The Fortnightly Rant

Anna Kilgore, of Springfield, Ohio, called the cops. She couldn’t find her cat, Miss Sassy. Anna suspected that her neighbors, who are Haitian, had eaten the cat. Ohio Senator and Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance sprang into action. On September 9th, he tweeted: “Months ago I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” The next day, during the presidential debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump treated the alleged canis- …

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If this election campaign were an episode of “Star Trek”—we should be so lucky—we’d be hearing from Scotty pretty soon: “I dannea if she can take any more, Captain!” Eleven days ago one of the candidates released a campaign photo of himself doing something that no normal, sane person would ever do. If some normal sane person were somehow tricked into pulling this stunt—standing among the graves at Arlington National Cemetery, grinning like an ape, with his diminutive thumb raised—and was photographed in the act, they’d probably assume it was for blackmail purposes, and hire a gumshoe to deep-six the evidence. We are talking, however, …

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We can’t speak for our two dozen predecessors, but since assuming the throne—editors traditionally use the royal “we,” why shouldn’t regal nomenclature extend to office furniture?—our natural condition has been existential dread. That yawning abyss which strikes terror in most hearts, is like an Olympic pool to Katie Ledecky. Existential dread is our natural habitat. Perhaps it comes from having survived 267 years—so far!—despite revolution, civil war, and capitalism. Expecting the worst, we’re surprised and amused on those occasions when it does not arrive. We bring this up because we fear we may now have to prepare for something for which we know we’re not …

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What a difference a fortnight and a half can make. The past three weeks have raised the possibility that we, the people, may not, in fact, be strapped into cheap seats at the glacier races. To the contrary, we now have evidence that if certain people in strategic positions do the right thing, conditions may change. What’s more, these changes—at least so it appears at the moment, let’s not get ahead of ourselves—might move the nation away from, rather than toward, utter catastrophe. Obviously, any such bold pronouncement demands extraordinary evidence. Here ’tis: On the one hand exuberant Democrats, their internecine animosities forgotten in the …

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There once was a time when summer meant reporting on meaningless little oddities that might amuse a reader swinging in a hammock in the shade. Those were the days, as a famous fictional televised bigot used to sing. Now the nightmares come around the clock. These are ugly times, but they’re our times, so let’s get on with them. At least we’re not bored. The fortnight began with a literal bang. Actually, eight bangs, from—spoiler alert!—an AR-15, aimed at former-and-possibly-future president Donald J. Trump. Democrats had been hoping for some kind of game-changing event that would divert attention from President Biden’s age. They got that, …

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It’s been a hell of a fortnight—one that deserves to live in infamy. Thursday, June 28th, presented a great opportunity: all that was needed was a clear, calm, explanation of the actual Republican agenda. That alone should have been enough to bury forever the threat of a second Trump term. Yes, there is a sector of the electorate that is eager to deep-six democracy and replace it with a fascist dictatorship—though they would, of course, obscure that unseemly truth with yards of obfuscatory patriotic blather. That group of voters will earnestly swear allegiance to a gibberish-spouting goon, though his allegiance is only to himself. For …

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