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Walter Kirn and I will be back on air tonight, watching Election Night lunacy and pondering questions big, small, and in between, as the calendar flips from Midterms to Campaign ‘28. Walter will be broadcasting from his end in Las Vegas, “looking out toward the very stretch of desert where tourists used to watch Atomic Bombs being tested”:

We will not be holding a drinking game, but if we were to, the following would be “drink” lines: “Most important election of our lifetime,” “Eggs,” “Communists,” “greatest threat in our history,” and, “I’m not saying it’s antisemitism, but…” Results are almost a foregone conclusion, with Democrats opening at least a six-touchdown lead in the House and likely turning the Senate too. The biggest source of true, gambling-addict suspense will involve learning how far off the polling industry has been, particularly in Senate races (I’d take the over if Vegas set the line at +2 for Democrats).

Back in March, a GOP member of congress told Politico that “we lose 60 to 70 seats” if Donald Trump ordered a ground invasion of Iran. That didn’t happen, but the Iran fiasco may yet prove that disastrous for the administration, as Republicans are currently judged to have maybe 160 safe seats left, down from the 219. No matter what results come in tonight, the end of midterms officially opens the door on a new era for the Republican Party, so we’re almost certain to see shameless jockeying in the form of ad-hoc TV appearances by a slew of undeclared 2028 candidates arguing for this or that post-Trump direction. Walter and I will of course observe these performances with appropriate gravitas and reserve.

Tonight will be a celebration for Democrats, but that party has issues too, symbolized by late-breaking news in the Michigan Senate race. Democratic primary loser Haley Stevens just threw her support behind Republican Mike Rogers over nominee Abdul El-Sayed, essentially judging the GOP less dangerous than the DSA. The New York Times ran an editorial called, “Don’t Be a Haley Stevens,” but bet on it, longtime professional pols in the Democratic Party and the up-and-coming DSA movement will commence all-out pitched battle soon, and don’t be surprised if the endgame involves defections more shocking than the neocon rush to the blue side in 2016.

Of course, Walter and I have some catching up to do before we get to any of that, so it might be a long night. We promise to do some actual work monitoring returns, but mostly I’m looking forward to working with my old friend, and catching up with the ATW faithful. You can find us at the links below, or visit Walter and me on X. Let’s all have a few laughs tonight:

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After midterms, life in America may not get better, but it could suck more quietly

Narrated by Jared Moore

Art by Daniel Medina

Text published 10/27/26:

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From a New York Times interview between Ezra Klein and Nate Silver, about the midterms next week:

SILVER: I will tell you one thing: The amount of Democratic infighting really dropped off after these races in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin.

KLEIN: And it’s going to go up again when the 2028 primary heats up.

SILVER: It’s going to be the only thing everyone is talking about for a year and a half.

It’s probably true that next week will be a wipeout for Democrats in the House, with the Senate also a good bet to flip. Pundits will rush will declare a “blue wave” of “generational change” destined to turn the clock back to 2015, a.k.a. BT or Before Trump, when Iowa and Ohio were battlegrounds and Middle America was in play instead of “reliably Republican.” Silver and Klein are probably also right that there will be a ton of Democratic infighting in the coming year and a half, though I disagree that “it’s going to be the only thing everyone is talking about.”

For the last twenty years, politics was our most fascinating news story and the most interesting thing on the Internet. Now, one senses huge portions of the electorate would rather take baths in battery acid than listen to even one more word from a politician. Americans have by now been screwed over so many times that the problem may no longer be that the government doesn’t work. It’s that government doesn’t work, and we can’t shut up about it. Other countries manage to deliver lousy economies and naked corruption without so much talking. Can’t we just be Mexico or Paraguay and have peace and quiet while things mostly go to hell?

Campaign coverage often assumes a demographic is voting for something, when the against vote is more important. This error is a big reason pundits mis-called the 2016 vote, which was decided by the high percentage of voters — 18%, according to one exit poll — who disapproved of both candidates. The big story then wasn’t the rise of fascism or the “alt-right” (a term “here to stay,” the Anti-Defamation League declared), but the collapse of faith in expertise. Similarly this year every poll shows the Democratic Party’s popularity is in the toilet even compared to Trump, but Trump’s decisions to launch a disastrous war in Iran while doing things like stretching anti-terror authority to vaporize Venezuelan drug boats (American presidents used to be much better at faking legality) has collapsed faith in the absence of expertise.

Remember all those hope-change voters in 2008 who thought electing a constitutional lawyer would put an end to torture and assassination? A few years later they were gnawing through their own arms to slip out of an embrace with the leader of their own “We tortured some folks” party. A fair number of adventurous Obama voters went with Trump in 2016. Now independent voters are likely going to flee in a vote they’ll see as a referendum on their own choice of Trump. That will bring those voters all the way back around to, “We’re fucked either way,” which was where many were to begin with, in the salad days when a presidential election could end in a numerical tie, like a shitty soccer game, as ours did in 2000.

From 2016-2024 one could argue there were four big factions in American politics: old GOP, MAGA, traditional Dems, and Berniecrats. After next week it’ll be Whatever Republicans Are, Schumer Dems, and the DSA, which is really just the DSA and a dispirited Everyone Else. Shepard Fairey’s iconic CHANGE theme won the day in 2008, but who’s still dying for “change” in 2026? I know there are polls showing large pluralities of voters clamoring for “complete upheaval,” but I don’t buy it. Americans need a break, not more upheaval:

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Walter Kirn and I have missed talking, and missed all of you. On Tuesday night, November 3rd, we’ll get together for an election night livestream to watch returns come in, and maybe also take some time to rap about this year’s bumper crop of political lunacies. We’d love to have you join us for what should be a fascinating night. The Democrats are expected to secure a huge majority in the House, while most polls — whose infuriating inutility was always a rich theme in America This Week discussions — portray the Senate as a jump ball.

Across three and a half years of episodes, I never thought of America This Week as work. It was a happily scheduled time to catch up with Walter. It’s great to have another starred day on the calendar. It’s only one night, but if you’d like it to be more, please don’t hesitate to let us know. At minimum, join us on Election Night, when there may be a surprising/amusing cosmetic upgrade or two, plus some percolating sitcom ideas. We’ll follow up with links closer to the show, but expect us to be on at about 8:00 p.m. ET. See you then. I can’t wait.

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Art belongs to everyone and even heavy metal is more important than causes

Narrated by Jared Moore

Art by Daniel Medina

Text published 10/14/26:

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Yesterday I wrote an article in defense of what the Soviets called “art for art’s sake” after Metallica frontman James Hetfield controversially declared his band’s agenda to be “love, energy, and heavy music, baby!” Former Pink Floyd lead singer Roger Waters, who declared Hetfield a “prick” who “can’t play a note,” was mentioned mainly for saying “‘I’m apolitical’ is not an option,” a stance with which I disagree. Waters responded:

I’ve defended Roger Waters on speech issues multiple times in this space, and when he gets in trouble again, as he inevitably will, I’ll do so again. I bring it up only to note that his “useless idiot” salvo marks roughly the 958th time a left-leaning figure whom I’d publicly defended has denounced me as cowardly, compromised, immoral scum for failing to endorse their political opinions. But who cares about behaving with class when people are dying?

The problem is the separation of artists into “political” and “apolitical” categories. Propaganda on this score has been so relentless for so long that generations of people have grown up with the idea that art that isn’t visibly “taking a stand” — against the Vietnam War, against the bomb, against hunger, racism, inequality — is “apolitical.” Apolitical art, in the mind of someone like Waters or Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, is mindless fluff and a soma-like distraction that Serves Power by keeping people tapping to a beat while leaders make war and commit atrocities. Hence the idea that art “either supports the status quo or challenges the status quo.”

It’s a false choice. Art isn’t either “political and stuff” and a threat to power, or apolitical pap and aid to tyrants. Great books and music and paintings are concerned with things far above politics, from love and hate to passion and death and the great beyond. It can turn people against wars long before they happen. People who are exposed to great art tend to be improved by the experience in the same way that a parent holding a child for the first time feels inner doors opening. That’s the case whether you’re looking at openly political images like Picasso’s Guernica or Goya’s The Third of May 1808, or subjects seemingly far from politics, like Monet’s Water Lilies series or Van Gogh’s The Drinkers.

You might prefer one to the other, but the presence or absence of political intent isn’t what matters. You just want an artist with the skill to expand your consciousness. People who demand that art adopt a narrow, current political line are like the critics Oscar Wilde complained about who took books and tried to “explain their divinity away.” Of course, you’d need to recognize the possibility of divinity to see that.

If on the other hand your metaphysical world is limited to who backs subsidized housing or opposes aid to Israel, life becomes simpler: your allies are good, and everyone else sucks. Moreover, everyone else sucks identically, since you’ve worked it out that all things either support or oppose the status quo. Who needs things that are just beautiful and make us better people? It’s like Waters says: even the “Mona Liza” [sic] or Starry Night are just paintings, useless in the fight. Practically Trump ads, when you think about it.

Any sane person knows there’s no reason you can’t have art and advocacy, but sanity is clearly suspect with this crowd, too. First it was climate change, then it was food sustainability, then Just Stop Oil, now Palestine. In every case, even though art had nothing to do with the issue, the plan was soup on a Van Gogh, soup on a Mona Lisa, mashed potatoes on Monet, someone’s head glued to a Vermeer, heads glued to a Botticelli. Impatience with reverence for beauty is a feature, not a bug. Down with pretty things! Down with catchy tunes! Is there anything weirder than making a rallying cry of being miserable? What’s wrong with these people?

Metallica frontman James Hetfield gave a concert at the Las Vegas Sphere over the weekend, and kicked off with a few words about his band’s “agenda”:

Thanks for coming to celebrate with us. And I just gotta say: Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bullshit. We are here to forget about all the outside shit. Metallica’s agenda is love, energy, and heavy music, baby!

On cue, every activist on the planet lined up to denounce the band. My own former podcast cohost Katie Halper called Hetfield a “loser and a coward” and had former Pink Floyd lead Roger Waters on to deploy the obligatory talking points that not only is Hetfield spineless, but Metallica sucks and always has (“never heard anything so appallingly out of tune in my life… can’t play a note”). Waters added:

“I’m apolitical” is not an option. Nobody can step away from this. You are being killed. Gaza is just the first bit. They’ll get to you. Don’t you worry. They’ll either enslave you or murder you. Because that’s that’s their ethos. This goes back, you know, 500 years, to the beginning of European white settler colonialism.

This all takes place on the heels of a related speech controversy, in which the stadium tour of Ed Sheeran hit an iceberg after people like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft objected to warmup act Macklemore’s “Free Palestine” speech at MetLife stadium in New Jersey. Kraft and Sheeran promoters the Messina Group were on the wrong side of free speech culture to cancel the show, and now Waters, Katie, Jimmy Dore, and all the Metallica-bashers are just as bad, if not worse, for declaring “all art is political,” “art must take a side,” and “‘I’m apolitical’ is not an option.”

In the Marxist conception art either exists in service of revolution, or, like religion (which Marx dismissed as the “sigh of the oppressed creature”), it exists to narcotize and distract the masses on behalf of the colonialist/capitalist establishment. That’s why every wannabe activist in the world today is lining up to denounce Hetfield as a rich twerp who’s a “lifeless,” “soulless” tool of people like Sphere majority owner Steve Cohen.

I grew up reading and listening to artists who came down on both sides of this argument, but was always more persuaded by the ones who believed a) art spoke to something higher than politics, and b) the enemy of all good art is certainty. Chekhov felt an artist’s job wasn’t solving problems but “posing the question correctly,” Auden eulogized Yeats by saying, “Poetry makes nothing happen,” Pushkin said poets were born “not for gain, not for battles,” but “for inspiration, for sweet sounds and prayer,” Wilde said “all art is quite useless,” MacLeish said “A poem should not mean, but be,” and Keats said “we hate poetry that has a palpable design on us.”

What sane person looks back at any of these people and sees reactionary tools and political oppressors? No one. Since they all dedicated their lives to art, they obviously weren’t saying art is meaningless. All of them, and countless others from Baudelaire and Blake to Moe Howard and Louis Armstrong and Weird Al and a million others, saw their vocation as being about making people laugh or inspiring or lifting spirits, and they’re remembered for producing art that belongs to everyone, in a realm above politics.

Of course, to see that, you have to believe there’s something in life more important than politics:

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Actor John Leguizamo, breaking down while receiving the Career Achievement Award from the Critics Choice Association:

Leguizamo has been in a hundred movies and is fresh off a gift gig in the representation Olympics that was The Odyssey. He once boasted that voicing a dipshit sloth in the Ice Age series “got me a brownstone. It got me two extra homes, it got me a beautiful beachfront house in the Hamptons, it got me two pools!” and the next movie might buy “a helicopter” — and that was before he said that even if you “write like Shakespeare” but “look Latino,” the “odds are against you in Hollywood.” He’s whined that Spain’s Javier Bardem (thirty times the actor Leguizamo is) got parts in Before Night Falls and Being the Ricardos, railed against Antonio Banderas being cast in El Mariachi, and decried the choice of James Franco for the coveted role of Fidel Castro (“No more appropriation Hollywood… he ain’t Latino!”). He complained about Carlito’s Way co-star Al Pacino’s iconic performance in Scarface, moaned that John Turturro’s Jesus helped make The Big Lebowski comedy legend, and even blasted the great Eli Wallach, who once received a residual check for two cents (“I’m not a rich man”), for helping turn The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly into an international hit.

Forget that “long-dead British guy” Shakespeare can’t even stay in English departments in America (his portrait was pulled off the walls at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016), Leguizamo is the latest high-profile American male to demonstrate that crying and playing the victim is how a man gets things done now (he should be digitally removed from John Wick for the offense). This is especially true in Hollywood, where Boys Don’t Cry has no meaning, beyond of course being an Oscar-winning role for a woman.

Most men know crying as a real show of emotion is fine, encouraged even, but making shows of loss for material gain has always been considered despicable, from Coriolanus through Kipling (“If you can make one heap of all your winnings/And risk it on one turn at minute nine…”). There is such a thing as manly behavior in a positive sense, and Leguizamo embodies the increasingly common phenomenon of its complete absence in a technical specimen.

Who cares about one actor? No one. I do care about the adult world my sons will soon join. Take a more serious example, the “Cornell 7” case. If any of my boys were involved in a sordid episode like that I’d be horrified for a hundred reasons — because it’s undignified and shows a lack of respect for women, yourself, even your housemates to dance with a girl for five minutes before shopping for a third to play drunk wiener polo, because ketamine makes you dumb as a squirrel, because if you’re too high for sex, she probably is, too, because if you text “free pussy” about any woman you’ll deserve it if her brother shows up to throw you out a window, because no man worth admiring has ever agreed to be the fifth or sixth person to climb on a woman in a night, and so on.

At the same time, it’s outrageous that women have somehow won the right not be named in court papers or media reports after making accusations, or that no one in the intellectual world since Camille Paglia has suggested it’s wrong to allow people to selectively surrender “agency” and personal responsibility (two years ago Jane Doe was voluntarily “ten shots deep” and high as a kite, now she was “plied with alcohol and drugs”). The next generation of boys will have to compete with men and women in an era when “positive masculinity” has been devalued almost out of existence. That’s thanks in significant part to the craven wimphood of American men, who spent most of the last four decades smiling nervously and waving on the transformation of university humanities teaching into one big seminar on men as historical oppressors.

As a result, the taxonomy of male public figures is littered with absurd caricatures like Leguizamo. There are many types, each representing a different spineless strategy for how to compete in a world that tells them their sex is dangerous and superfluous:

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Having dispensed with marriage, the New York Times enlists a professor to denigrate writing

Narrated by Jared Moore

Art by Daniel Medina

Text published 09/30/26:

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The New York Times semi-retracts a 2015 celebration of marriage

Narrated by Jared Moore

Art by Daniel Medina

Text published 09/28/26:

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