The Constitution Won’t Save Us From Trump by Aziz Rana

Recent years have brought a prolonged, dismaying demonstration of the fragility and faultiness of all the systems meant to keep the United States properly on the path towards that long-promised more perfect union. Writing for The New York Times, Aziz Rana makes a convincing argument that the U.S. Constitution isn’t up to the task of preventing willful marauders from stripping the nations for parts and leaving its citizenry to suffer. This thesis seems especially true at this time when the Supreme Court is dominated by right wing zealots who are exceedingly comfortable expressing fealty to the founding document on their way to making whatever decision will most please their wealthy, white benefactors.

The Pitiful Penalties for Violating Labor Law by Timothy Noah

Here’s a prime way the system fails the people. Officially, there are lots of laws on the books that address employers thieving from their employees. In practice, those regulations are haphazardly enforced and any associated penalties are minuscule enough that companies can blithely consider the fines as merely the cost of doing business, making it worth the gamble to cheat their employees out of wages they’re owed. Timothy Noah writes about this flagrant, ongoing, and unchecked criminality in the piece, which was published by The New Republic.

Writers, Writers, Everywhere by Zoe Si

Inspired to uncomfortable introspection by encountering a cluster of cinematic protagonists who are forlorn writers, Zoe Si crafts a marvelous comic about her own anxieties in claiming that ink-stained occupation as her own. Yes, I can relate. This work is published by The New Yorker.