Magazine: “The Venture-Capital Populist: How David Sacks and the new tech right went full MAGA and captured Washington” by George Packer in The Atlantic, June 2026 – Because of extreme cold, the 2025 presidential inauguration was held inside the U.S. Capital. The smaller venue limited how many could attend in person. I found it notable that photos of the ceremony showed the front row occupied not by members of the Cabinet but by leaders of the nation’s tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Google, and X. I saved that photo as an emblem of the marriage of high tech and a government regime with fascist aspirations. Two decades ago, tech founders seemed grounded in the left side of the political spectrum. What changed? This article, by George Packer, who is best known for his deep explorations of U.S. foreign policy, national politics, and the socio-economic divisions shaping modern America, profiles David Sacks, a native of South Africa who made his initial fortune alongside Elon Musk with PayPal, who was appointed White House AI and Crypto Czar in the second Trump administration. This quote gives a sense of this article. It refers to Sacks’ position that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was entirely Ukraine’s fault. According to Packer, “It’s worth asking how someone so committed to facts and logic could end up spouting such nonsense. If Sacks made investment decisions on this basis, he would go bankrupt. An obvious explanation is that a successful businessman might not know much about history and politics. But an intellectual deficiency can be compounded by a moral one.” That moral deficiency is the willingness of Sacks and the other Tech Bros to embrace what Packer calls the most corrupt administration in American history to grow their already enormous wealth. Whatever room they enter, these guys not only believe they are the smartest one in it, but that everyone else should be unquestionably grateful to them for their brilliance. When ordinary people began turning hostile towards tech for all the harm social media has wrought, and all the anticipated and magnified harm that AI will bring (as used by these people), the tech bros fled to a corrupt, anti-populist regime that permitted tech to maximize its own wealth at the expense of everyone else, as long as the regime got its cut of the profits. 

Newspaper: “Pope’s Encyclical Calls for Putting Humanity at the Heart of Technological Change” by Ruth Graham and Elizabeth Dias, New York Times, May 27. 2026. Pope Leo XIV, a native of Chicago and the first American Pope, has criticized governments over immigration crackdowns and war. Now he has spoken out on artificial intelligence and technology in general by issuing his first encyclical, called Magnifica Humanitas. I downloaded it but haven’t read it yet – it’s quite long – but have followed the mainstream news coverage of it. He warns that technology should not be allowed to take away the dignity of ordinary human beings, and says humane labor practices and just wages remain essential. While this pronouncement is focused on the impact of AI, it is also a critique of the modern economy where more and more of the world’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small group of people. Government, which once leveled the playing field between corporate owners and individual workers, has become a tool of the wealthy and the expense of the many. 

Newspaper: “Jill Lepore adds a Pulitzer to her laurels, but she’s nowhere near ready to rest” by Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe, May 23, 2026. When Jill Lepore’s first book – The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity was published in 1998, I was in the midst of a late in life masters in history program at Salem State and was in a course on colonial America. I scooped up this book and wrote a paper on King Philip’s War (which had a profound impact on the subsequent history of Lowell). However, when her next book came out, I bought it, read it, and thought it was just OK (I can’t even recall the title). Since then, Lepore has been omnipresent in American history and culture, as a prolific author, a staff writer for The New Yorker and as a full professor at Harvard. Earlier this month, she also won the Pulitzer Prize for history with her latest book, We The People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. A week ago when I was at lala books on Market Street with a gift certificate I had received I spotted We The People on the New Nonfiction table, took that as an omen, and bought the book. Every Pulitzer Prize winning history or biography that I’ve read has been a good book and I expect this to be that. And in the age of Trump and the corrupt Supreme Court, knowing the history of the Constitution is valuable information to have. This article quotes Lepore: “I’m really fascinated by the relationship between the past and the present . . . The way we tell stories is how we anchor ourselves in time. That’s what I’m interested in.” She also said that one of the reasons we’re in our current predicament is that it is so difficult to amend the US Constitution. In contrast, the Massachusetts Constitution which predated the US version, has been amended more than 100 times which is not a lot for state constitutions. But the US Constitution was last amended in 1971. Lepore says to be functional, a constitution must be “durable and changeable.” Because the US procedure for amend is so difficult and rare, it is decisions of the Supreme Court that amend the Constitution by its decisions. Since not everyone agrees with those decisions, there is a sense that unelected judges are encroaching on the people’s government. I have a big stack of books to be read before this one, but whenever I do get to it, I’ll be sure to review it here.

Newspaper: “Cambodia’s Leader Suddenly Pardons Top Opposition Politician” by Sue Narin and Sui-Lee Wee, New York Times, May 27, 2026 – Because Lowell has the second largest population of Cambodian-Americans in the United States, and because the politics of Cambodia today have repercussions for the politics in Lowell, anytime I see a news story about Cambodia, I pay attention. This one reports that Hun Sen, the longtime leader of Cambodia, “pardoned” Kem Sokha, one of the leaders of the opposition party who has been under house arrest for years. Sokha is a founder of the Cambodia National Rescue Party which was the main opposition to Hun Sen and his followers. Although Sokha’s supporters must be pleased with his release, they are also realistic that this is not a move towards reform but an attempt to lessen Western scrutiny of the country and its regressive political practices. I believe the Cambodian-Americans in Lowell fall on both sides of this divide and that the intensity of that divide seeps into local politics here. 

Newspaper: “A eulogy for Schlitz, the cheap beer that made me a beer lover” by Kevin Slane, Boston Globe, May 24, 2026. Like many, my introduction to beer occurred when I went away to college (which was during the short window during which the drinking age was 18). My preferred brand was Miller, or sometimes Michelob but that was more expensive. Because I went to school in Rhode Island, there was plenty of Narragansett to be had. Schlitz was in the refrigerator case of the local liquor store but no one ever seemed to buy it. “The beer that made Milwaukee famous didn’t have much of a following in the late 1970s. This story’s author went to school in Wisconsin in 2008 which is where he first tried Schlitz. He says he enjoyed it. The brand, now owned by Pabst, is being discontinued, hence the “eulogy” in the title. Interestingly, the author says in a cost cutting measure in the late 1970s, whoever owned Schlitz at the time revised the formula to use cheaper ingredients and the beer lost much of its popularity, although it switched back to the traditional better-tasting recipe by 2000. 

Newspaper: “Joe Sedelmaier, Auteur Behind ‘Where’s the Beef?’ Ad, Dies at 92” New York Times, May 21, 2026, by Richard Sandomir. I’d never heard of Joe Sedelmaier but this story caught my eye because the ‘Where’s the Beef” commercials were big in popular culture in the early 1980s. It was so big that in the 1984 Democratic Presidential Primary, former Vice President Wallter Mondale used it to skewer Gary Hart whose campaign was surging on the strength of his promise of “new ideas” that were never defined or described.