Alex Sayf Cummings's Blog, page 2

Rumors, Paranoia, and Repression: The American Left, 1919 to the Present

The US government has long repressed the Left, often violently, but covert infiltration helped fracture progressive movements psychologically.

Hierarchies of Care and Hierarchies of Children

There are few things scarier in American politics than a group that calls itself "Moms for Liberty."

Trouble with the Brothers: Booze, Divorce, and Madness in the American West

The past really is a foreign country, as historian Jonathan Ablard finds when piecing together the turbulent history of his ancestors in the West and Midwest.

Real Reality Bites Hours: Loving the World of NYC Dating Hell in Celine Song’s ‘Materialists’

Love is a dog from class-war Hell in Celine Song's charming follow-up to Past Lives.

The Violence and Dishonesty of “White Genocide”

Babble about "white genocide" not only deceives people with a false narrative; it also obscures and erases the real genocides of our past and present.

AI Can Lie Without Trying Even a Little Bit

Just ask my underling who begs to work harder.

What Songs Do We Sing for the Dead? The Dark Void at the Heart of ‘The Righteous Gemstones’

No album has so consistently tried to kill me as much as Sufjan Stevens's 2015 Carrie and Lowell.

Emaciated Women, Febrile Jesuses, and Horrible Labyrinths: The World of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’s ‘Heretic’

The film Heretic offers a very rare exploration into faith and morality, even though it's a gruesome horror movie.

‘Mickey 17’: It’s Hard Out Here for a Print

Mickey 17 gives a rollicking tale of a Muskian world where workers have been turned into rebootable NPCs.

Exquisite Frustration: Twentieth Century Stereotypes of Ph.D. Students

Half the people I knew in graduate school were going to write a novel about it.  I thought about it myself.  No one ever wrote such a book, as far as I know...