by Matthew Friedman | Mar 28, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Commentary
“Getting the Hell out of here” is on my mind these days. I live in a deep-blue part of New Jersey, no more than a couple of miles from one of those liberal universities that give Redhats hives. But if I go just a mile further out in either direction, I...
by Matthew Friedman | Mar 21, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Commentary
I could never have imagined that I would find myself “behind the lines.” The phrase was always a feature of the kind of military adventures that I consumed as a boy; the First World War ace forced down behind the German Trenches, Jan Kubis in Alan...
by Matthew Friedman | Feb 15, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Commentary
I am not really a flag guy. I don’t like them. They flatten complex ideas, communities, and identities into simple, two-dimensional images and have historically served as instruments of discipline that evacuate politics and ideas of any depth of meaning. They are a...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 8, 2023 | Commentary
I have been watching the events in the State of Israel with horror. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand Israelis have been killed in Hamas’s attack, hundreds more Gazans have died under Israeli missiles and “bunker-buster” bombs. And the State of Israel’s Defense Minister...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 14, 2023 | Commentary
I had no idea when I woke up this morning that I was going to spend most of my day trying to contact an unresponsive multi-billion-dollar media corporation and trying to save The Typescript from the predations of late-capitalist corporate colonialism. I thought I...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 16, 2023 | Commentary, Essays
My first impression of the United States was… not great. I remember watching scraps of paper packaging blow unobstructed down the street in the late-summer breeze, corner trash bins overflowing twice their volume, crumbling concrete, cracked bricks, and peeling paint....