The ceasefire between Israel and Iran might be holding—for now, at least—but it’s a crisis merely in limbo, not aborted. For all of Donald Trump’s insistence that the United States has fully demolished Iran’s nuclear capacity, reports from the Pentagon disagree.
Whatever comes next in the region, we can be sure of one thing: the most odious people on Earth will continue to profit. On our site, Ben Makuch considers the recent exploits of one Erik Prince, whose reputation as a private military wunderkind is bizarrely unmarred by his long record of abject failure. These days, he’s pushed his way into the second Trump administration by striking unsavory alliances and whispering proposals that advance a MAGA agenda. As Jasper Craven and Brian Karlsson note in their recap of the president’s birthday military parade, the big man loves his big guns—but the country itself is coming down with a case of Vietnam syndrome.
Elsewhere, in our new issue, Andrew Schenker writes about athletic halls of fame, linking them to a certain American attitude towards patriotism and heroism. Chapman Caddell rattles off the pantheon of writers who influenced the work of Enrique Vila-Matas. And Crispin Long reviews the latest from André Aciman, which is guilty of the same crimes as his other recent work.
“Inside the perimeter was a festival featuring tents and booths run by Army units and weapons contractors. They had a captive audience to shill lethality and, hopefully, find new recruits.”
“If we attach any kind of importance to the sports they commemorate, it’s worth at least grappling with who gets in, who should be in, and who should never have come close. Americans are in retreat from honest discussions of history.”
“Argentina is a metonym for both mystic periphery and timeless classic, confused in the Global North as a hideout for Nazis, Southern governors, travel writers, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid.”
“Reading his recent fiction, one might feel duped in the way of the tourist who eats at a beachfront restaurant only to discover that, because the view is lovely and the foot traffic abundant, the food gets away with being nearly inedible.”
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