When Your Friend Gives You a Book and You Begin to Question the Friendship

 Recently, a long‑time friend gifted me a book. Normally this is a safe bet. I’m an avid reader. Give me paper with words on it, and I’m happy. I read cereal boxes. I read museum plaques. I read the fine print on shampoo bottles. I read everything.

So, imagine my shock when I opened this book and discovered… nothing. Nothing, as in no punctuation. Not a period. Not a comma. Not even a rebellious semi‑colon trying to start a revolution. Just one long, uninterrupted literary scream. It felt like the author had taken a deep breath in 1972 and never exhaled.

I fought my way through a couple of pages—squinting, sweating, mentally begging for a comma like it was water in the desert—before emailing Joe, my friend of nearly 50 years, to ask whether the entire book was written like someone had thrown grammar out a window.

Joe confirmed that yes, the whole thing was punctuation‑free. He encouraged me to read on, pointing out the literary and cultural allusions sprinkled throughout the first few pages as if that would soothe my rising blood pressure.

I had caught the allusions—plus a few he hadn’t mentioned—but the experience was giving me a headache. Still, I trudged through the first chapter, mostly out of stubbornness and the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, a period would appear like a rare desert flower.

It did not.

Meanwhile, Joe started sending me articles—glowing reviews of the book—to convince me to read on. With 50 years of friendship, I generally trust Joe’s recommendations, so I went back to the beginning and slogged through to the end of the second chapter.

That’s when I had the moment. The moment every reader knows. The moment when you close the book, stare into the middle distance, and think: “Why am I doing this to myself?”

Life is too short to spend your free time wrestling with a book that feels like an Olympic event.

Now, let me be clear.

As I wrote previously, there is power in reading. Some books are challenging because they’re meant to be; they offer deep truths, vital history, or new ways of seeing the world. Some books are emotionally heavy or slow, but worth the effort because they expand your mind. And some books should be read simply because they’re foundational to cultural literacy.

But here’s the problem: Americans aren’t reading much anymore. The National Endowment for the Arts reports that the share of people who read for pleasure on any given day dropped from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023—a decline of more than 40%. According to YouGov’s data 40% of Americans didn’t read a single book in 2025. 

There are many reasons for this decline, but one big one is that people don’t enjoy reading something simply because they're told they should read it.

So, here’s my suggestion: Your free time is precious. Don’t spend it on a book that bores you or frustrates you. There are millions of wonderful books waiting for you. Giving up on a boring one simply frees you to find a story you’ll actually love.

 

What Happens When God is Dead?

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” he was not simply making an argument against belief. He was diagnosing a cultural crisis. The old religious framework that had given Western civilization its moral order, shared meaning, and sense of cosmic purpose was losing its power. The question was no longer whether people would believe in something sacred. The question was what they would treat as sacred once traditional religion declined.

Nietzsche’s Warning: The Crisis of Meaning

Nietzsche first wrote the phrase “God is dead” in The Gay Science and later expanded on it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He was not claiming that a supernatural being had literally died, nor was he merely offering atheism as a doctrine. His point was much larger: the Enlightenment, scientific skepticism, and the rise of modern secular thought had undermined the old Christian metaphysical order that once anchored Western morality.

For Nietzsche, this loss created a frightening vacuum. If society no longer relied on God as the source of moral truth, then the inherited categories of right and wrong began to lose their foundation. The result was nihilism: the sense that life has no intrinsic meaning, value, or direction. Nietzsche believed modern people would have to confront this emptiness honestly rather than pretend the old certainties still held.

Jung’s Answer: The Religious Function Does Not Disappear

Carl Jung approached the same problem from psychology. Unlike Sigmund Freud, who often treated religion as illusion or neurosis, Jung argued that the “religious function” is built into the human psyche. By this he did not mean organized religion, doctrine, or creed. He meant the mind’s deep need for relationship with the sacred, the mysterious, and the numinous—those experiences that inspire awe and give life meaning.

Jung preferred the older Latin sense of religio, meaning careful consideration. True religion, in this sense, is not blind belief but careful attention to the deep currents of inner life. It is the conscious observation of the unconscious, the symbolic, and the mysterious forces that shape human behavior.

The Sacred Always Finds a New Home

If Jung was right, then the decline of traditional religion does not eliminate the human need for meaning. It merely redirects it. When people lose connection to the religious function, the sacred energy and quest for meaning goes somewhere else. Money, possessions, science, addictive substances, or political movements with charismatic leaders who become substitute gods.

This is why modern politics can take on a religious intensity. Parades, banners, rallies, slogans, and mass gatherings can function like substitute liturgies and rituals. They give people a feeling of belonging, certainty, and protection within a larger collective body. Political doctrines become absolute truth. Leaders are treated as prophets. Dissent becomes heresy.

Jung warned that when individuals surrender conscience to the crowd or the state, they lose their moral compass. In mass movements, people can sink below their ordinary level of judgment, becoming more emotional, more suggestible, and more willing to commit acts they would reject as individuals. Destructive political ideas can possess people with the force ancient cultures once attributed to demons.

The Remedy

Nietzsche and Jung both believed the answer begins with the individual. Nietzsche saw struggle, suffering, and inner chaos as the raw material of self-overcoming. His famous line “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star” captures the idea that growth requires tension. A person must pass through uncertainty and loss to create a stronger, freer self.

Jung likewise argued that the only real defense against collective madness is psychological maturity. A person who understands their own mind, acknowledges their own dark impulses, and thinks independently is less likely to be swept up by the frenzy of the crowd. Such a person can resist the temptation to hand their conscience over to a party, leader, state, or ideology.

The deeper solution is not to replace one idol with another. It is to cultivate meaning from the inside out: through honest self-knowledge, deep relationships, meaningful work, art, philosophy, and a genuine inner spiritual life. When people are rooted in living meaning, they become far less vulnerable to the false promises of political utopias offered by authoritarians.

Why This Still Matters

The modern world has not outgrown the sacred. It has merely become confused about where the sacred lives. Nietzsche warned that the death of God would unleash a crisis of meaning. Jung warned that the religious instinct would not disappear; it would seek new objects. Together, they show why a society that abandons inner meaning may end up worshipping power, ideology, or the crowd.

The task, then, is not simply to believe or disbelieve. It is to become conscious of what we serve. If we do not carefully cultivate meaning within ourselves, something outside us will gladly offer one—and may demand our conscience in return.

What I’m Reading: Voices from Earlier Generations

As I prepare my upcoming lecture series, The Anatomy of Fascism, I’ve spent the past few months reading widely. Much of that work has focused on contemporary political philosophy and analyses of authoritarianism, fascism, and Nazism. But I’ve also returned to several older works that feel especially worth revisiting in the current political climate.

Some of these works connect obviously to authoritarianism and fascism.

• George Orwell: 1984 (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) are layered critiques of authoritarianism, each approaching the subject from a different angle: dystopian prophecy in one case, political allegory in the other. Together, they offer Orwell’s most forceful warning about how oppressive systems rise, consolidate power, and destroy truth

• Sinclair Lewis: It Can’t Happen Here (1935) remains one of the sharpest American literary warnings about fascism—not as a foreign import, but as something that could grow from U.S. traditions, anxieties, and political habits. Lewis suggests that American fascism would arise from populism, nationalism, economic fear, and the appeal of a “strong man” promising order.

Other works I’ve returned to are less obviously tied to The Anatomy of Fascism, but they still speak powerfully to the topic and to current political moments.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925) is an elegant critique of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby embodies that dream in motion, but Fitzgerald shows how the American’s Dream promise—that anyone can succeed through hard work—collapses under wealth, class, illusion, and human frailty. The novel portrays a nation where aspiration curdles into disillusionment, a theme I will connect to fascism’s roots in The Anatomy of Fascism.

• Ernest Hemingway: In A Movable Feast (1964) and The Sun Also Rises (1926), Hemingway traces two stages of disillusionment—one reflective and elegiac, the other raw and immediate. Both works show the “Lost Generation” struggling to rebuild meaning after World War I. Disillusionment is one of fascism’s emotional engines: not because disillusioned people seek tyranny, but because widespread loss of faith—political, economic, cultural, and moral—creates a vacuum that fascist movements can fill with certainty, identity, and rage.

• Christopher Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin (1939) offers a vivid eyewitness account of fascism’s rise in everyday life—not through grand speeches, but through the gradual normalization of hatred, poverty, and political violence.  Isherwood shows fascism emerging slowly, through social decay, economic desperation, moral collapse, and the willingness of ordinary people to look away.  The 1966 musical play and 1972 film Cabaret are based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera, itself adapted from Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin.

To understand what we are experiencing today, we sometimes need to listen to the voices of earlier generations.

Read on!

 

 

Democratic Socialism, Communism, and Political Language

Democratic socialism has surged into public conversation in recent years, prompting a familiar question: Is this the next evolution of the Democratic Party? While it is far too early to make sweeping predictions, one thing is clear—democratic socialism has become a visible and growing faction within the party. The result is an ideological tug‑of‑war between the party’s long‑established center‑left wing and an energized, farther‑left movement pushing for deeper structural change.

This internal debate is not happening in a vacuum. Democratic socialist candidates have gained traction in local elections, and the movement’s policy priorities—universal healthcare, aggressive housing affordability measures, and stronger wealth redistribution—have resonated with a sizable portion of voters. That visibility has also brought opposition, including a persistent rhetorical strategy: equating democratic socialism with communism.

Why Confusion?

Some of the conflation of democratic socialism and communism is deliberate political propaganda—designed to provoke emotional reactions rather than encourage thoughtful discussion. But part of the confusion is historical and conceptual. In the United States in particular, these two left‑leaning ideologies are often collapsed into a single category. Both ideologies after all critique capitalism and highlight social, political, and economic inequality. Both seek to expand social ownership and reduce exploitation. But democratic socialism and communism differ in fundamental ways; their methods, goals, and political assumptions diverge sharply.

Democratic Socialism vs. Communism: What is the Difference?

Democratic Socialism seeks to reduce inequality and expand public ownership in key sectors while preserving democratic freedoms. Markets still exist, but they are regulated and balanced with strong social protections. Change happens through democratic institutions—elections, legislation, and public participation.

Communism envisions a classless, stateless society with no private property and fully communal ownership of production. The path to this society is revolutionary, typically involving a single party that centralizes power during the transition.

A Side‑by‑Side Comparison

Path to Change

·        Democratic Socialism: Reformist—works through elections, legislation, and democratic processes.

·        Communism: Revolutionary—seeks to overthrow capitalism and transition through a socialist state.

Political System

·        Democratic Socialism: Requires multi‑party democracy, civil liberties, free press, and constitutional protections.

·        Communism: Concentrates authority in a single party, even though its theoretical end goal is a stateless society.

Economic Structure

·        Democratic Socialism: Mixed economy with public ownership of major sectors and regulated private enterprise. Worker cooperatives and public accountability are common elements.

·        Communism: Full socialization of the means of production; markets are replaced by centralized planning.

Why Clear Language Matters

Explaining democratic socialism—or any political ideology—does not imply agreement with it. But meaningful democratic debate does require clarity. When political language becomes sloppy, as George Orwell warned, public reasoning decays with it. Propaganda thrives in ambiguity. Democracy does not.

If we want rational political conversations, we must resist emotional shortcuts and insist on precise language. Clear thought depends on clear words—and clear words are essential for democratic life.

What I'm Reading - Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson

Every so often, a book arrives at exactly the moment it’s needed. Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America is one of those rare works—part history lesson, part warning flare, part call to citizenship. Drawing on the same clear-eyed analysis that powers her newsletter Letters from an American, Richardson offers a sweeping narrative of how the United States arrived at its current political crossroads and what it will take to move forward.

This isn’t just a chronicle of recent events. It’s a story about the long arc of American democracy—how it has bent, broken, and been repaired by generations who refused to surrender it.

How Democracies Falter: The Authoritarian Playbook

One of Richardson’s central arguments is that the threats facing American democracy today are not new. She traces how an elite minority has repeatedly used language, mythmaking, and selective history to consolidate power. From the post–Civil War backlash to the rise of modern conservatism, she shows how political movements have often relied on:

• Creating an “us vs. them” narrative
• Rewriting history to justify exclusion
• Using fear to weaken democratic norms

Richardson doesn’t frame this as inevitability. Instead, she shows how these tactics have been used—and resisted—throughout American history.

A Historical Roadmap for the Present

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its ability to connect eras that often feel disconnected. Richardson moves seamlessly from:

• the ideals of the Founders,
• to the abolitionists who insisted those ideals apply to everyone,
• to the New Deal’s reimagining of government’s role,
• to the political realignments of the Nixon era,
• to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

By placing these moments in conversation with one another, she reveals a pattern: American democracy has always been contested, and its survival has always depended on ordinary people choosing to defend it.

A Call to Action—Rooted in Hope, Not Despair

What makes Democracy Awakening more than a history book is its insistence that the story isn’t over. Richardson highlights the countless times marginalized groups—women, Black Americans, immigrants, labor organizers—have pushed the nation closer to its stated ideals.

Her message is clear: Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires participation, vigilance, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. But she also reminds readers that Americans have risen to this challenge before. The book is ultimately hopeful because it trusts the power of informed citizens to shape the future.

Why This Book Matters Now

In a moment when political language is weaponized, when misinformation spreads faster than facts, and when many feel exhausted by division, Richardson offers something rare: clarity. She gives readers a framework for understanding the present without losing sight of the past. She shows how democratic erosion happens—and how it can be stopped. And she invites all of us to see ourselves not as spectators to history, but as participants in it.

If you’re looking for a book that explains not just what is happening in American politics but why it’s happening—and what can still be done—Democracy Awakening is essential reading. Because, as Richardson reminds us, democracy doesn’t disappear all at once. It erodes when people stop paying attention. And it revives when they decide to act.

 

Emotional Reasoning: When Feelings Masquerade as Facts

 There is a quiet, persistent cognitive trap that slips into everyday thinking, often without our noticing. It whispers a simple but seductive message: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

·       If I feel anxious, the situation must be dangerous.

·       If I feel guilty, I must have done something wrong.

·       If I feel dismissed, the other person must have intended to hurt me.

·       If I feel frightened, the other person must be a threat.

This is emotional reasoning—the habit of treating feelings as objective evidence, as facts. Emotional reaction defines reality. Even when empirical evidence contradicts the feeling, the feeling wins. This is why emotional reasoning is so powerful—and so distorting. It bypasses the slow, reflective parts of the mind and goes straight to certainty. The emotion becomes the proof – and the conclusion.

The problem is that while emotions are real, they are not facts.

The Personal Cost of Treating Feelings as Facts

Relying on emotional reasoning can quietly erode a person’s essential psychological capacities:

·       Impaired Self‑Awareness

When emotions are treated as truth, we stop examining our emotions. We do not ask: Where is this feeling coming from? What triggered it? Is it accurate? Instead, we accept the emotion as a verdict.

·       Weakened Emotional Growth

Ironically, treating feelings as facts prevents people from understanding their own emotions. Instead of asking “What is this feeling trying to tell me?” the mind jumps straight to “This feeling is the truth.” Emotional reasoning blocks the very self-awareness that leads to maturity, empathy, and resilience.

·       Reduced Emotional Resilience

If every uncomfortable feeling signals danger, failure, or rejection, then discomfort itself becomes intolerable. Emotional resilience requires the capacity to adapt, recover, and grow stronger when faced with stress, trauma, or adversity.

·       Distorted Personal Decision‑Making

When emotions become evidence, people make choices based on fear, shame, anger, or insecurity rather than on clear thinking. This can lead to avoidable conflicts, impulsive decisions, and self‑sabotage. Over time, emotional reasoning can trap people in cycles of anxiety or resentment because the feeling continually recreates the “proof.”

·       Reinforced Cognitive Biases

Emotional reasoning strengthens the mental shortcuts we already have—especially the ones that distort reality. And the most powerful of these shortcuts is confirmation bias.

Confirmation Bias: The Emotional Echo Chamber

When emotional reasoning takes the wheel, confirmation bias becomes its loyal co‑pilot. People unconsciously:

• Seek out information that validates their feelings.
• Accept evidence that supports those feelings.
• Remember details that reinforce the emotional narrative.
• Ignore or dismiss anything that contradicts their feelings.

The result is a self‑sealing emotional logic loop. If I feel threatened, I will notice every sign of danger and overlook every sign of safety. If I feel unappreciated, I will remember every slight and forget every kindness. If I feel certain I am right, I will interpret all new information as proof – and reject any evidence to the contrary. The feeling creates the belief, and the belief protects the feeling.

The Social Cost of Treating Feelings as Facts

In a world saturated with outrage-driven media, political polarization, and algorithmic echo chambers, emotional reasoning is not just a private mental habit; it has public consequences. When enough people begin to treat feelings as facts, the boundary between subjective experience and shared reality starts to erode. And once that boundary weakens, everything built upon it—trust, dialogue, community, democracy—begins to wobble.

·       Emotional Reasoning Damages Relationships

If “I feel hurt” automatically becomes “you intended to hurt me,” then misunderstandings escalate into moral judgments. Emotional reasoning turns partners, friends, and colleagues into mind‑readers who are always failing the test. It replaces curiosity with certainty and replaces dialogue with accusation. Relationships become fragile because every uncomfortable emotion is treated as a formal accusation.

·       Emotional Reasoning Fuels Polarization and Outrage

At the societal level, emotional reasoning is rocket fuel for polarization. Outrage-driven media ecosystems thrive on emotional certainty:

o   I feel threatened, therefore the other side must be dangerous.

o   I feel disgust, therefore the issue must be immoral.

o   I feel loyal, therefore my group must be right.

When feelings become the arbiter of truth, people stop engaging with evidence and start defending emotional narratives. Public discourse becomes a contest of whose feelings are louder, not whose arguments are stronger.

·       Emotional Reasoning Makes Us Vulnerable to Manipulation

Advertisers, political strategists, and social media algorithms all understand one thing: emotions move people faster than facts. Emotional reasoning creates a population that is easier to influence, easier to divide, and easier to mislead. If a message can trigger the right feeling, it does not need to be accurate. It only needs to be emotionally plausible.

·       Emotional Reasoning Undermines Shared Reality

A functioning society depends on at least some agreement about what is real. Emotional reasoning fractures that agreement. When personal feelings override observable facts, we lose the ability to solve collective problems—from public health to climate resilience to community safety—because we no longer start from the same ground.

Reclaiming the distinction between what we feel and what is true is not just a psychological skill. It is a civic one. Emotions are essential. But they are signals, not verdicts. A healthy society requires the ability to feel deeply without surrendering our judgment. When we learn to hold our emotions with respect but not obedience, we reclaim the ability to think clearly, connect honestly, and live in a reality that is shared rather than splintered.

An Invitation to Action

If emotional reasoning is a quiet force shaping our inner lives and our shared world, then the work of countering it begins with something deceptively simple: pausing before we conclude. Not suppressing emotions. Not shaming ourselves for having them. Just pausing long enough to ask: “Am I treating this feeling as a fact?” That pause is the hinge on which clearer thinking, healthier relationships, and stronger communities turn.

So, here is the invitation:

• Notice your emotional narratives. When a feeling arrives with certainty, get curious.
• Seek evidence that challenges your first emotional reaction – not to invalidate the feeling, but to broaden the picture.
• Ask others how they experienced the same moment. Shared reality is built through shared inquiry.
• Practice emotional humility. The willingness to say, “I might be wrong,” is not weakness. It is wisdom.
• Model this publicly. In conversations, classrooms, families, and communities, show what it looks like to hold feelings with respect but not obedience.

We cannot stop emotions from arising. But we can stop them from becoming unquestioned truth. And if enough of us do that—patiently, consistently, courageously—we help rebuild something our culture desperately needs: a reality grounded not in the volatility of emotion, but in the steadiness of reflection, evidence, and shared understanding.

 

 

The Founders and the Problem of Parties

This morning someone asked me whether America’s Founders were truly opposed to political parties. It is a familiar question, and for good reason: the early republic was full of warnings about “factions,” the term they used before “party” became standard political vocabulary.

George Washington’s Farewell Address is the most famous example. As he prepared to leave office, he cautioned that factions would inflame jealousies, divide the nation into rival camps, and invite foreign powers to manipulate American politics. Washington’s concern was civic and national: parties, he believed, threatened the fragile unity of the new republic.

Thomas Jefferson is often quoted—and often misquoted—on the subject. A popular paraphrase has him saying, “If there are political parties in heaven, I’d rather not go there.” Jefferson did not write that exact line, but he did write something close. In a 1789 letter to Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party… If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Jefferson’s point was philosophical and personal. He believed that republican virtue required independent judgment, and that parties demanded a kind of moral surrender. To join a party was, in his view, to hand over one’s conscience.

James Madison, ever the architect, approached the problem differently. He agreed that factions were dangerous—especially when a majority could use them to oppress a minority. But unlike Washington or Jefferson, Madison believed that given human nature factions were inevitable and that they could not be eliminated without unjustly limiting freedom. As he wrote in the Federalist Papers, the task therefore was not to eliminate factions but to “break and control the violence” they could unleash. His answer was structural: a large republic, separation of powers, and institutional designs that force competing interests to check one another.

So, while Jefferson, Washington, and Madison all distrusted parties, they distrusted them for different reasons: Jefferson feared the corruption of personal judgment, Washington feared the loss of national unity, and Madison feared the tyranny of an unchecked majority. And yet, despite their warnings, parties emerged almost immediately.  Jefferson, Washington, and Madison warned us—and we still walked right into the trap.