THE PARTY OF NEGATIVE HOPE by Dan Brooks

This essay by Dan Brooks perfectly puts words to an anger I feel towards the political party that I have consistently voted for my entire adult life. I believe I’m more willing than most to make allowances for compromises that are sometimes necessary due to the vexing practicalities of governing, but I am exhausted with the Democratic leadership’s default to policy paralysis when faced with political moments that frankly aren’t that challenging. This article is published by Gawker.

I’m a High-Risk Obstetrician, and I’m Terrified for My Patients by David N. Hackney

According to the quick-sketch bio that accompanies his piece in The New York Times, David N. Hackney is a “maternal-fetal medicine specialist and chair of the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.” He writes with conviction and contained fury about the damage done, now and pending, by the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, including some useful side notes about the alarming medical ignorance of lawmakers. I’ve thought about this sentence every day since I read it: “For instance, in 2019 we successfully fought HB 413, which would have made ‘abortion murder’ a crime and could have required doctors to ‘reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the woman’s uterus,’ which is impossible.”

Guns Aren’t Sacred by Francisco Cantú

Writing for The New York Times, Francisco Cantú accurately dissects the way that guns have toxically taken hold as sickeningly venerated items in U.S. society. Importantly, he forcefully argues how delusional that veneration is, based on the laughable notion that average people with a modicum of practice are going to emerge as John McClane–like heroes when catastrophe happens before their eyes. Our culture is broken.

Amy Coney Barrett Is in Over Her Head by Mark Joseph Stern

This article is a savage appraisal of the third and most damaging appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States by a wannabe despot who allowed to occupy the White House for four years despite finishing second in the relevant vote count. Mark Joseph Stern doesn’t tear down Amy Coney Barrett’s tenure as a justice because he disagrees with her political views (that are dressed up is pretend legal evaluation adornments), but because, as a seasoned reporter for Slate, he’s able to see her lack of basic capability in almost every aspect of the incredibly significant job she’s been gifted. Because his backing evidence is convincing, that approach is far more brutal than a lamenting of mere disagreement.