"In what seems a dream of life, and not life, which is to say life at last, and not a dream, the rhythm of the road, the quick of perception, both lull you and drive you on. You are individual and alive, and everything that passes catches the sun." ajayadler.substack.com/p/the-americ...

A distant past no longer. "American Indian reservations began as concentration camps. Southern plantations were slave labor camps, both of which — concentration and slave labor camps — were backbones of murderous Nazi and Soviet totalitarian oppression." open.substack.com/pub/ajayadle...

"To live in the middle, it turned out, was to reside at the edges. To move to the center meant to travel to the boundaries, because the boundary — the frontier — is where the other is, and the other is experience." open.substack.com/pub/ajayadle...

From Boo Radley to Tom Hagen to Mac Sledge, one of the greatest. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/m...

Oh, they haven't really changed? They didn't see the light? They'll one day sit in the dock and claim they're only there because they lost. "But the dismay that Republicans expressed in recent weeks over the actions of federal agents seemed to have dissipated." www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...

This may not be your America (yet) but it's theirs. Now. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/d...

"Egressions, digressions, and, if not, discretions." #Memoir and Memory ajayadler.substack.com/p/full-flush...

I'm new here. Is "least racist" a good thing?

It is a life, in all its scope, that demeans the society that produced it and the culture that valued and rewarded it through all its guises.

The face of MAGA all along. The voice of the ballot cast for Trump from the start. The pernicious cowardice of a raging Republican Party that sold the country out. We can't shame the shameless. We can refuse to tolerate the intolerable. We can refuse to tolerate tolerance of the intolerable.

Superb.

“ICE and the Border Patrol pose a threat not just to our civil liberties but to our political liberties. Dealing with the threat to our political liberty, in particular to free and fair elections, is the fight—for the rest of 2026, and then for 2027 and 2028.” www.thebulwark.com/p/defang-ice...

Read all about it. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

"More transparent and accountable than Cronkite."

BTW, Do you think a 5-year-old understands a difference between "detention" and imprisonment and punishment and people are being really mean to me?

Three cheers for the United States of America, where 5-year-old children can win release from detention by judge's order. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/u...

Well, this is so . . . unsurprising. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/u...

"Every writer of memoir must contend with the history of Shandy’s editorial indiscretion. . . which is to say artificial transitions must be devised, the artifice of composition that produces the arrangement of experience different from how it was lived." open.substack.com/pub/ajayadle...

The political arrests begin. *77/88 -- The number in millions who voted for Trump/of those who didn't vote. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

The American Terror State: A Political Baseline in Reality 'The normalizers are the people who pretend to “moderation” or who claim, genuinely or not, to stand in some state of neutrality between truth and lies, hate and acceptance, brutality and decency.' ajayadler.substack.com/p/the-americ...

Wow -- Fanone coughs "go fuck yourself" to Trey Nehls as Nehls blames Capitol Police leadership for January 6

It appears that the White House edited this image using AI

Penguins are not indifferent. They are within themselves. Oṃ maṇi padme hūm̐.

"A half-millennial era that began with what we call the Renaissance and then the Age of Enlightenment and that created our modern world is ending." ajayadler.substack.com/p/the-great-...

This is absolutely what happened.

She smiled at the officer. So he shot her in the face. And then called her "a fucking bitch."

This is the bottom line.

Yes, Trump is the January 6th president, not only because of his own actions since that day, but because his coordinated, violent attack on democracy appealed to people who hate the US and its institutions, and because they now staff his administration. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/o...

Volk.

An inspiring sentiment, but often not so. In the Soviet Union for over 70 years, they didn't. In China, now for longer, they haven't. Sometimes State might is too great. Better to prevent the tyranny while still possible.

The name of the North Carolina Republican Party communications director is Matt Mercer. "For four years, he served as North State Journal’s editor in chief, winning multiple N.C. Press Association awards. He joined the NCGOP in March 2024."

In that spirit, I would like Shamp to donate her brain to research. Now.

Two Russian officers accused of torturing Ukrainians die in a Moscow explosion united24media.com/latest-news/...

This is great, and it will please decent, right thinking people. But autocrats & their kleptocratic allies are immune to such symbolic repudiations. Trump will simply replace or reject Redd & carry on. The time for the efficacy of such symbolic resistance is past. www.cnn.com/2025/12/24/p...

The instructor, Mel Curth, was right. The paper did not respond to the assignment -- read a scholarly article exploring the relationship between “gender typicality” and popularity and write a “thoughtful discussion" -- & employed no critical thinking. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

This exactly.

Increasingly, people and organizations will need clearly to mark off where they stand. Increasingly, Bari Weiss fake moderation will fool few. deadline.com/2025/12/amer...

It is a year and a half since I created American Samizdat, to “warn against, prepare for, and persevere until.” The time for persevering has begun.

WANTED For the murder of 60 Minutes and the destruction of CBS News For intellectual and journalistic fraud For complicity with oligarchic tyranny APPROACH WITH CAUTION Suspect is known to be completely full of shit

"These unaltered claims to singularity and supremacy together are the unecumenical bomb in the theological armory whose fuse goes unlit – the Love (Kumbaya) that is actually not love (infidels!) that dare not speak its name." ajayadler.substack.com/p/the-faith-...

More on the American golem.

The essential characterization, of the human facsimile itself and its enablers.

"So I have all the elements. It isn’t hard. To see the crowded room. The cards. The dice. The theatrics on stage; the drama on the floor. Shots being poured. The shot ringing out. A shout. The general honky-tonk and the orgasmic grunts of hungry men." ajayadler.substack.com/p/bordello-r...

The problem is, among the myriad causes of Trump & the MAGA decline, is that no one was ever held to account for the torture. The U.S. has always pardoned, blind-eyed, & compromised away accountability for its transgressions. Now here we are. ajayadler.substack.com/p/a-compromi...

"I suddenly saw, in utter revelation, in the world, the startling, swirling visions that seemed before then always surely the product of Van Gogh’s eyes alone." My latest at Homo Vitruvius. open.substack.com/pub/ajayadle...

Since we're patriarching this thing, no man or woman would defend a male writer in these precious, infantilizing terms, mothering a 32-year-old woman only 13 years younger and roughly the age of the newly elected mayor of NYC. I won't address "dazed compunction."

Remember the role that Apple played in support of persecution and tyranny. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/b...

File under "charts that need no explanatory context to make the story clear" wapo.st/4iC8oCR

I think of Homo Vitruvius as something like my writer's open studio, where I share with readers some of what I've published and some of what I'm working on. This week, a #poem "Infinite Nocturne," from my collection Waiting for Word. ajayadler.substack.com/p/infinite-n...

How could it have happened at all? How could it have happened so fast? Who are these Americans? What was that country? open.substack.com/pub/ajayadle...