Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground. Russia and Orientalism. Extremisms of Russian and American literature. The holy fool. 2+2=4. Romanticism, nihilism, socialism. To see everything. Christianity vs. rationalism: "The Grand Inquisitor." Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Fecundity of narrative art. Journalism, propaganda, aesthetics. Trump/Russia and the pause of history. Free speech: Milton was right. A new progressive racism?

Watchmen. Favorite characters. Alan Moore as stylist. Superhero comics. Watchmen and Don Quixote. Form and genre: Understanding Comics, understanding superheroes. Watchmen as American literature. Rorschach as hero. Necessity of perversion and extremism. Watchmen as the Bible of people who "go hard." Is there any defense of the Comedian? Watchmen's relevance to the war in Ukraine and renewed nuclear tensions. A debate about the merits of the American empire. Moore as closet conservative. The ambiguity of Ozymandias: ideological, ethnic, scientific, economic. The meaning (and pronunciation) of the vagina dentata. Gender in Moore's oeuvre. Allusions and epigraphs. A guest appearance from Sam's brother.

Erratum: General Pinochet was the dictator of Chile, not Argentina.

Ukraine. A political autobiography. Democracy and empire. Conviction and ambivalence. Ideological ferment: neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and MAGA. Individualism and collective identity in Milan Kundera, Toni Morrison, and Alexandr Dugin. Liberal nationalism. The trouble with land acknowledgments. Getting liberalism's story straight.

Note: my post about Kundera, Morrison, and Dugin.