You probably know what a rage room is. People fork over cash and spend time destroying household items like dishes and furniture cabinets.
They’re marketed as stress relief. But getting violent isn’t a path toward tranquility. It just encourages you to be violent.
Smash a plate or a teacup or a TV as much as you want. It might feel like you’ve released something. But that’s not calm. It’s a fleeting sense of power, easily confused with catharsis.
Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of immigrants if he is elected to a second term, claiming that, among other things, foreign-born workers take jobs from others. His running mate JD Vance has echoed those anti-immigrant views.
Researchers, however, generally agree that massive deportations would hurt the U.S. economy, perhaps even triggering a recession.
Abortion is on the agenda not just in the United States but worldwide.
A majority of people in developed democracies increasingly favor abortion rights and self-determination. And, in most places, laws are shifting to reflect public opinion. Since 2020, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, among others, have legalized abortion. In 2024, France adopted the right to an abortion as a “guaranteed freedom” in its constitution.
On the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump has declared there are serious threats to the United States. First, he said, there is “the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous,” as he told Fox News in an Oct. 13, 2024 interview.
He went on to say that “the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”
The U.S. election system features checks at every step of the process to ensure only lawfully cast ballots are counted. From the poll workers checking in voters at polling locations, to poll observers reviewing the process, to the trained election officials who verify the validity of each ballot cast, every step helps ensure our elections are accurate and secure.
This column explains one less-understood aspect of the postelection process: election certification.
Many Latinos regularly declare: “Día de los Muertos is not Mexican Halloween.” The declaration is increasingly repeated by non-Latinos too.
Drawing a clear line between the two holidays is a rhetorical strategy to protect Day of the Dead’s integrity as Mexican cultural heritage and separate it from American popular culture. However, as a Mexican-American who celebrates Día de los Muertos and as a scholar of culture and performance, I believe it’s time to fully acknowledge the cultural intermixing that’s happening between the two holidays.
Halloween these days calls pumpkins to mind, cackling witches, teenagers pulling pranks, and scream masks. You probably know that all this derives from All Hallows’ Eve, the night before the Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day, the time when the dead are remembered.
But Christianity itself appropriated the tradition from pagan ancestors. And so the night which is, in the secular and commercial world, Halloween and in the Christian calendar, All Hallows’ Eve, has its roots in the pagan Wheel of the Year and the festival of Samhain.
Halloween is a time to embrace all that is disgusting, from bloody slasher films to haunted houses full of fake guts and gore.
But the attraction to stuff that grosses us out goes beyond this annual holiday.
Imagine a grand house on a hill, after dark on an autumn night. As the door opens, an organ pierces through the thick silence and echoes through the cavernous halls.
The tune that comes to many minds will be Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, an organ work composed in the early 18th century. Most people today recognize it as a sonic icon of a certain type of fear: haunting and archaic, the kind of thing likely to be manufactured by someone – a ghost, perhaps – wearing a tuxedo and lurking in an abandoned mansion.
When a pessimist is told there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s likely to assume it’s an onrushing train. According to journalist Sydney Harris, “A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he’s prematurely disappointed in the future.”
Pessimism and cynicism are fashionable these days, but it’s the people who see and celebrate the positive aspects of life who live best.
