like nothing else you’ve ever seen. Please consider purchasing a copy. You won’t regret it.
I want to thank our amazing Current Affairs team for making this year possible. Brianna Rennix, Briahna Joy Gray, Cate Root, Eli Massey, Lyta Gold, Nick Slater, Oren Nimni, Pete Davis, Sparky Abraham, and Vanessa A. Bee have all worked their asses off to make this magazine succeed. God bless them all. Lyta was an absolute machine for producing endless hilarious sketches for the podcast and amusements for the magazine and book. Nick has created one of the most entertaining and thoughtful newsletters I’ve ever seen, and you really need to see it (all subscribers and Patreon donors should receive it). Vanessa has made our Twitter account brilliant and witty. Pete has put together a must-listen podcast. Cate, our Administrative Maven, has pulled off the impossible: not just herding cats by trying to keep the editors on track, but sometimes literally herding cats to create ads like this.
And yet: All of the others have full-time jobs outside Current Affairs, so this is something they do in their spare time. I’m still the only full-time paid staff member of Current Affairs. Someday we want to actually hire them, so that they can be compensated properly for the work they do. Please help us by subscribing or donating today.
Most importantly, though, I want to thank YOU. You, the Current Affairs reader, the person who keeps this operation afloat. Your support has allowed us to build up a successful independent print magazine at a time when supposedly this is impossible. We have no outside advertising, and rely entirely on subscriptions and donations. Page views actually cost us money, so if you’ve enjoyed our material this year, please consider helping us out so that we can continue to provide you with high-quality work. We have many exciting plans for 2019, including new books, new videos, live shows, and some exciting podcast guests. But with one full-time staff person and no outside funding, it’s really hard to produce as much material as we’d like as quickly as we’d like. So we need you!
THANK YOU and I wish you all the most wonderful possible 2019.
