Today’s technology-oriented, media manipulated civilization has succeeded in imposing a degree of hyperreality capable of obscuring whatever remnants of reality still remain within the average person’s field of perception. This requires a permanent effort to deviate attention from hyperreality...
A 2014 study published by Princeton University sought to determine how political decisions were made in the United States. The study's conclusion called into question the legitimacy of calling the current political system a democracy. It had effectively evolved into a functioning...
The Daily Devil’s Dictionary belongs to the category we might call ironic journalism. It is dedicated to unearthing the subtleties of language used by officials and public personalities as well as the media outlets that report on their sayings and doings. Irony is an effect of language that...
The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their...
Once upon a time in the United States, people referred to something called “Culture with a big C.” It turned around the notion of a communally shared appreciation of the noble arts: music, painting, literature, architecture, cinema and other fields of creative production, including philosophy,...
Yahoo Finance regularly features its senior columnist, Rick Newman, as a voice of open-minded reflection and staid wisdom, a seasoned journalist skilled at juggling with issues at the junction of finance and politics. Though no doctrinaire libertarian, he adheres to the capitalist faith and...
In this age of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), the dominant model for modern systems of government has now become hyperreal democracy. If current trends continue, society itself will inevitably become lost in a world of commercially driven illusion. Even if many brave souls are...
Until recently, France appeared to be on the way out, the Australian-American betrayal on the submarine deal the coup de grace, the ultimate humiliation for what once was known as the grande nation. Grand no longer, a nation at risk, collective psyche in the dumpster: autumn in France. Things...
Are we freighting football with too much responsibility? After all, the game we recognize today started as a frivolous competition for English factory workers to let off steam at the end of a miserable, emotionally unrewarding and ungratifying work week in the 19th century. Yet this futile ball...
The legacy press continues its endless campaign to promote the belief that Russia is waging a never-ending battle against US diplomats and spies thanks to the secret weapon that provokes the dreaded “Havana syndrome.” Two Washington Post journalists, John Wagner and Miriam Berger, have...
Political news in the US often begins with legitimate debate and then quickly tends toward the competition between extravagant personalities that can only delight the media. They don’t even have to pay the actors. Occasionally it can rival reality TV, attaining the gold standard of the...
