The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Death of a Salesman A Complex Tragedy Librarian of Celaeno On the morning of December 4th, at 6:45 AM, Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, was murdered in Times Square as he was on his way to a shareholder meeting. At the time this is being written, the identity of the killer is unknown, and the motive yet to be definitively determined. However, much speculation has emerged around words written on shell casings left at the scene- “deny,” “defend,” and “depose.” These terms echo what trial lawyers  have labeled basic insurance company tactics to avoid paying claims - “delay, deny, defend.” In other words, it seems the killer may have been motivated by revenge for some wrong done to him, perhaps a denied claim on his or a loved one’s behalf, which caused him to seek out and kill Thompson as an act of retribution. This information has in turn led to some social media unpleasantness. Thompson’s death was roundly mocked on X, with people claiming to need  prior authori...

  Fake Lit and the Curation of History We may need to pay closer attention to the shelves in our bookshops. The construction of the pseudo-reality is entering its secondary phase: the curation of historical amnesia and myopia. John Waters The Darker Side of Bad Books There is an aspect of propaganda to which  we may be paying insufficient attention: the curation of history. Through the work of Mattias Desmet and others, we are pretty much on top of the quotidian drip of news-management, indoctrination, misdirection, disinformation and normalisation disguised as warnings about malinformation or ‘conspiracy theory’, and other delightful skills of the contemporary nudge-monger. But we forget that what is happening is intended to be for keeps. It is not, in other words, as if, when the would-be tyrants have achieved their objectives, they will call an end to the lying and brainwashing programmes, and then revert to something resembling what we remember as the way things used to be...