Jeff Sharlet

Searching the Tyre Nichols Footage for What the Media Missed

This likely isn’t the first thing you’ve read about Tyre Nichols, and likely won’t be the last. It’s not the first you’ve read about a police “killing”—the word we use until murder has been proven in court or when, despite evidence, a court says it…

“Fuck Biden,” “Don’t Tread on Me,” and a Wisconsin Death Trip for Our Times

“The thing to worry about is meanings, not appearances.” —Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip, 1973 Cecil, Wisconsin I went back twice to find out what the coffin meant, but though cars came and went in the driveway, nobody ever answered the door.…

January 6 Was Only the Beginning

“Although no one believed in civil war, the air reeked of it…” —Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, recalling 1860 1. It’s Cool We watched her die before we knew her name. We watched almost in real time, or soon enough after, her death looped…

The Terrifying Familiarity of the Buffalo Shooting Suspect’s Extremist Screed

On Saturday night in Austin, Texas, Ted Nugent opened for Donald Trump with a kind of love song: “I love you people madly, but I’d love you more if you went forward and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the…

Joe Biden “Unbound” Won’t Be Enough to Save Us

“Joe Biden unbound”—that’s how CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger described President Biden’s January 6 speech, right before Biden told reporters, “The way you have to heal you have to recognize the extent of the wound. You can’t pretend.” And…

“They Sought to Convert Us”: Officers’ January 6 Testimony Reveals the Riot’s Dark Righteousness

To the Republicans who insisted that there was little left to learn about January 6—least of all from frontline cops who could testify to the record that day left on their minds and bodies—the four officers who opened the January 6 hearings responded…

“I Represent What They Want”: Trump’s First Postpresidential Rally Was a Dark Warning

The biggest booing of the night at Donald Trump’s first postpresidential rally—“Save America” was the theme, “I wuz robbed” the constant refrain—came in response to the phrase “critical race theory,” and the name “Kamala Harris.” Which is to say:…

Joe Biden’s National Address Raises the Question: How Many Times Can a Nation Be Saved?

The question going into President Joe Biden’s address last night was not one of policy but of positioning: Would he appeal once more to the fiction of unity as a bipartisan endeavor? The answer, thank God, was no. Inasmuch as he rose above division…

All That We've Lost

Courtesy The Tender Song The dead tonight, as I write, number 317,816. A figure too big to grasp but one that’ll seem small when you read this. Just a snapshot, a screen grab, to mark that which is passing. All we can do is say, "This is what loss…

A Heart Is Not a Nation

Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda BY Jean Guerrero. New York: William Morrow. 336 pages. $29. Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism BY Seyward Darby. New York: Little, Brown.…

The “1776 Report” Is Trump’s Last Gasp of State-Sponsored Hate

It’s perhaps fitting that one of Trump’s last gasps in office, the “1776 Report”—revisionist guidelines for teaching U.S. history—came on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which in right-wing circles marks a massive celebration of misappropriation. Ted…

“Executing Politicians? Lulz.” For Trump’s Zombies, “Funny” Cosplay Is the Language of Deadly Fascism

The Trump dream that’s proven more contagious than the mutant B.1.1.7. has finally fully crossed over, IRL, into the material plane. It’s the delusion he rode in on in 2016 and the hallucination in which he himself walks, no longer a con man but now…

“Watch What’s Going to Be Revealed”: In Georgia, Trump Shows He’s Bought Into His Own Con

The most revealing moment of Donald Trump’s Monday rally in Dalton, Georgia, came before he took the stage: David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” rounding out his usual playlist of Phil Collins, Billy Joel, and the Village People. It’s not the only time it’s…

How QAnon Crept Into the Mind of Donald Trump and Turned Conspiracy Into Reality

She saw shadows. She always had. She was spiritual, not Christian—she’d left that behind when she’d left Waco, in her early 20s. She got into Wicca, “super witchy,” says a friend. “She was fun, happy, a little wild. Just a normal girl.” I’ll call her…

The 2020 Election Isn’t About Idealism. It’s About Survival

It was a slow news weekend in “real” America. A livestreamer was beaten at a Proud Boy rally in Portland, and in Washington, D.C., talk was of the Return, meaning one of the two major prayer marches on the National Mall. If you love God and Donald…

“F--k Your Feelings”: In Trump’s America, the Partisan Battle Flag Is the New Stars and Stripes

There’s a picture circulating online right now of a small pleasure boat at rest on the bottom of a clear lake. A flagpole appears to shoot up from the boat, with a bright-red Trump 2020 flag gently aflutter, purportedly in the currents of Texas’s…

Trump’s Brand of Biblical Capitalism Makes Him Stronger Than You Think

I wasn’t sure what to make of the ping-pong rhythm between “religious freedom” and economic deregulation, God and mammon, that marked the second night of the GOP convention until Cissie Graham Lynch, rock-jawed granddaughter of Billy, took the pulpit…

“Say 12 More Years”: At the RNC, Trump’s Authoritarian “Joke” Slips Closer to Reality

Donald Trump opened his first speech of the Republican National Convention today by telling the live crowd chanting the usual “four more years,” “If you want to really drive them crazy, you say 12 more years.” The Washington Post says he was joking.…

“You Know What to Do”: Decoding the Grotesque Symbolism of Trump’s Tulsa Rally

On Saturday in Tulsa, where the president expected to be greeted with row upon row of screaming adoration decked out in red, he was faced instead with a sea of empty blue plastic. According to the Tulsa Fire Department’s crowd estimate, some 12,000…

“He’s the Chosen One to Run America”: Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies Are Church and He Is the Gospel

Yusif Jones, standing in front of a long row of porta-potties, slides his plastic Trump mask over his face. “I’m him!” he exclaims. He puffs up his chest in his homemade Trump shirt. It’s a short-sleeved American flag pullover, onto which he has…