The future is uncertain—how to manage the anxiety about what comes next? You could practice deep breathing exercises. You could get involved in community organizing. Or you could keep the existential fear at bay by . . . gambling on the crises to come?
On Monday, Francis Northwood wrote on Polymarket, the “de-centralized betting platform” where people are using crypto to wager on “pretty much anything,” from the escalation of Israel’s genocide/regional war to the particulars of American politics. Would it surprise you to hear that insider trading is essentially baked into the site’s mechanics?
The United States is entering a new age of reaction, and Germany is not far behind. As Kevin Okoth explains, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won a regional election, and the country’s governing coalition is now collapsing. A moment like this requires adversarial journalism; Andrew Holter considers one practitioner, Claud Cockburn, whose anti-imperialism never wavered. His example is rarer than it should be. As Zoë Hu points out, the West’s war reporters are too enmeshed with—and sympathetic to—the militaries they cover.
“By framing economic crises as problems of border security, the far right has legitimized its ‘concerns’ about immigration and made them appealing to the public.”
“Claud Cockburn’s extraordinary career as a reporter in the 1930s illuminated the decade when gangsterism, journalism, and political ideology combined in dramatic new permutations.”
“The genocide in Gaza has largely happened outside the usually privileged perspective of the American abroad. Without troops or independent journalists, accepting that Gaza is one of the United States’ wars—which it is—makes this a unique moment.”
“Though I kept hard copies of both misbegotten books readily accessible over the years, my rare peeks saddened me, forcing me to recall the gap between ambition and execution, completion and reception.”
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