Category Archives: Atlas Shrugged

The halls of academia may appear to be overrun by battles over academic freedom, free speech, identity politics, cancel culture and overreaching wokeness. But why does it look that way? And what are the real causes? The influential political theorist Wendy Brown has spent her career studying the very ideas those of identity, freedom and tolerance that are central to current debates about whats happening on college campuses across the country, as well as to the attacks theyre undergoing from within and without. Were confused today about what campuses are, says Brown, who is 66 and is the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Weve lost track of whats personal and public and whats acceptable speech where. That confusion happens in part because boundaries are so blurred everywhere.

When people talk about free speech problems in colleges, its often in the context of woke ideology run amok. Which to me seems like a simplistic understanding of what might be causing changes in discourse on campuses. What do you see as being responsible? Campuses are complicated spaces, because they arent just one kind of space: Theres the classroom, the dorm, the public space that is the campus. Then theres what we could call clubs, support centers identity based or based on social categories or political interests. Its a terrible mistake to confuse all of these and imagine that the classroom or the public space of the campus is the same as your home. Some of that confusion, and I dont think its limited to the left, is responsible for the effort to regulate or denounce what transpires in public spaces. The other thing is that we are suffering from highly politicized discourse about education discourse that often doesnt care one whit about actual education. The most recent example is Gov. Ron DeSantiss Florida math-book banning for reasons that he cant explain and that have some vague connection to something he doesnt understand called either critical race theory or social-emotional learning. The politicization of academic environments is unhelpful in being able to understand how we teach and orient ourselves to contesting views. What you need is to have the classroom as a space where were not talking left wing and right wing but offering the learning that students need to be able to come to their own positions and judgments. So there are two problems. One is the loss of distinctions among different spaces on campus. The other is the hyperpoliticization of knowledge and education.

Whos responsible for clarifying those campus distinctions? I want to suggest that the biggest onus is on faculty themselves to think through this problem and teach it in their classrooms. Tell students, These are the different kinds of spaces on a campus, and heres whats appropriate in each. Theres an important set of issues to teach and to understand rather than just being reactive. Administrations for the most part have tried to dodge this issue in two ways. One is by issuing vague civility or time, place and manner codes. When Milo Yiannopoulos or Richard Spencer come to campus, administrations try to throw their time, place and manner codes at the problem, but that doesnt settle it. On the other hand, many administrators try to send out general encomiums about tolerance and respect and civility and responsible speech. But those dont address the deeper problem. We need to orient students differently, not just regulate them. Its quite possible to do. If you ask students to think with you about where they think its appropriate to limit speech and where they dont, and you talk them through the histories, the social theories and laws, the jurisprudence on this, theyre game.

Orient them how? Or, put another way, wheres the most common disagreement between student views on free speech and those of you and your colleagues? Certainly we have had for some time a debate about whether hate speech is free speech or ought to be covered by free speech, and if not, what qualifies as hate speech. There are excellent I cant believe Im about to use this term critical race theorists who have written volumes on the question of whether hate speech can be specified, what it means to specify it and whether it can be categorized as an exception to free speech. Thats an important zone and a difficult one. Many students today go quickly to the position that there is such a thing as hate speech, that they know it when they see it that and it ought to be outlawed. For me thats a topic to teach, not to simply honor or denounce. Im revealing myself here as a person whose chords and arpeggios and scales are always the history of political thought: John Stuart Mills On Liberty is the place to start. He says that the line between your freedom and its end is where it impacts on anothers freedom. Thats the question with hate speech: When does it do that? Ill also mention Charles Murray. Thats tricky, because his science has been discredited by his peers, and his conclusions are understood by many as a form of hate speech, because he makes an argument about the racial inferiority of Black people in their capacity to learn and to succeed in this society. It feels terrible to give him a podium and a bunch of students who would sit and imbibe that as the truth. I think if Murray is invited to campus, you can picket him, you can leaflet him, but I dont think it should be canceled. The important thing is for students to be educated and educate others about the bad science, the discrediting of his position, and then ask, Why does he survive in the academy, and why does that bad science keep getting resuscitated? Those are important questions for students to ask and then learn how to answer. Thats whats going to equip them in this political world.

Wendy Brown at a rally at Williams College in 1985, where she was an assistant professor. From Wendy Brown

Questions about whats happening on college campuses keep turning into questions about politics, which happens a lot these days but which maybe also conflates various things. A debate over cancel culture on campus, for example, is a different thing from legislators enacting laws limiting what can be taught in schools. So where are the useful connections and what are the unhelpful conflations as far as politics and on-campus issues? Here I think its time to talk about the very serious right-wing effort to use free speech and freedom more generally as a flag for a political, social and moral project. On campus, for example, the constant harangues about cancel culture and wokeness on the left that you get from the right keep us from seeing enormous amounts of foundation money and use of the state to try to control what is taught, to build institutes and curriculums that comport with a right-wing engine. Guilford College, this little Quaker school in North Carolina takes half a million dollars from a foundation in love with Ayn Rand. Every econ and business major in the college for the next 10 years had to be given a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and at the center of the curriculum there had to be a course in which Atlas Shrugged was the required textbook. This story has been repeated over and over. Then you have colleges and universities not so desperate but nonetheless willing to take large amounts of Koch and other right-wing-foundation money to set up institutes, even hire faculty. All of this is under the aegis of free speech, organized as correcting for wokeness and cancel culture. The right is also mobilizing the state. Not just to cancel math textbooks in Florida but the Dont Say Gay bills, the C.R.T. bills. Its important that we have our eyes wide open about that. Little episodes about cancel culture make great tidbits in newspapers and talk shows, but they dont represent this larger and deeper project of the right of mobilizing state power and corporations for their agenda in schools. They also dont represent the deeper problem with which we began: the confusions and the loss of boundaries between something like academic freedom and free speech. That boundary is just totally messed up.

Where should that boundary be? Academic freedom needs to be appreciated as a collective right of the faculty to be free of interference in determining what we research and teach. Were accountable to our disciplines, our peers. We cant just do anything and have it called quality scholarship or teaching. But the idea of academic freedom is that we are free of external interference. Free speech is different. Its an individual right for the civic and public sphere. Its not about research and teaching. Its not even about the classroom. Its what you can say in public without infringement by others or the state. Now, whats the mess-up? The right today is mobilizing state power and using corporate money to attempt to constrain academic freedom in the name of free speech. Theyre attempting to say what cant be taught in primary and secondary schools, and theyd like to get their hands on the public universities. They dont say were trying to constrict academic freedom. They bring free speech in as the rubric for these constraints or censorship and often bring parental rights as well. Now lets go to the left. The left has permitted a certain moral, political strain to gain a foothold in classrooms where things ought to be more open and contestatory. Thats where I think theres confusion on the part of the left and the right about whether the classroom is that civic space for free speech or whether it ought to be governed by something more like academic freedom, which is, again, a faculty right. Then the question is, What can and should students be able to do there? My own view is that they ought to be able to try out their ideas but not simply have them presented as a political broadside. Thats not what class is for. Thats for civic space.

Brown speaking at a seminar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2021. Andrea Kane/Institute for Advanced Study

So in your view its a kind of category error to think of an academic classroom as a site for free speech? Yes. Not because there shouldnt be openness for ideas to circulate but because its not a free-speech zone. You cant just say anything. You come into my class on political theory, and were talking about John Stuart Mill or Plato, and you want to begin yelling about the Russians attacking Ukraine, Im going to tell you thats not appropriate. Ive given you a kind of extreme example. To the student who starts denouncing Marx clearly not having read the text, which is terribly common Im not going to say, OK, you get your five minutes and the next student gets their five minutes. No, its not a free-speech domain. It should be a domain in which all kinds of concerns that bear on the topic have a place, no doubt about that, but thats not free speech.

I find it difficult to understand the extent to which fears about cancel culture or free-speech issues on campus could be akin to a kind of moral panic. In your own experience are these phenomena more alive and dangerous than they used to be or are people just fixating on them more? I do think that in order to feel effective in a world that makes many politically progressive or socially conscious kids feel extremely impotent, that there may be a little upsurge of righteousness; you try to control the tiny world that youve got. Theres probably some of that, but I agree with you not just that this is a kind of moral panic but also that its basically a right-wing mobilizing trope. Critical race theory, the supposed education of little kids in sexuality and gayness and cancel culture are being used with great effect to convince a base that the left is a totalitarian socialist nightmare and that universities and schools are crawling with this stuff. The analogy I would offer is communists under the bed: Its everywhere; its in the math books; its in every kindergarten; its got to be cleaned out.

Looking specifically at college campuses, though, what do you think are the biggest threats to academic freedom? What worries me is that we cant see the extent to which academic freedom is in serious peril these days from increasing corporate sponsorship of research, which contours that research in a private-enterprise direction and away from research for the public. Also, adjunctification: The phenomenon in universities in this country today in which about 70 percent of teaching is done by non-tenure-track faculty means that 70 percent of those who are teaching basically dont have academic freedom. Technically they have it, but they dont have it in the sense that they dont have job security. Theyre dependent on student evaluations on the one hand and faculty approval on the other. What does that mean? They have to teach in a way that is entertaining. They cant teach anything too challenging. They cant teach the basic literacies that students need to understand the world in a deep way. So adjunctification, corporatization and then the rankings-and-rating systems of programs and faculties and individual academics also mean that we are increasingly constrained by a narrow set of norms in the discipline by which we either rise or fall. Its also important to distinguish between academic life and political life. In a classroom, in a research project, you have to be treating good challenges as something you cherish. The political world, you stake your position and you try to win. A highly politicized academy is a real disaster, because it messes up the importance of more open space for thinking, for undoing something you had arrived at. That needs to happen in any research or seminar or lecture hall. Thats the opposite of political life.

Has the hyperpoliticization that you mentioned earlier changed what students expect to be getting out of university? Which is to say, their willingness to entertain uncomfortable ideas? The immense hurdle is the idea that your future income prospects and investment in those prospects are what youre in college to pursue. The second problem here is that instead of approaching higher education as a place where you expect to be transformed in what you think the world is, what it takes to understand it, that ideal of a higher education which is essential to developing citizens has been almost completely displaced by the idea of bits of human capital self-investing to enhance that capital. So political views, social views, are for many students bracketed if not altogether irrelevant to what they expect a university education to be. Whats the implication of this? That those views are treated as something that you just have culturally, religiously, according to family but not something that you develop, enrich, maybe change. To put it in brief, neoliberalism essentially aims to roll out education as vocational training, and the extreme right essentially aims to turn education into church. What you have in the middle are a bunch of kids earnestly concerned with social justice, climate crisis, police violence, screaming into that context that their views matter, and that their view should hold sway and if not dictate curriculums at least dictate the culture of campus.

How much should students views dictate the culture of a campus? I dont think they should dictate curriculum. I certainly think that in the open public space of campus, what students believe and student disagreements and student political and social aspirations for the world will govern that. If I can add this: We need to appreciate that young left activist outrage about a burning planet and grotesque inequality and murderous racial violence and gendered abuses of power is accompanied by disgust with the systems and the rules of engagement that have brought us here. Young left activists are pulling the emergency brake because it feels as if theres no time for debate and compromise and incrementalism; because many see conventional norms and practices as having brought us to the brink and kept us stupid and inert. I dont think theyre entirely wrong. #MeToo, with its flagrant disregard for due process, did in two years what previous generations of feminists could not pull off, which was to make sexual harassment totally unacceptable in school and workplaces. Black Lives Matter in a summer pushed Americas violent racial history and present into the center of political conversation and transformed the consciousness of a generation. My point here is that if we just focus on this generations political style and we have to remember youth style always aggravates the elders we ignore their rage at the world theyve inherited, and their desperation for a more livable and just one, and their critique of our complacency. That is part of what is going on in the streets and on our campuses. But that remains different from educating that rage and helping young people learn not just the deep histories but even the contemporary practices that will make them more powerful thinkers and actors in this world. If theyre right about our complacency, what we still have to offer is knowledge and instruction and some space in a classroom to think.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Neal Stephenson about portraying a utopian future, Laurie Santos about happiness and Christopher Walken about acting.

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Why Critics of Angry Woke College Kids Are Missing the Point - The New York Times

Scholar David L. Pike has had an eclectic career, writing about such diverse topics as the modernist obsession with imagery from ancient and medieval underworlds (Passage through Hell: Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds, 1997), underground spaces such as sewers and railways (Subterranean Cities: The World Beneath Paris and London, 2005) and contemporary Canadian cinema (Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World, 2012). One recurring thread in his work has been a fascination with underground spaces of all kinds, and his latest book, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980: The Bunkered Decades, is no exception, focusing specifically on the underground bunkers and fallout shelters of the cold war.

Another recent book on a closely related topic, Bunker: Building for the End Times (2020) by experimental geographer Bradley Garrett, is concerned with the physical space of bunkers themselves, and the doomsday preppers whose various fringe theories feed their need to bunker themselves. In contrast, Pikes comparative study suggests that the bunker is not a fringe concept, it is something that has entered our collective subconscious and mutated to the point where it is all around us, and yet not always instantly recognizable.

Cold War and Space Culture returns us to a time when worldgovernments spent excessively on nuclear arms and fortifying shelters. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans were encouraged to build shelters in their own backyards and basements and to prepare for a potential disaster.Popular culture of all kinds expressed what Pike calls the bunker fantasy, expressions of the dreams and nightmares of nuclear destruction.As he explains:

As idea, as image, and as physical space, the bunker dominated Cold War culture; since 1989 it has continued to dominate the way we respond to and process everything we inherited from that war, and the ways we think about shelter, security, boundaries, and difference. But we seldom attend to the meanings mobilized by these ideas, images, and spaces, to our profound ambivalence towards them, or to the ways they contain our deepest fears entangled with our strongest desires.

For Pike, this obsession with bunkers, as fortresses, personal spaces, and more, has wide-reaching but not always easy to notice resonances, hence his eclectic, interdisciplinary approach. The bunker fantasy is at least twofold: its not only a yearning for security that verges on a nostalgic desire to return to a womb-like state but also a desire that the country should become a fortress, fortified against outsiders. Readers may recognize in this latter formulation some overtones of Donald Trumps MAGA project, but Pike doesnt confront this directly, perhaps hes weary of glib comparisons or of dating his analysis.

Pikes focus on two specific decades cleaves the book into two main sections.The 1960s and 80s are studied as particular high points in the coldwar.The early 60s saw the resumption of Soviet nuclear tests and the Cuban missile crisis, while the less-studied cold war culture of the 80s was fueled by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began in 1979 and heated up the cold war again. The dtente period of the 70s is not covered here, as it produced quite a different strain of pop culture (the spectacle-oriented campiness of the James Bond franchise, for example.)

The 60s section is organized according to five themes: 1. home shelters, 2. the cave as the home for a feral humanity, 3. survivalism and the private bunkers, 4. shelter and community, and finally 5. the kind of government shelters seen and talked about in films such as Stanley Kubriks Dr. Strangelove and Sidney Lumets Fail Safe. At the outset of the 1960s section, he cites historians Peter J .Kuznick and James Gilbert, who argued that the principal effect of the Cold War on culture was a psychological one, not a direct one. This allows Pike his heterogeneous approach.

Despite this eclecticism, the 1960s section cleaves fairly closely to the bunker theme. Pike draws useful insights from considering the bunker in relation to gender. He demonstrates how the bunker relates to the idealized suburban home of the 1950s/60s as a feminine domain, and how it has also been conceived as a space for a particularly masculine kind of alienation and isolation.

While images of Cold War suburban nuclear anxieties have become pop culture staples (seen in TV shows such as The Simpsons, for example), the idea of the government super shelter has been less studied, and so the final chapter of the 1960s section is of particular interest. As Pike notes:

The tension between fascination with secret underground headquarters, fear and suspicion of government secrecy, corruption and favoritism, and disapproval of the existence of technologically sophisticated and heavily fortified government shelters with nothing remotely analogous available to regular citizens drives the imaginary around these supershelters even more than around the private bunkers discussed above.

Here, Pike contrasts two political versions of the bunker fantasy: the liberal version of the bunker myth, in which the apocalypse proves a kind of theodicy for government, proving their worth in times of crisis, and the conservative version, exemplified by Ayn Rands novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), in which the apocalypse purges the bureaucratic excesses of government.

Rand, of course, didnt become mainstream until the 1980s, the focus of Pikes next section.

The remaining three chapters deal with the following: mens action fiction, what Pike calls nuclear realism, and feminist approaches to the bunker fantasy.The chapter on nuclear realism is one of the books broadest, starting with the recognizably realistic Testament (Lynne Littman, 1983)and Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984), before moving to satirical treatments of the nuclear threat, before finally discussing pop songs such as Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It becomes clear that nuclear realism isnt about fealty to naturalism, but about a long hard look at what the reality of a nuclear apocalypse would look like, something that would eventually filter into the usually carefree sphere of pop music.

Pike provides a dizzying amount of interdisciplinary references in Cold War and Space Culture, from Wisconsin-based feminist sci-fi writers such as Jeanne Gomoll, who were involved with the magazine Aurora, to the found-footage documentary The Atomic Caf (Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, and Pierce Rafferty, 1982). Indeed, this is undeniably an incredibly well-researched book, brimming with detail and the ability to connect even the most mundane piece of popular culture to the fear-driven Cold War. As such, it is an essential read for anybody interested in Cold War culture or how apocalyptic themes manifest themselves in film, literature, and other forms of culture. As Pike suggests in his conclusion, other existential threats such as the climate crisis will ensure that the bunker fantasy continues to mutate and influence our culture.

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Digging into the Atom Bomb's Effects on Cold War America - PopMatters

Edward Ashtons Mickey7 is chock-full of interesting ingredients.

Set at an unspecified point in the future, it sees humanity having migrated to a planet they call Midgard and solved their most immediate issues: theres something like Universal Basic Income (and hence not true poverty) and neither pollution nor overpopulation, industry and agriculture are automated, and the government is democratic (more on this neat little paradise later). In fact, theres quite little to do in this quasi-utopia, which is why humanity spends its free time establishing colonies on distant planets.

However, since colonization missions are treacherous (interstellar travel guzzles energy, making the trips one-way, while physics and technology both place limits on how much can be seenand therefore knownabout the destination), each mission has an Expendable: a person who takes on the most dangerous and lethal jobs, and who, if they get killed, are quite simply reincarnated (read: 3D-printed) with all the memories from their previous upload. Enter our protagonist: Mickey7, the seventh iteration of Mickey Barnes, who volunteered as Expendable on a colonization mission to the icy world of Niflheim. Due to Mickey surviving a situation in which he was left for dead, only to discover that theyve already made a Mickey8 by the time he returns, hes in a spot of trouble in a colony thats already rationing calories, and which has a strong taboo against multiple copies of the same person.

Now, if this were simply a book review, this would be the part where I do that thing book reviewers do, and say Unfortunately, followed by a phrase about how the author doesnt take advantage of the rich potential of his own ideasfor potential there is, in both the worldbuilding and the conceit of an Expendable. But since Mickey7 is slated to be a film starring Robert Pattinson and helmed by Bong Joon-ho, whose Parasite garnered both critical praise and numerous awards, I get to focus on the positive: how an obviously talented writer/director can put all these ingredients together into a tasty stir-fry (or salad. You choose.) of a poignant story.

The most obvious of these delicious ingredients is the deliciously science fiction-y idea of the Expendable. Its probably the concept that caused early reviewers to call the book high concept and thought provoking, even though its a trope thats far from uncommon in science fiction: Star Treks transporters, for example, deconstruct a person molecule-by-molecule only to make a perfect replica on the other end (something The Big Bang Theory made a joke of); Netflixs Altered Carbon (based on Richard K. Morgans books of the same name) is set in a future world where everyones consciousness is backed up to a computer chip compulsorily inserted into their spinal columns, allowing people to change bodies, travel instantaneously, and reincarnate; Joss Whedons Dollhouse essentially equated personality to memory, making for dizzying interchanges between bodies and identities. And thats but a handful of examples.

In other words, the idea of copying, uploading, and downloading personalities and memories, while a thought-provoking one because it destabilizes our assumptions about identity and memory, is also as common as space dust in science fiction. Is an identical copy of you really you? Are you still you without your memories? Is there something like a soul? Science fiction fans have been debating these thorny philosophical questions for decades, and the inclusion of such a trope in a storyworld is not, in itself, a contribution to that storied debate. There has to be something morewhich, in this case, is lacking beyond an occasional cursory allusion to the Greek myth of the Ship of Theseus. Instead, Ashtons novel proceeds swiftly and without question into making Mickey8 the antagonist, vying with Mickey7 for existence (after Mickey7 has an unrelated realization that he doesnt want to die).

Thats easy to do because Mickey8 is inexplicably completely different from Mickey7 and also a little bit of an asshole, a difference in personality that isnt really explained by anything except narrative necessity and this creeping sense I have that Ashton wanted to make it glaringly obvious that a copy of a person with the same memories and identity does not the same person make. Thus, strangely, theres absolutely no discomfort or soul-searching on Mickeys part that Mickey8 is, in some way, him; Ashton writes him as if he were some entirely different person and proceeds apace with the story. Which wouldnt be as frustrating if it werent for the constant namedropping of philosophers like John Locke and a marketing push to make it seem like a sci-fi author whos thought of copying a person has found some kind of philosophical holy grail.

But perhaps the culprit here is the medium: text is not well-suited to the complexities of this philosophical conundrum in the way that visual media are. Think, for example, of a series like Orphan Black or the aforementioned Dollhouse, where characters slipped in and out of each others bodies and identities, played by immensely talented actors who imbued each variation of a person with an eerie, almost-imperceptible difference. Perhaps it is this possibility that Bong saw when he reportedly read Ashtons manuscript and decided to make it into a movie. Think of the possibilities of a film, with a talented actor and an acclaimed director, attuned to the rich potential produced by the deeply unsettling fact that Mickeys antagonist is himselfor is he? Think of Pattinson playing the two Mickeys as almost identical, but ones just slightly offand maybe you cant tell which one, while claustrophobic cinematography and crescendoing music makes the whole experience even more uncanny. And maybe what makes Mickey8 the bad guy is precisely his ability to create discomfort through that uncanniness, the way in which hes almost-but-not-quite our Mickey? Imagine the tightrope for an actor to walk, the possibility for a virtuoso performance that makes us question: which of him is the real one? And what does that question even mean?

And what if that similarity were played to its greatest effect through interpersonal conflict? For example, the character of Nasha, Mickeys partner and love interest, unquestionably accepts both Mickey7 and Mickey8 (leading to a truly bizarre threesome; but then again, its not any weirder than your average episode of Star Trek). But what if she wasnt clued in right away, leading to a nightmare scenario of wondering whats happened to her lover and why hes suddenly so different? What if she had to make a choice between the two of them? Which one of them, to her, is more Mickey, the man she loves?

Moving from the personal to the social and political, meanwhile, brings us to a future world made up of yet more building blocks of an excellent story. In Mickeys future, human civilization (which calls itself the Diaspora, a loaded term that begs exploration) has resettled on a different and relatively comfortable planet and, for lack of anything better to do, sends out regular colonization missions. On Midgard, meanwhile, Universal Basic Income is enough to get by, but not much elseand being a historian doesnt pay, because its the professions considered useful, then as now, that have a place: medics, pilots, engineers, geneticists, biologists, soldiers. (There is, admittedly, one cursory reference to poets and entertainers). People like Mickey, on the other hand, scrape by on a government pittance because theres no need for historians. After all, everyone has the equivalent of all human knowledge in their pockets, so why would anyone ever need a historian?

The idea that we have access to all of human knowledge is a tired truism thats been around for at least as long as a smartphone. That doesnt actually make it true, because, firstly: have you heard of paywalls? But, also, and more importantly, historians dont collect facts; they interpret them. They write the books and the articles from which you learn history, and given that Mickeys constantly reading both articles and primary sources, one wonders who did the writing. He also learned history in school, which, as he admits, had a different spin on the Diasporas failures than the articles he reads as an adult, so clearly history is more than just facts than anyone can access; there are interpretations and valences coming from somewhere. Plus, this is a world that seems to have history teachers (and wouldnt it be useful for colony worlds to have a few of those?). This is perhaps a particularly nitpicky example, but its one that makes it painfully obvious that Mickey7 was written by someone who spends a lot more time in the hard sciences than the humanities (and indeed, Ashton is a physicist), and whose worldbuilding, therefore, isnt informed by crucial disciplines like history, social sciences, and anthropology.

Still, what Ashton echoes here is a science fiction trope dating all the way to the nineteenth century, when industrialization, the mechanization of labor, and mass production created anxieties about a future where only efficiency, productivity, and machinery had value. For example, works like Jules Vernes (unpublished in his lifetime) dystopia Paris in the Twentieth Century or Albert Robidas 1882 novel The Twentieth Century portray a future where the humanitiesarts, poetry, and so onhave little value; art can be mass-reproduced and consumed, while literature is condensed and consumed like vitamins. That anxiety has popped up in science fiction sincein works like Fritz Langs Metropolis or Karel apeks R.U.R.and its somewhat borne out by the fact that when theres an economic recession, the first thing that gets cut is arts and humanities budgets.

In other words, theres a storied history here, and an interesting critique to be made about the ways that, as we advance technologically and fulfill human beings basic needsfood, water, shelterwe often leave by the wayside our more spiritual or psychological needs: for art, for culture, for inspiration, for social relationships. This, despite the fact that, in times of crisis, it is the arts we reach forhow many hours of television and books did we consume during the months of pandemic and lockdown? And so, this world, undeveloped as it is, is a bleak one well suited to a critique of our own productivity-obsessed world; in fact, it reads a little like a darker version of a Star Trek future, where humanity has solved all their material needs, and yet instead of looking to the stars for exploration and wonder, we look there to colonize. And Bong, who so aptly critiqued the dehumanization inherent in capitalism in his Parasite, seems well-placed to flesh this blueprint of a world into something dark and familiar, funny and terrifying.

In the process, hell hopefully do something about the plot (or rather, lack thereof), because Mickey does so little throughout the story that if his character were female, the think pieces about agency would practically write themselves. This is despite the fact that their little colony world is full of pressing issues: first, theres two Mickeys, and they can only hide their existence for so long; the local fauna (called creepers) are possibly sentient, acting weird, and eating through the metal enclosure of the colony; the head of their colony is a trigger-happy extremist from a fringe religious sect. Clearly, someone needs to step up and at very least try to solve the mystery of what the locals are up to.

In fact, Mickey himself admits that a fair number of beachhead colonies fail for one reason or another. Id really hate to have this one fail because of me. He sure doesnt hate that idea enough, though, as he spends the majority of the book avoiding being seen in two places at once and reading about failed colonies, until hes eventually found out as a double. The reading is certainly interestingits another place where the social commentary that is science fictions forte peeks out of the cracks in the narrative. For example, theres a colony called Gaults World, a clear allusion to Galts Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, which was built according to a libertarian philosophy and subsequently failed because for a society to function you need things like, you know, infrastructure. Roanoke, meanwhile, is a reference to the obvious: a colony whose residents were taken out by some unknown form of local fauna. These flashbacks to failed colonies also allow the narrative to alternate between past and present, an alternation necessary to cover up the fact that nothing actually happens.

No, really, I cant really summarize the extent to which absolutely nothing happens in this entire book.

Mickey7 was blurbed and reviewed as The Martian-meets-Dark-Matter (and we really must talk about how Andy Weir has become a marketing category in his own right, but thats for another essay), but the only commonality is the snark possessed by the protagonist. A distinctive feature of Weirs characters, however, is that they science the shit out of their problems, to borrow Mark Watneys eloquent phrasing. Its a triumph of brains over brawn that both this graduate of the University of Chicago and its admissions office (which has a cheeky plaque celebrating our fictional alum, Watney) more than appreciates. The Mickey7 equivalent of that would be Mickey using his amateur historian chops to humanities the shit out of this, something of which science fiction does not have nearly enough. If anyone saves the day with their brains, its usually the scientists (see: the Stargate franchise, the Star Trek franchise, as well as characters like the MCUs Tony Stark and Shuri, and the Arrowverses Felicity Smoak)even if theyre often the ones who caused the problem in the first place. Characters like Daniel Jackson and Indiana Jones (whose pictures also adorn our admissions office walls) are notable exceptions, but with much less of a storied history. The former, in particular, rarely gets to use his penchant for language, communication, diplomacy, and history before things start blowing up.

And so Mickey7 seems to provide a perfect set up for Mickey to use all that historian knowledge to save the day, save the colony, save the world; in fact, thats what I spent most of the novel expecting would happen. How amazing would it be if, thanks to all his knowledge about failed colonies, and the ways in which they went wrong, he saw the writing on the wall for this colony, whose crops are failing and who are being attacked by creepers? What if, instead of the creepers just being made to think hes a diplomat through a misunderstanding in the final couple dozen pages, Mickey actually was a diplomat? And in the process, what if the story sent the message that in the future, language, history, the humanitiesall that stuff that gets cut out of budgets firstmatters? Even on a colony thats rationing their food and counting their ammo?

Now thats a story I would watch the hell out of.

Dr. Anastasia Klimchynskaya is a Sherlockian, a Trekkie, and a scholar of science fiction. Currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicagos Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, she specializes in nineteenth-century science fiction and has appeared widely to speak about her work and the genre, including as a recurring co-host on the Rosenbach Librarys Sundays with Frankenstein program. Find her on Twitter @anaklimchy.

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Bong Joon-ho's Mickey7 Adaptation Has the Potential to Be a Truly Great Science Fiction Movie - tor.com

All creations of wealth in history have issued from a collective process, writes Thomas Piketty in his book A Brief History of Equality (Tunku Varadarajan, Books, April 9). Arguing for aggressive redistribution of the spoils of capitalism, Mr. Piketty writes that this collective process includes the division of labor, the use of global natural resources, and the accumulation of knowledge since the beginnings of humanity.

This recalls Dr. Floyd Ferris in Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged, a dystopian novel. A mans brain is a social product. A sum of influences that hes picked up from those around him, Ferris says. Nobody invents anything, he merely reflects whats floating in the social atmosphere. A genius is an intellectual scavenger and a greedy hoarder of the ideas which rightfully belong to society, from which he stole them. All thought is theft. If we do away with private fortunes, well have a fairer distribution of wealth. If we do away with genius, well have a fairer distribution of ideas.

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Thomas Piketty Is Right Out of Ayn Rands Nightmare - The Wall Street Journal

AMAC members are familiar with the weekly poll on our website where we ask their take on an issue or item(s) in the news.But it is the comments section where members can really sound off. A good week has 500-700 comments.However, this week we garnered over 1,300 comments, the most since October 29, 2021.

We want our members to make pointed selections from the choices offered, limited to two maximum, and therefore intentionally eschew an all of the above selection.That helps AMAC discern priorities and what is most important.

Our ask this week was about the top priorities of The Left. There was a near three-way tie between growing government to control us, indoctrinating kids as early as elementary school, and open borders to get illegal aliens voting later. Creating dependency, a Green New Deal industrial policy, and a post-gender unisex world were the also-ran choices.

The one theme easily spotted in the comments was how The Left is totally absorbed with power and control in all that it does and proposes.Heres a selection from AMAC members, in their own words:

I feel like I am seeing the destruction of everything good about America in real time. The political class seems hell bent on ruining every institution, every aspect of American life. Anna

Read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; she and Orwell both described the future we are living now. Dan M.

Its all by design to usher in The New World Order. Karen

Its disgusting what theyre doing to America, and its disgusting how theyre getting away with it day after day. Audrey

When good men do nothing, evil rules. Time for good men to step up. David M.

Americans better wake up or there will be no freedoms. Bonnie

They dont believe in American exceptionalism. Carolyn

I dont understand why the left hates America so much. Charlene M.

The [Democrats] at the wheel and behind the scenes are focused on turning us into a society so dependent and submissive to government. Patti

The lefts main goal? See Hunger Games.- John

Their goal is to keep the situation stirred up to confuse a pubic not able to focus on more than one thing. Tom C.

Create non-self-thing robots and destroy Christianity. Kate S.B.

They are doing this for a purpose to destroy society. David

My heart breaks for what the Democratic part has become. My father was a Democrat who understood an intact traditional family is crucial to the fabric of society. L.J.P.

Any chance of a future for my grandchildren in this country which I love deeply and fought for is growing bleaker by the second right now. William L.

How on Gods earth are we going to continue on this very dark road? Maria

Their priorities are power and control; those [poll] options are the means by which to achieve it. Alyson W.

To fundamentally change America from founding beliefs that will erase our history. Joe

We need to have a Convention of States to restore the power back to the states, where it rightfully belongs, as our Constitution was written! Roscoe

Any country or people who turn away from God get exactly what we are witnessing in America. Gary

Total and complete subjugation of the entire population just as Venezuela went from rich to poor in 3 years, we are on that track. Cyncro

My question- what is being done to stop this? Judith

The party of slavery continues to promote slavery in any and all form. They support anything and everything that enslaves a person physically, mentally, and spiritually. Rick

Jeff Szymanskiworks in political communications atAMAC, a senior benefits organization with nearly 2.4 million members.He previously taught high school economics for 15 years.

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Members Outspoken on The Left's Priorities - AMAC - The Association of Mature American Citizens - AMAC

The Spring election cycle proved to be a resounding red wave for Wisconsin Conservatives. April 6th, 2022 could go down in history as the moment when Wisconsin turned the tide against the draconian Left-wing, WOKE indoctrination of our public schools and local governments.

While we should be elated, its time for a reality check.

Yes, ordinary people engaged, ran for office, and fought back. Southeast Wisconsin elected a Conservative to the State Court of Appeals and even saw Kenosha County elect their first woman and Republican County Executive, ever.

We saw cities like Cedarburg, Brookfield, New Berlin, Menomonee Falls, and Waukesha rip their school boards right out of the very clutches of the WOKE left, and in most cases, it wasnt even close.

In Waukesha County, the WisRed initiative led by Terry Dittrich and Chris Slinker won over 150 of their 173 endorsed races.

All this success last night and things look amazing for the November elections. Right?

WRONG!

We reclaimed what was ours, we did not gain anywhere new, except in Kenosha.

There remains a dismal cloud of failure over Milwaukee County by producing some of the worst numbers in the state.

While WisRed and the Waukesha GOP surely set the standard for success, the Milwaukee County GOP showed us the precise recipe for failure. The county party did nearly NOTHING to recruit, engage with, and help local candidates.

Sure, there were some shining moments when the city of West Allis shot down another boondoggle school referendum, and at the county level, incumbent Milwaukee County Supervisor, Patti Logsdon, won but came dangerously close to losing.

The Milwaukee County GOP barely sent out one email and made one Facebook post on who to vote forand there were only eight people on that list, eight!

Obviously, Bob Donovan was at the top of that list, but barely got any help from the Milwaukee County GOP. They donated $1500, thats all. In a real campaign, the local party would have provided the infrastructure for the campaign, like the Democrats did with Chevy Johnson.

This was a squandered opportunity to find new or disgruntled voters, especially in the City of Milwaukee where crime is running rampant and people are longing for leadership.

At the county level, Patti Logsdon, the only conservative on the Milwaukee County Board, was begging for help with her campaign. She got nothing. To make things worse, they didnt say a word about Deanna Alexanders write-in campaign.

The City of Wauwatosa saw significant losses to several WOKE candidates, and in some cases, it was very close. Even a little bit of help from the Milwaukee County GOP could have helped tip the scales in several races.

I lay these losses directly at the feet of the Milwaukee County GOPs feckless leader, County Chairman, David Karst.

In a conversation I had with some prominent people, I mentioned I was writing this op-ed talking about David Karst, and their response was LITERALLY, Who is David Karst?

That speaks volumes.

Sadly, this is not even close in comparison to the Who is John Galt? of Atlas Shrugged fame.

You see, losing is nothing new to David Karst, he has a long history of doing nothing and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Last night was just the icing on the cake.

In a nutshell, the Milwaukee County GOP has no infrastructure to recruit local candidates, raise money, assist campaigns with volunteers, or even coach them on what to do. To make things worse, the Milwaukee County GOP office on S. 108th St in West Allis is only open from 11 am to 2 pm on Wednesday and Saturday, if you are lucky.

For years now, the state party has refused to hold David Karst accountable for his lack of leadership and failure to help the Get out the vote in Milwaukee County. Not once have they pushed David Karst to resign.

This is not without precedent, the state party has gotten involved when they forced then St. Croix GOP Chairman, John Kraft, out of his position after he casually told his Facebook friends to prepare for war with the left, a few days after January 6. He was a very active Chairman and had the largest Trump rallies in the state. The state party turned his board against him, and he was forced to resign.

But in the case of David Karst, we got crickets, saying they do not interfere at the county level.

The state GOP literally went after an active GOP member because they were afraid of bad news coverage, yet they allowed a consistently incompetent Chairman to continue in the most populated county in the state.

To add salt to the many wounds, David Karst now wants a promotion. He is running for State Assembly in a newly drawn district. With his lack of progress, he is surely undeserving of it.

Years ago, Conservatives like Scott Walker and David Clarke could win the entire county, and now we barely get over 30%. For comparison, on election night in 2020, Trump only got about 31%.

The reality is if we do not get 38% or better in Milwaukee County, WE LOSE! End of story. David Karst remaining will likely cost us 2022 and maybe even 2024. We must get more votes out of Milwaukee County if the Republican Gubernatorial candidate and Sen. Johnson are to win.

There is more to being a county chairman than just having a fancy title and getting to sit at the head table at Lincoln Day dinners. There is real work required and with hard work come victories. Just look at Waukesha County, they work hard and win.

David Karst must resign and be immediately replaced before its too late. We have too much at stake and with republicans like Karst, who needs Democrats?

Ask yourself this, what would John Galt do?

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In The Midst Of Election Night Success, There Are Concerns For November - Wisconsin Right Now

Milton Friedman once said one of the great mistakes in government is to judge policies by their intentions rather than by their results. One of these days, the United States Congress might learn that lesson.

Three U.S. representatives, all Democrats, want the government to hand out more stimulus checks, or rebates, to Americans to help them pay for gasoline at the pumps. The idea goes that because people are hurting as gas prices rise, the federal government should send them money to help pay for their fuel.

According to CBS News: "Called the Gas Rebate Act, the bill ... would provide a monthly energy rebate of $100 per person. That refund would kick in for the rest of 2022 as long as the national average gas price topped $4 a gallon during any given month."

That's just one proposal. There's another that would hand out money to Americans quarterly, based on a new tax on oil companies. That legislation is called, poetically, The Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax.

There's yet another: The Stop Gas Price Gouging Tax and Rebate Act.

All this reminds us of those acts in Ayn Rand's magnum opus "Atlas Shrugged." Ms. Rand had politicians down pat. When her not-altogether-fictional congressmen wanted some legislation that would create instability, they named it the Public Stability Law. When they passed legislation that would kill employment, they called it the Preservation of Livelihood Law. Now the acts to help with gasoline inflation could probably cause more gasoline inflation.

The reasons for inflation these days are many: The pandemic caused a supply link hiccup around the world. Demand surges as people come out of lockdowns. There's a war you might have heard of going on in Ukraine. Wages are rising. And when the price of gas and diesel go up, the price for everything that is moved with trucks--almost everything--goes up, too.

But there is another reason: Too many dollars chasing products, or as the economists put it, "increased money supply." When people have a surplus of cash, the natural order is for prices for goods to rise.

So how would putting more money into the economy help lower the cost of gasoline? Answer: It wouldn't. But it might get a couple of members of Congress into the news columns.

Also, do our betters understand that there is another cause of inflation? It's called devaluation. As more money is printed, it becomes worth less. It's a part of the law of supply and demand. The more there is of something, the less it can bring at the market. And right now the national debt stands at $30 trillion and growing.

$30,000,000,000,000-plus.

And as dollars become worth less, it takes more of them to buy things. Like a gallon of gas.

Econ 101 should be a prerequisite for anybody signing up to run for Congress. Or maybe just common sense.

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OPINION | EDITORIAL: Gas on the fire - Arkansas Online

Theres a narrative taking shape in certain corners of the political discourse right now that goes something like this: Democrats are the real authoritarians. While Republicans may have started this century leading the charge on shredding civil liberties and expanding the national security state, liberals and the Democratic Party have now taken up that torch, while the Right with its opposition to pandemic mitigation and tech censorship, and its invocations of free speech are the defenders of core civil rights.

This is, at best, half right. Its true that the Democratic Party has, along with the rest of the US political center, embraced a range of authoritarian moves, from embracing and expanding George W. Bushs war on terror and pushing for tech companies to censor political speech and ban users, to valorizing entities like the CIA and increasing the role of the national security state at home.

But are these alarming trends on the liberal side matched by a commitment to protecting civil liberties on the Right?

In a word, no. From criminalizing protest, to banning books, concepts, and even words from schools, to using executive power in new, repressive ways the Right continues to be an extreme and growing authoritarian threat in todays United States.

When it comes to basic rights, protesting is among the most crucial. Its specifically mentioned in the First Amendment; suppressing or banning it is the hallmark of authoritarian states like Russia and Saudi Arabia; and right-wing media in the United States have themselves pointed to recent anti-protest measures from the Canadian government to make the case that theres a new, authoritarian strain of Western liberalism.

Yet all around the country, for the past four years, Republican governors have signed into law Draconian legislation either effectively making protest a criminal act, or even creating protections for drivers who mow demonstrators down. As of February, forty of these bills have become law in twenty-three states, all of them ruled by Republican trifectas, though four of them purplish states in the form of Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Dozens more have been introduced in other states.

These bills were largely passed in response to a panoply of left-leaning protest movements, namely those against police brutality, fossil fuel pipelines, and various college campus issues, though some lawmakers also pointed to January 6 to spur their passage. Their provisions are the pride and joy of any budding autocrat: absurdly high fines and jail time for blocking roads and sidewalks or coming close to pipelines, a broad definition of rioting that would ensnare protesters simply standing near someone who damages property, and making so much as encouraging people to take part in an unlawful assembly an act punishable with prison.

As the conservative response to Canadas actions against the anti-mandate truckers suggests, there arent many more authoritarian measures you can take than turning protest into a criminal offense. And yet Republicans have done this in state after state.

At the same time, Republicans are working state by state to silence vaguely liberal educators, something they cast as a crusade against critical race theory, or CRT. A once-uncontroversial analytical concept, CRT has been successfully turned into a stand-in for the often offensive cottage industry of anti-racist grifters who have tried to profit off the racial reckoning of the past few years.

According to PEN America, Republicans have introduced 165 bills in nearly forty states since January 2021, ostensibly taking aim at the teaching of CRT in schools. In reality, the bills are written so broadly that theyre effectively gag orders for any subject state officials decide they dont like. Among the eleven that were signed into law is a New Hampshire law that makes the teaching of divisive concepts around race and gender grounds for a teacher to lose their license, which was then later copied in an Arkansas law.

A Tennessee law prohibits fourteen topics and concepts, including the idea that the United States is fundamentally racist. A Texas law has placed severe restrictions on what books can be used in the classroom, barred teachers from having to discuss controversial current events, and forced teachers to provide opposing perspectives on the Holocaust. In Iowa, teachers have been forced to avoid telling their students about the Native American genocide or answering their questions about why Gilded Age financiers were all white men.

And thats just the ones that were passed. The author of an ultimately vetoed Wisconsin anti-CRT bill listed nearly ninety terms and concepts that would be forbidden if it passed, including unconscious bias, equity, hegemony, multiculturalism, white supremacy, and racial justice. Bills in Florida, Missouri, and other states allow private citizens to sue schools if kids are taught, instructed, inculcated, or compelled to express belief in, or support for certain ideas about race, sex, or other matters, or are not offered courses giving an overall positive . . . history and understanding of the United States. Another mandates that kids be taught about a nonexistent debate that took place between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Meanwhile, right-wing groups have been working in these same states to get books about race, gender, sexuality, or anything else deemed objectionable banned from school libraries. The targeted titles run the gamut from Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States and Toni Morrisons Belovedto Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale and New Kid, a graphic novel about a black kid who goes to a posh middle school.

The counterargument might be that these are merely disputes over school curricula, not free speech issues. But if liberals and progressive groups passed laws banning the teaching of, say, concepts like American exceptionalism, mandating the teaching of opposing views about an event like September 11, or barring books like The Federalist Papers or Atlas Shrugged from school libraries, how would this be viewed?

Then theres the variety of Republican-backed efforts to clamp down on pro-Palestinian speech and advocacy, most prominently the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to pressure Israel into changing its horrid treatment of Palestinians. According to Palestine Legal, more than two-hundred bills have been introduced across the country, with 22 percent of those passed, leaving restrictions on BDS in place in thirty-two different states. (The Jewish Virtual Library has the slightly different count of thirty-five states).

While you wont struggle to find Democrats who back or lead on such measures, the GOP is often their driving force. At the federal level, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been introducing anti-BDS bills into the Senate for years, including 2019s S.1, which would have given legal protection to state and local governments to cut off business with companies who take part in the BDS movement. As its name suggests, in an era of skyrocketing poverty, inequality, and despair among ordinary Americans, Rubios was the very first bill introduced into the then-GOP-controlled Senate, and he has continued to reintroduce such legislation in the years since.

That wasnt even the most extreme one. A 2017 bill, sponsored by twenty-nine Republicans (including Rubio) and fourteen Democrats, would have made it a felony to support a boycott of Israel, at the threat of a minimum fine of $250,000 and up to twenty years in prison. Rubio insisted that the First Amendment only applies to speech, not conduct, an exceedingly narrow reading of the text far outside the American mainstream, but ideal for clamping down on all manner of personal freedoms. This was the same Rubio who just this year complained about what happens to a society and a people when we empower those who believe that their job is to tell the rest of us how to live and think and believe, and how we are allowed to do it.

Again, its not hard to find example after example of blue states that have passed these laws. But it doesnt exactly speak to the Rights anti-authoritarian bona fides that theyve pushed for exactly the same ones, as in ruby-red Texas, whose legislature nearly unanimously passed a law that, among other things, makes people swear an oath not to boycott Israel in order to contract with the government. A judge finally struck that law down earlier this year, calling it a violation of free speech rights.

Republican legislatures have passed similarly repressive laws to protect corporate interests. A notable example is the so-called ag-gag laws that have been introduced and signed into law around the country, aiming to criminalize whistleblowing about the stomach-churning abuse of animals on industrial farms.

The first state to get it on the books was Kansas, a state that hasnt voted for a Democratic president since 1964, whose 1990 law made it a jailable offense to enter an animal facility without consent and take photos or videos. Since then, Montana, North Dakota, Alabama, Iowa, Missouri, South Carolina, and Utah have all passed their own variations on this law.

Aside from Iowa, which has occasionally swung blue the last couple of decades, these are all reliable red states in terms of both presidential voting and legislative control. More importantly, these bills have been pushed in both the states theyve been enacted and where theyve failed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a business-backed group devoted to limited government, free markets, and federalism that Newt Gingrich once called the most effective organization for spreading conservatism to lawmakers.

ALEC is also the fountainhead for a different set of anti-speech bills: the anti-pipeline protest bills that have been enacted in seventeen states so far. Frustrated by protests against oil pipelines that threaten the health and livelihoods of local communities, fossil fuel companies solved the problem by pushing legislation that simply makes the protesting illegal, by levying massive fines and lengthy jail sentences on anyone who trespasses on or simply protests near critical infrastructure. Aside from the purplish Wisconsin, the states that have enacted them are all GOP-dominated in the South and Midwest.

This isnt the extent of it. ALEC has now foisted another piece of model legislation that well no doubt shortly see enacted by Republican state legislatures across the country, this one using the anti-BDS model to cut off commercial contracts with any company divesting from fossil fuels.

Finally, for all their complaints about Biden governing like a dictator, leading right-wing figures now openly admire and flirt with autocrats overseas.

Mere months after suggesting Biden was acting like a despot and using an executive order on gun control to disarm opposing voters, Fox News host Tucker Carlson jetted over to Hungary for a cozy interview with the countrys hard-right autocrat, Viktor Orbn. Hes far from alone. Orbn is feted by a variety of US conservative leaders, from intellectuals to politicians, including Rubio, who at one point let Orbns advisers shadow one of his campaigns. As columnist Ross Douthat put it, the US right sees Orbns rule as a model for how political power might curb progressivisms influence.

What does this actually mean in practice? Over his last twelve years in power, Orbn has seized control of the judiciary, turned elections into a sham, put independent media under his thumb, undermined checks and balances, and used his power over cultural, educational, and religious institutions to advance his nativist and nationalist vision. Hes outlawed homelessness, rolled back LGBT rights, facilitated an upward transfer of wealth, and generally used state power to force his particular brand of social conservatism on the entire population. For Carlson, this made Hungary an obvious success. (Amusingly, for all Carlsons complaints about tech censorship and vaccine mandates, Orbn enacted the latter early on and later edited out the Fox hosts criticism of China from the Hungarian broadcast of their interview).

Once again, its GOP-dominated Texas thats giving us a taste of what an Orbn-style government in the United States would look like. Governor Greg Abbott has used a decades-old Texas disaster response statute to issue sweeping executive orders to either bully the state house and senate into passing his agenda, or simply go around them altogether. Lately, thats largely meant unraveling pandemic mitigation policies, but its also meant upping immigration restrictions, auditing the 2020 election results, and restricting judges ability to release prisoners. Most recently, Abbott directed the state family protection agency to investigate the parents of trans kids who have been medically transitioning and threatening the medical professionals who approved the procedures, a staggeringly menacing abuse of state power to harass families.

With the United States ever more split along cultural and partisan lines, the US right wants to sell you a simple story: its Democrats and liberals who are the leading authoritarian threat to democracy and basic freedoms, and its right-wingers and the GOP who are nobly defending both. And of course, if you watch MSNBC and other liberal programming, leading Democrats will tell you the same story in reverse.

The reality is simpler, and much more liberating. Both of these leading political tendencies and the parties that represent them are hurtling in an ever more authoritarian direction, including Democrats, who over just the course of Russias war on Ukraine have dramatically ramped up the use of tech censorship and information warfare for their own political purposes. But the idea that the GOP and the conservative movement behind it with its widespread criminalization of protest, muzzling of educators, gagging of whistleblowers, and admiration for foreign autocrats is somehow an alternative to this is simply laughable.

Creating a truly free society means not just rejecting and rolling back all of these repressive measures, but expanding our idea of freedom to include the right to not go hungry, to have a roof over your head, to get medical treatment, and to have autonomy and make decisions in your workplace. But doing that means first breaking away from the narrow duopoly that far too often stands in for politics in the United States.

Excerpt from:

The Right Is Still the Enemy of Freedom - Jacobin magazine

Photo-Illustration: by the Cut; Photos courtesy of the subject.

My stepson was 4 when my husband, Eric, and I got married in May 2019. Atlas and his mom had traveled to our wedding in New York from their home in Berlin, and he charmed everyone, ordering bubbly water from the bartender, taking pictures with a Polaroid camera, and saying hi to all the guests in his German-accented English. After we said our vows, he climbed onto the shoulders of our friend who officiated and cheered when Eric stepped on a glass, in the Jewish tradition.

Nine months later, the pandemic began and international travel restrictions went into place. Our visits with Atlas turned to Skype calls. He showed us his first baby tooth loosening, and we watched the screen as he wiggled it with his tongue, a little more each week. After it fell out, he told us that the tooth fairy left a euro under his pillow.

By autumn, we realized the pandemic wouldnt be ending anytime soon, so we booked a trip to Germany. The borders were closed to U.S. citizens, but with a negative PCR test, lots of paperwork, and some luck, Eric figured he would be able to get into the country using a family exception.

But what about me? Im married to a man who has a son with a woman who lives in Berlin, and their entire relationship is based on a Tinder date in 2013 that resulted in a child. You try explaining that to the German border police.

For me, family has nothing to do with genetics. I was adopted, as was my brother. He has different birth parents than I do, and we grew up in a home with an open-door policy on love. Throughout my childhood, my parents fostered teenagers who had been kicked out of their homes for becoming pregnant. My mom, a first-grade teacher, was a mother figure to countless kids during her career. I was raised to believe that families come in all forms, and I didnt have much interest in marriage or motherhood. I never felt the pressure of a biological clock. I spent my 20s and 30s traveling and figured if the urge to have children ever came, I would foster or adopt.

When Eric told me he had a son, just a few weeks after we started dating, I was ecstatic that he had an unconventional family. I launched myself into his arms, excited about the connection: His son was an unplanned pregnancy, just like me. He staggered backward in surprise and told me that the situation was complicated, he was still figuring out how to be a father. I mumbled something about understanding and apologized for my overzealous response. It was too early in our relationship to tell him that it seemed uncomplicated to me: Accepting a child that arrives without warning, welcoming strangers into your life and being expected to bond with them immediately? Thats family.

I met Atlas a few months later and the bond was instant. He talks to strangers easily, dances down the street to music no one can hear, and is generous with his love. I mentioned Atlas in my wedding vows and remember looking around the room to find him as I spoke. I was completely unsurprised to see him sitting on my moms lap, whispering in her ear.

A year after that, with the pandemic wearing on, Atlass mom sent my parents a video of him enjoying the birthday present they had mailed to Germany. I messaged her to thank her for sending the video and for accepting me and my parents into her life. She said it made her happy to know that Atlas had so many people who cared about him and that she loved how my family and I treated him as our own.

Would border control feel similarly about our setup? When we arrived in Europe, Eric handed over his documents, including a paternity test and a copy of Atlass birth certificate. We also had a letter of support from Atlass mom. The officer looked through everything and stamped Erics passport, then asked what my story was. I explained we were married and showed him our wedding rings and shared last name. He shrugged and asked to see our marriage certificate. Luckily, I had a photo of it on my phone. As he studied the screen, his expression didnt change. So I started babbling about how I loved my stepson and hadnt seen him in almost a year; his childhood was passing by too quickly, and I was sick of talking to him on Skype. Thats when the officer started laughing and got out his stamp.

Germanys list of the immediate family members who were excluded from the travel ban didnt include stepmothers, but he let me in.

When we returned to the States, I told my parents what had happened at border control, and my dad reminded me that there was a way to ensure I would always be able to visit Atlas: I could become a German citizen. Theres a law, Article 116, that allows descendants of Germans who had their citizenship revoked for political, racial, or religious reasons to reclaim it. As the son of German Jewish refugees who fled the country in 1938, my dad and his descendants could apply. A lawyer told him the approval process could take years, but we thought it was worth a try.

My dad gathered evidence of his parents life in Germany and scheduled an application appointment at the German Consulate in New York. He arrived with two accordion files full of paperwork, including his parents passports that had been revoked by the Nazis Reich Ministry of the Interior. The officer on duty listened solemnly as my dad explained that if his parents hadnt fled the country, he wouldnt be alive today.

But if my Oma and Opa had been killed in the Holocaust, I would still be here. The documents I brought to our application appointment included two birth certificates. My current one, dated about a year after I was born, is issued to Jennifer and has my parents names. But the original certificate records my name as Baby Girl and shows my birth father was born in Iran and my birth mother, a Catholic woman, was born in Germany another link to the country.Would she be happy to know my application was approved, and that the next time I travel to the country it will be as a German citizen? I have no idea. But I do think my Oma and Opa would have liked to see me reconnecting with the place that rejected them all those years ago. And theyd be even happier that part of my family, unconventional as it is, lives there once again.

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Genetics and Geography Don't Make a Family - The Cut

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Farmland has become a hot commodity these days with rising food prices and inflation. In fact, The Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago and Kansas City have estimated a YoY appreciation in farmland value of 20%. That is eye popping performance and well above the average CAGR in farmland appreciation of 5.7%.

Farmland Partners Inc Investor Presentation

I love farmland. Not just as an investment. Farmland is enjoyable to view and a great place to spend time and grow (pun intended). But I hate overpaying for farmland. That's why I do not own Gladstone Land (LAND) which I wrote about last month. Because farmland is uncorrelated with general equities, it is a strategic portfolio asset that I want to own.

Timberland Investment Resources LLC

The war in Ukraine is causing commodity prices to soar even further. Russia and Ukraine are responsible for approximately 25% of global wheat exports and 15% of global corn exports. Sorry, I meant to say 'were responsible.'

The Daily Shot

The crisis is causing wheat and corn prices to go vertical. Wheat futures are up 50% since the beginning of the invasion. You can't tell, but I look like I've just seen a ghost. About 20% of all calories consumed by the human race comes from wheat. This means that the cost of eating increased 10% over 2 weeks.

Wheat and Corn Futures (TradingView)

This is a great cause for concern. History shows that people are most desperate when they cannot afford to eat. Eventually high food prices cause social unrest. While I have hope that the war in Ukraine will end soon and food prices will stop rising, I don't see "cheap" commodity prices for a long time. Ukraine and Russia will not ramp up food production quickly. We do not know the measure of destruction that will result from this war or how long it will take to rebuild.

This is why I'm taking another look at farmland investments. There are nine equities on my radar. One of them is really cheap, but unfortunately it comes with great risk. Higher commodity prices have risen the bottom line and geopolitical risk. That stock is Adecoagro S.A. (AGRO).

I have a list of nine U.S. listed equities that own significant quantities of farmland with a market capitalization of at least $100 million. For this article, I'm interest in farmland first and foremost. Specifically, I'm referring to crop producing farmland. Several of the following companies own more than just crop producing land. For example, Cresud owns residential and commercial real estate in addition to their agricultural holdings. Fresh Del Monte and Mission Produce have processing and distribution infrastructure. Adecoagro has sugarcane and ethanol processing plants and also produce bio-electricity. This is considered in the overall valuation of the stocks, but the cropland is my primary focus. Now, let's meet the contenders:

The land packages of each company are in the table below. I'm interested in how many farmland acres they own. I'm not interested in how many acres they lease. The location of the farmland is crucially important. I also want to know what they produce with that land.

The following information was derived from presentations and financial reports from each of the company's websites. The information is the best estimation available at the time. Links to the company websites are above.

United States

United States

Citrus

AGRO, LND, and CRESY have the largest land packages all located in South America. They grow the same types of crops, focusing on row crops that do not require irrigation. These companies own and operate their cropland. They are fully exposed to cost inflation and farming risks but also experience the full benefit from rising commodity prices.

FPI has row crop exposure in the United States. LAND, FDP, LMNR, and ALCO own mostly high value fruits and nuts in the U.S. that usually require irrigation and are costly to install. AVO grows avocados on their cropland in South America. Normally, higher value crops are a better investment. But with all things being equal, I would rather own farmland that produces staple crops like wheat, corn, and rice over expensive fruit and nut crops in this environment. That's because I see consumers around the world suffering from inflation and needing to cut costs. They will cut back on luxury foods before staple foods.

Chart by Author (Data from Company Presentations and Earnings Reports)

LAND and FPI are the most well known to U.S. investors. They are REITs that own farmland across many States. They lease out their properties on a triple net lease basis. Therefore, they do not deal with farming operations and are less exposed to cost inflation. However, they are not immune to poor crop performance. If their tenants cannot make rent the REIT will suffer.

You can see how their property maps breakdown below. Many of their properties are in the same growing regions. The main difference between their exposure is the types of crops grown. About 70% of FPI's portfolio produces row crops such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. Most of LAND's properties produce berries, nuts, or tree fruit.

Farmland Partners Inc Investor Presentation

Gladstone Land Investor Presentation

The operations of each of these companies is unique and different from the others. Many companies own more than just farmland and several are involved in global marketing and distribution of food products. To evaluate each company I'm looking at the EV/EBITDA, P/CF, and ROTC to assess efficiency and value. I looked at Market Cap/Acre and Market Value/Acre to get a sense of how expensive the land is. The market value is the company's stated value of the farmland, separate from the rest of the operation.

The following information was derived from presentations and financial reports from each of the company's websites in addition to Seeking Alpha. The information is the best estimation available at the time. Links to the company websites are above.

AGRO has the cheapest cropland according to this information, which makes sense because they mostly grow low value crops. Farmland that grows high value crops are worth a lot more because suitable land is more uncommon, it often comes with irrigation rights, and perennial crops are expensive to plant. For example, is can cost more than $7,678 per acre just to plant an almond orchard, which does not include the cost to buy the land. This compares to the cost of planting wheat between $150-250 per acre, which is required annually.

For perspective, the average cost of cropland in the U.S. in 2021 was $4,420 per acre. About 93% of AGRO's farmland is located across Argentina. The generalized cropping conditions of Argentina, including hardiness zone, precipitation, temperature, and soils, is similar to that of Texas. The value of non-irrigated cropland in Texas in 2021 was $2,090 per acre.

Chart by Author (Data from Company Presentations and Earnings Reports)

With a P/FFO of 46x and 44x I do not find LAND or FPI attractively valued, respectively. I'm not interested in ALCO, AVO, and LMNR due to niche crop markets in luxury foods. CRESY is too broadly invested and expensive for my taste. This leaves AGRO, LND, and FDP.

Chart by author (Data from Company Presentations and Earnings Reports & Seeking Alpha)

Between these three AGRO has the best Quant Grades. FDP has underperformed the group significantly. Cash flow from operations have been positive and consistent for AGRO while LND has suffered from volatile and often negative cash flow. The chart below has CFO for AGRO on the left and CFO for LND on the right. For these reasons, I want to take a closer look at AGRO which I believe to be the best performing farmland stock.

Chart by Author (Data from Seeking Alpha)

Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha

AGRO is a sugar and ethanol company first. They are one of the lowest cost producers of sugarcane worldwide. They own and operate 3 sugar/ethanol mills and harvest over 180,000 hectares of sugarcane. These facilities have the ability to switch production between sugar and ethanol giving them the ability to adapt to changing market prices to maximize returns. Currently, they are running mostly ethanol because of attractive pricing.

AGRO produces hydrous and anhydrous ethanol which is primarily used for vehicle fuel. The company was optimistic about ethanol prices when oil was around $80 per barrel and it has risen 50% since. They also expect the Brazilian sugarcane crop to be lower than expected this year which will further support prices. Ethanol is an important fuel in South America. Ethanol accounts for more than 50% of gasoline use in Brazil compared to 8% in the U.S. In 2021, sugarcane production was down 27% due to poor weather conditions. The company expects sugarcane yields to return to normal in 2022.

Adecoagro Institutional Presentation 2020

Adecoagro Institutional Presentation 2020

In addition to sugarcane the company produces a variety of row crops on 262,000 hectares. Like sugarcane, they are also a low cost producer of crops like soybean, corn, and rice. Unfortunately, the cost of export taxes prevents AGRO crops from being competitive globally. According to an independent appraisal, company farmland appreciated by 2.4% in 2021.

This year they expect to plant 7.9% more acres than last year. They have secured their fertilizer needs for the current crop but if fertilizer prices continue climbing it will impact margins for next year. The farming enterprise recorded a 30% increase in EBITDA YoY for Q3 2021.

Adecoagro Institutional Presentation 2020

The company also produces dairy products and electricity, as a bi-product of their other operations, which helps to diversify the operation. Synergies from the vertical and horizontal integration of these enterprises leads to great efficiencies in company performance. This helps explain the steady rise in FCF and EBITDA per share over the past few years. EBITDA, in particular, has grown by 53% YoY while decreasing the shares outstanding. The company has achieved a reasonable Net Debt to Adj. EBITDA of 1.56x which is below the company goal of 2.

Data by YCharts

Several recent developments are appealing about the direction of AGRO:

In 2020, about 74% of EBITDA came from the sugar/ethanol enterprise of the business. It has been the fastest growing segment of the company. It is advantageous for the company to have this enterprise because it helps to hedge the company's exposure to energy costs on the farming side, but they can switch to producing sugar if energy prices are low.

Adecoagro Institutional Presentation 2020

Stock performance correlates with the prices of the commodities the company produces. Prices of these commodities has risen sharply since 2020.

Data by YCharts

So far we have seen a great company with bright future that provides investors with exposure to inexpensive farmland. Here comes the "but."

Argentina is a terrible place to invest.

The Heritage Foundation ranks Argentina #144 in their Country Rankings for the 2022 Index of Economic Freedom, one rank above Haiti. Here is what they say about Argentina's background:

Argentina, once one of the worlds wealthiest nations, is South Americas second-largest country. It has vast agricultural and mineral resources and a highly educated population, but it also has a long history of political and economic instability. Peronist President Alberto Fernndez and Vice President Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, who preceded Fernndez as president, began their four-year terms in 2019. Legislative elections in November 2021 weakened the strength of the Peronists in Congress. Popular disillusionment is widespread because of a weak economy and the countrys ninth sovereign debt default. To check inflation until after the election, the government imposed economically harmful price controls on hundreds of products. In September 2021, the government gained backing from creditors for a deal to resolve the default.

Argentina has a checkered history, at best, interfering with free market enterprises. Trade restrictions and regulations have impacted the competitiveness of commodity exports from the country. Consumer inflation, especially rising food and fuel prices, are going to pressure politicians in Argentina and Brazil to take drastic actions. They have demonstrated a willingness to engage in actions that harm businesses in the country in the name of the public good.

Just listen to what the company has to say on the issue. The following are excerpts from the Company's 2013 Form 20-F filing:

The Argentine government has in the past set certain industry market conditions and prices. In March 2002, the Argentine government fixed the price for milk after a conflict among producers and the government. In 2005, the Argentine government adopted measures in order to increase the domestic availability of beef and reduce domestic prices.

Moreover, the Argentine government may increase its level of intervention in certain areas of the economy. For example, on April 16, 2012, the Argentine government sent a bill to the Argentine Congress to expropriate 51% of the Class D Shares of YPF, S.A. (YPF), the largest Argentine oil and gas company in Argentina. The expropriation law was passed by Congress on May 3, 2012 and provided for the expropriation of 51% of the share capital of YPF, represented by an identical stake of Class D shares owned, directly or indirectly, by Repsol YPF S.A., a Spanish integrated oil and gas company. The national government and the Argentine provinces that are members of the Federal Organization of Hydrocarbon Producing Provinces now own 51% and 49%, respectively, of the YPF shares subject to the seizure. This particular measure also sparked a strong international condemnation and had a significant negative impact on foreign direct investment in Argentina as well as restricted more the limited countrys access to international capital and debt markets. In response to the nationalization of YPF by the Argentine government, the European Union Commission threatened with the imposition of commercial sanctions (i.e. unilateral tariff preferences to Argentina). However, during February 2014, the Argentine government and Repsol YPF S.A. agreed to a compensation of $5,000 million payable in Argentine sovereign bonds to compensate Repsol YPF S.A. for the seizure of the YPF shares. This settlement was ratified by Repsol YPF S.A.s shareholders and by the Argentine Congress through a law passed on April 24, 2014.

We cannot assure you that the Argentine government will not continue to interfere or increase its intervention by setting prices or regulating other market conditions. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that we will be able to freely negotiate the prices of all our Argentine products in the future or that the prices or other market conditions that the Argentine government might impose will allow us to freely negotiate the prices of our products, which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

During the Argentine economic crisis in 2001 and 2002, Argentina experienced significant social and political turmoil, including civil unrest, riots, looting, nationwide protests, strikes and street demonstrations. Despite Argentinas economic recovery and relative stabilization, social and political tension and high levels of poverty and unemployment continue. In 2008, Argentina faced nationwide strikes and protests from farmers due to increased export taxes on agricultural products, which disrupted economic activity and have heightened political tensions.

Future government policies to preempt, or in response to, social unrest may include expropriation, nationalization, forced renegotiation or modification of existing contracts, suspension of the enforcement of creditors rights, new taxation policies, including royalty and tax increases and retroactive tax claims, and changes in laws and policies affecting foreign trade and investment. Such policies could destabilize the country and adversely and materially affect the Argentine economy, and thereby our business, results of operations and financial condition.

The Argentine government may order salary increases to be paid to employees in the private sector, which would increase our operating costs.

The Brazilian government frequently intervenes in the Brazilian economy and occasionally makes significant changes in policy and regulations. The Brazilian governments actions to control inflation and other policies and regulations have often involved, among other measures, increases in interest rates, changes in tax policies, price controls, currency devaluations, capital controls and limits on exports and imports. We may be adversely affected by changes in policy or regulations...

We are a Luxembourg corporation (socit anonyme) and it may be difficult for you to obtain or enforce judgments against us or our executive officers and directors in the United States.

To make matters worse, Last year MSCI downgraded Argentina from "emerging market" to "standalone," which caused AGRO stock price to take a 9% hit. AGRO will experience fewer capital inflows as a result of this downgrade.

On the bright side, Argentina and the IMF recently agreed to a credit facility extension. This measure is intended to stabilize the Argentinian financial situation. I suspect the agreement will change little in the way of economic prosperity and is likely another link in a long chain of economic failures by the country's government. But at the very least there is some international pressure to take responsibility and additional nationalization will not be viewed favorably.

Adecoagro is a quality farmland company that is performing well. In the best case scenario the Argentinian and Brazilian governments do not interfere with AGRO through debilitating taxes, tariffs, price controls, or expropriation. In that case I would expect the stock to perform well. It currently trades at an adjusted P/OCF of 4.09x which is below the 8Y average of 4.98x.

FAST Graphs

Using data from FAST Graphs I have created the following chart which illustrates the expected return over 1Y and 2Y time-frames at different price to cash from operations multiples. The size of the circles represents the probability of occurrence according to my judgement in the best case scenario. In that case, I expect total return CAGR of 20-40%.

Chart by Author (Data from FAST Graphs)

AGRO is the epitome of "you get what you pay for." The company is performing, the farmland is cheap, and current commodity markets are supporting strong cash flows. They have an ideal combination of diversification, integration, and low cost of production.

Enter, Atlas Shrugged.

If governments get involved investors will be lucky to breakeven. There is no limit to the amount the losses could be. Higher commodity prices lead to higher profits which lead to more scrutiny. The rising cost of food is alarming and social unrest should be expected. And with it, higher risk.

We should acknowledge that this geopolitical risk has existed for the entire 11 years since the company's IPO and that has not prevented AGRO from outperforming the S&P 500 over the last three years, not an easy task. It's also worth noting that 6 out of 9 farmland stocks we looked at have exposure to Argentina, Brazil, or other South American countries with similar geopolitical risk. Because of this, I've decided to start taking a closer look at ALCO.

Data by YCharts

I cannot disagree more with the SA Quant Ranking of "Strong Buy." I'm really tempted to call this one a sell. The only reason I'm not is because I have yet to see signs of imminent government intervention. Therefore, I will hold onto my very small position in AGRO as a highly speculative part of my commodities portfolio. It is adrenaline-inducing to say "I own farmland in Argentina."

I'll be watching governments carefully with one finger on the sell button.

See original here:

Adecoagro: The Most Inexpensive And Speculative Farmland One Can Buy - Seeking Alpha