Angry Planet

America spent most of the 19th century at war with itself. It conquered its western expanse then collapsed into civil war. Once the North beat the South, partisan politics consumed the country for a generation. A string of assassinations, progressive firebrands, and civil service reforms burned people out on domestic politics and a bored and febrile nation began to search for meaning beyond its borders. It noticed the Spanish Empire was awfully close.

In Splendid Liberators, award winning journalist Joe Jackson chronicles the beginning of the American myth of the “good war.” He’s on the show today to talk to us about Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and a general who lay in state at the Alamo.

Recurring patterns in American history
Roscoe Conkling jumpscare
Remnants of the Spanish-American War in South Carolina
What did liberty mean in the 19th century?
Clara Barton, Leonard Wood and the dual American personality
The first modern concentration camps
The Battleship of Maine
When Congress used to fight, physically
Drones won’t win a war
The US in the Philippines
‘The water cure’
American historians facing reality in the Philippines
Teddy, finally
Laying in state at the Alamo

Buy Splendid Liberators

A Defense of General Funston
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Greenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an impassible warren of ice and snow has become a geopolitical opportunity.

On today’s Angry Planet, we host journalist Kenneth R. Rosen who just published the book Polar War. He’s spent the past few years among the ice and snow, embedding with troops, yearning for snus, and smoking cigarettes with morticians in the long dark.

Rosen knows what makes the Arctic so important and can see the truths that undergird the obsession with Greenland.

Getting bombastic and angry about Greenland
“We already have Greenland”
How is Turkey “near Arctic?”
The Greenland obsession as proof of climate change
What makes a good Arctic force
Accession to NATO
Servicing subs in the Arctic
Trying to embed on a nuclear submarine
Mispronouncing place names
The most powerful navy in the world doesn’t have an icebreaker
Spies in the polar regions
“It should have been an article.”
Smoking under a tree in the dark
Snus vs Zyn
The death drive of the penguin

Buy Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic

US Army Poorly Prepared for Arctic Operations: Finnish Troops Forced Them to Surrender During Exercises in Norway

Can we just appreciate the fact State secrets were just leaked on this sub?

Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe
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There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political and cultural actors who now dominate our psychic landscape. Now those people are in charge and they’ve manifested Twitter into real life in a way previously thought impossible.

The White House is posting Stardew Valley memes about whole milk. A Customs and Border Patrol official is asking people if they’re triggered when they respond with empathy to the murder of a woman. Laura Loomer, one of the most online gargoyles to ever live, is a serious policy player in administration. The Secretary of War has a video game tattoo.

How did we get here? Michael Senters, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, is here to explain how online culture became the culture.

It’s all for the posts
A YouTuber comes to town
What, exactly, does it mean to be terminally online?
The right goes all in on identity politics
The pandemic drove us all crazy
Turns out the post-modernists were correct
Posting yourself into a different form or reality
Survival tips for the extremely online
Depraved art and Hearts of Iron IV
Deus Vult?
Video games as propaganda
We should have been harder on the online Nazis
John Romero will make you his bitch
A brief history of Something Awful
Fighting the performance regime

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow

Do you have stairs in your house?

Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful
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On January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump administration would go. I put the audio in a vault and didn’t listen to it until now.

We focused on geopolitics and the American military and our hit rate for predictions was about fifty percent. Domestically, it’s been much worse than I expected. Abroad it’s been much weirder than I expected. The bit about America seeking violence though? Right now that feels spot on.

Hegseth’s reforms got worse for women (vindicated)
Conscription is not back (wrong)
The yearning for violence when the gloves come off (vindicated)
All the episodes that weren’t produced
Sicarioifciation continues apace
The bigger problem was that people felt bad
The dangers of boredom
“Drugs won the war on drugs and then looted the armories.”
Against burning it all down
Greenland is still on the table
The ceasefire didn’t last and war did not spread to Europe (wrong)
Elon Musk is out (vindicated)
X is still around, but it IS producing on-demand CSAM (wrong?)
WWIII and mass riots didn’t happen (wrong)
Martin O’Malley 2028?

The Cult of Sicario
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On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.

Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constant barrage of grotesque memes, it feels like America is a crueler and cruder place. For better and worse, the Presidency sets a moral standard for the country and Trump has lowered that standard. Klay wrote about all this in a piece at The New York Times and he’s here with us today to talk through it.

“It’s too easy to condemn.”
The project is spectacles of cruelty
“You’re not supposed to be joining a gang of thugs.”
What is this doing to us as a nation?
The lust for cruelty and domination
Klay’s review of Hegseth’s first year
War vs. Defense
“Read long things.”
Living in the Hell of opinions
Ending on a high note

What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes

Trump Admin’s Racist Halo Memes Are ‘A New Level of Dehumanization of Immigrants’

Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced
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