Rick Perlstein
American historian of the American conservative movement; author of Before the Storm (2001), Nixonland (2008), The Invisible Bridge (2014) and Reaganland (2020). Writes Rickipedia, a newsletter on politics, history, culture and jazz.
Rick Perlstein did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe reason for this Rube Goldberg arrangement is that PayPal, basically, acts like all Palestinians must be ISIS money launderers or something; his own accounts get randomly canceled all the time.
↗Make a Moral Wilderness Bloomrickperlstein.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsI later learned from a Palestinian friend that these forests were often specifically planted to obscure the sites of depopulated Palestinian villages, whose remains can be made out.
↗Make a Moral Wilderness Bloomrickperlstein.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThere's a whole intellectual tradition in the Marxist historiography from the 1970s and '80s analyzing incumbent firms' tendency to ask to be regulaled in times of industrial ferment, because, when regulators are captured, it is a way to crowd out challengers, and to shape the marketplace to your liking; also, to deflect, denude, and defenestrate popular political energy to actually regulate them in the public interest.
↗Why AI Execs Say AI Will Eat Yourickperlstein.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsAnd, in the case of AI, to supercharge their price-to-earning ratios by backing their made-up claims that their machines are so powerful they will replace every job.
↗Why AI Execs Say AI Will Eat Yourickperlstein.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 6 days earlier
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Their wordsBecause, if there ever was an actual affirmative cultural content to "whiteness"that didn't actually signify "not a member of a degraded caste", a concept of "white genius" that didn't make you sound like one of Stephen Miller's favorite accounts on X, it inheres in the style of jazz invented by "white" Americans from rural backgrounds in the 1970s and into the '80s.
↗...in which the Rickipedian breaks deeply felt personal principle.rickperlstein.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Most music writing in the internet age should consist only of a link and a brief recommendation.
Their wordsSeriously, I believe 98% of music writing, in this here age of teh Internet, should consist of a link and three words: listen to this.
↗...in which the Rickipedian breaks deeply felt personal principle.rickperlstein.substack.com 3rd of 2 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
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Their wordsthe obsession with polling itself--a novel development of the last several decades--is, itself, politically, morally, and civically damaging?
↗Polling Sucksrickperlstein.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsIn my judgement, it is (1) therapeutic, stanching existentailly paintful doubt about the future that is central to the human condition; (2) profitable (I need not say much), and (3) a useful source of grist for those seeking to manipulate public perception more generally
↗Polling Sucksrickperlstein.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAAVE was how the enslaved forever integrated into English a more African than "Western" (a word I despise) connection of mind to body, and body to nature nature (as expressed by James' point about his body register changes in the atmopshere, except in his donnish argot); and a more African conception of musicality, especially rhythmic but also tonal ("melisma," the musicologists call it); not to mention an African conception of parody and play as a mode of human interconnectedness.