And not a minute too soon. Here we recap another month at Ask Questions Late
October was a mirror reflecting the absurdity of our time. In the Middle East, the second anniversary of Oct. 7 came amid the dim possibility of renewal. In Britain and France, comic convulsions of political dysfunction. In Asia, trade wars. And of course Trump wants to destroy the East Wing of the White House, get generals to fight the “enemy from within,” force reporters to submit advance stories to the Pentagon for vetting, and run for an anti-constitutional third term.
In our latest Critical Conditions podcast Claire Berlinski and I dissected Trump’s additional desire to resume actual nuclear testing after decades — which of course he does, precisely because it’s reckless and will enrage anyone who understand the issue. The people have had enough of experts!
Below we offer a tour of the month’s highlights.
If you agree that independent media like AQL has a place, we invite you to join our growing community and unlock full access by upgrading to a Paid Subscription or Board Membership. And spread the word by inviting friends and colleagues! The sums are small. The meaning is big.
Let Them Eat S##T
We analyzed how the proposed “Trump Ballroom” crystallizes the deeper cultural and political psychosis of the present moment: a president who styles himself as a monarch while the country reels from democratic decay. Announced amid “No Kings” protests, the quarter-billion-dollar annex — funded by defense contractors and Silicon Valley donors — would partly demolish the East Wing to erect a neoclassical palace of chandeliers and Corinthian excess larger than the original White House itself. What was conceived as “the people’s house” is being rewritten as a personal court. We drilled down.
Black October: Two Years Later, a Crossroads Between Ruin and Renewal
Two years after Black October—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust—Dan Perry maps a stark, civilization-scale fork in the road: disarmament and reconstruction that could redraw the Middle East, or a plunge into insurgency, isolation, and decades of ruin.
The Nobel Committee Reminds Us: Venezuela Can Rise Again
In this deeply personal essay, former Associated Press Caracas bureau chief Steven Gutkin revisits Venezuela’s tragic journey from promise to collapse. Arriving in the late 1980s, he recalls a country bursting with music, generosity, and hope—only to watch it descend into populist ruin under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Gutkin witnessed the pivotal moments firsthand: the riots of 1989, Chávez’s failed coup in 1992, and the transformation of a vibrant democracy into an authoritarian kleptocracy. Against this backdrop, he argues that the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for opposition leader María Corina Machado is a signal that the world must help Venezuelans reclaim their future.
Why We Believe (or Pretend To)
Dan Perry ruminates on the persistence of faith in an age that supposedly transcended it. Blending memoir, anthropology, and irony, he sketches archetypes of belief: the Literalist who clings to scripture; the Abstractionist who believes in mystery without myth; the Pragmatist who values ritual for cohesion; the Bargainer who treats belief as insurance; the Conformist who believes by habit; the Mystic, and the Manipulator who exploits the devout. Against these, he places the Outsider—agnostics and atheists who substitute ethics for revelation. Perry concludes that religion’s endurance, despite its harms, springs from humanity’s deepest fear: death. It is not logic but mortality that is the driver.
In the first installment of our series on political systems that may no longer fit their times, veteran journalist Alison Mutler dissects Britain’s first-past-the-post system — a relic of the two-party age now breaking under the weight of a five-party reality. As Labour, the Conservatives, Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and Corbyn’s new party vie for space, the “first past the post” district-based system may yield a random result.
France’s Fifth Republic Has Reached Its Limit
In the second installment of our series on political systems, Claire Berlinski examines the slow collapse of France’s Fifth Republic — a constitution born to impose order on chaos, now succumbing to it. Designed by Charles de Gaulle to deliver stability through a powerful presidency balanced by parliament, it functioned so long as towering personalities embodied national unity. But France in 2025 is fractured into three irreconcilable blocs — Macron’s technocratic center, Le Pen’s nationalist right, and Mélenchon’s radical left — none capable of compromise or majority. As debt mounts and paralysis deepens, Claire argues that the Fifth Republic’s monarchic presidency, once France’s source of strength, has become its fatal weakness.
When did they pass a law that every man has to have a beard?
The brilliant curmudgeon Larry Derfner launches a hilarious broadside against the tyranny of the beards. Once the mark of radicals, rebels, and intellectuals, facial hair has become, he laments, “mandatory”—a woolly badge of conformity stretching from Marxists to MAGA men, from hipsters to hedge-funders. With mock-anthropological zeal, Derfner skewers vanity, fashion, and masculinity with the precision of a razor he wishes more men would use. His conclusion? Beards make half their wearers look absurd and the other half merely older.
The Pentagon’s Putinesque Censorship Ultimatum
We analyzed how the Pentagon’s unprecedented move to compel journalists to publish only “authorized” information marks the most direct assault yet on America’s free press under Trump’s restored administration. The order, which threatens to revoke credentials from reporters who refuse to comply, evokes tactics from Russia, Turkey, and Hungary—where autocrats dismantled independent media piece by piece until only propaganda remained. And it yielded a mass walkout by an extraordinarily unified press. Additionally, on Yom Kippur, we analyzed how Pete Hegseth’s unprecedented mass summons of America’s flag officers to Quantico, to hear an anti-woke harangue followed by Trump’s open call to prepare for domestic crackdowns, was a stress test of civil-military norms.
A Primer on a Prime Example of Systemic Dysfunction
In our third installment on political dysfunction, we turned to the United States, where the month-long government “shutdown” has become a parable of systemic failure. Tens of millions of Americans—especially poor rural voters who support the Republicans driving it — are losing food aid and healthcare after a $4 trillion budget shifted wealth to the rich, slashing programs like SNAP by hundreds of billions. We argued this isn’t just cruelty but a breakdown: the Senate filibuster lets a minority block legislation indefinitely, while Democrats can’t explain the stakes in human terms. Unlike other democracies that keep government running during disputes, America’s laws turn political deadlock into economic suffering. Beyond the shutdown lies a broader indictment of U.S. democracy —gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and a Senate where tiny states wield equal power to California. The result is cynicism, cowardice and confusion, as citizens pay the price for a system that no longer serves them.
