118 Posts found for Source: The Atlantic

Being president is impossible. […] To “succeed” in the job, a person needs a broader range of skills than any real human being has ever possessed. Public eloquence. Private persuasive power. IQ. EQ. Stamina. Luck. A generous imagination, but also cold-bloodedness. A thousand traits more. The question is not whether any president will “fail.” It is in which particular way, and how the world will … [ Read more ]

Author: James Fallows | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy

The default setting in world history is authoritarianism. Freedom is a rare appearance on the historical map of the world, and requires extraordinary, extraordinary vigilance and effort to preserve it. And when I see leaders here or elsewhere moving toward authoritarianism, it sets off alarm bells. Because I do read history. The history of the world is strongmen lying to people, gaining power over them … [ Read more ]

Author: Mitt Romney | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: History, Politics & Public Policy

Statistics often tell us more about collection procedures than they do about the phenomenon they are supposed to reflect.

Author: Andrew Hopkins | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Math & Science

It’s possible to care deeply without taking ourselves so seriously.

Author: Faith Hill | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

From the very beginning, the land of the free has also been about the freedom to make and spend money. America put God on our money, but for many Americans, money is God. This nation put profit over morality through centuries of slavery. Individual expediency in the name of capitalism is as American as the right to bear arms. Around the world, no idea has … [ Read more ]

Author: Xochitl Gonzalez | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, Economics | Economy, International, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Politics & Public Policy

Many psychologists believe that as a species, humans are not evolved to enjoy the here and now. Rather, we are wired to time-travel mentally, mostly into the future, to consider new scenarios and try out new ideas. The social psychologist Martin Seligman goes so far as to call our species Homo prospectus.

Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

The hottest commodity of today’s online cultural ecosystem is open conflict. Chitchat on podcasts and livestreams is transfixing because it’s unruly, argumentative, and unafraid of causing offense.

Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Culture, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

The so-called Breitbart Doctrine stated that “politics is downstream from culture”—that is, the ideas conveyed by popular entertainment shapes consumers’ worldviews. This proposition called for conservatives to build a shadow Hollywood that tells conservative stories and raises up conservative stars… In the long run, though, the doctrine’s biggest impact has been encouraging the right to get creative with online culture.

Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy

Back in 2021, I wrote a book about the rise of “illiberal populism,” the self-destructive tendency in some nations that leads people to participate in democratic institutions such as voting while being hostile to democracy itself, casting ballots primarily to punish other people and to curtail everyone’s rights—even their own. These movements are sometimes led by fantastically wealthy faux populists who hoodwink gullible voters by … [ Read more ]

Author: Tom Nichols | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

The NatCons are wrong to think there is a unified thing called “the left” that hates America. This is just the apocalyptic menace many of them had to invent in order to justify their decision to vote for Donald Trump.

They are wrong, too, to think there is a wokeist Anschluss taking over all the institutions of American life. For people who spend so much time … [ Read more ]

Author: David Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy

Conservatives have lately become expert culture warriors—the whole Tucker Carlson schtick. This schtick demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being. It’s a cynical game … [ Read more ]

Author: David Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in a half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

Author: Edmund Burke | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth.

Author: Aldous Huxley | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Fear, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

One way to look at the rise of Donald Trump is as part of a decades-long backlash among the American leadership class to the idea of accountability. Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions… This is not just about Trump; his impunity is the … [ Read more ]

Author: Adam Serwer | Source: The Atlantic (February 26, 2026) | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy

[Paul O’Keefe] and two co-authors—[Carol] Dweck and Greg Walton of Stanford—recently performed a study that suggests it might be time to change the way we think about our interests. Passions aren’t “found,” they argue. They’re developed.

Author: Olga Khazan | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Career, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

The Trump adviser’s assertions about the “real world” reflect a deep misunderstanding of Thomas Hobbes’s dog-eat-dog worldview.

Author: Gal Beckerman | Source: The Atlantic (January 10, 2026) | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Reagan Republicans fully understood the political risks of dismantling more than 50 years of public policy, yet—more effectively than any of their predecessors—they succeeded in manufacturing the popular consent needed to do precisely that. The key to this achievement was a simple but devastating insight: The most effective way to discredit liberal social policy was to starve it of resources and then point to its … [ Read more ]

Author: Heather Ann Thompson | Source: The Atlantic (January2026) | Subjects: America, History, International, Politics & Public Policy

Human beings are group animals, and they are frightened and stressed when expelled from the groups to which they have belonged. Our political attachments often matter much more to us than our political ideas.

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

One of the great mysteries about the rise of populism, in both the United States and Europe, is why it has benefited the political right so much more than the left. For years, American progressives have been trying to get people worked up over rising rates of economic inequality, with the expectation that this anger could fuel greater support for the Democratic Party. Yet the … [ Read more ]

Author: Joseph Heath | Source: The Atlantic (December 15, 2025) | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.

Author: Charlie Warzel | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy