Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Yes, It’s Fascism by Jonathan Rauch: “Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.”

We’re Living Through the Great Detachment by David Brooks: “If you lead a life designed to maximize personal independence and autonomy, you’ll get to live a relatively unrestricted life. But you’re more likely to live a low-energy life, slower to harbor those great loves for people, places, God, vocation and nation that arouse fervent passions and yield ardent lives. If, on the other hand, you resist the autonomy ethos and put loving passion at the center of your philosophy of life, you will find yourself tied down by all sorts of obligations — to things like a spouse, kids, community, God and a vocation. But your love for these things will constitute fires in the heart, producing great vitality, full engagement, an increase in personal force. It is one of the weird paradoxes of life that the constraints you choose are the ones that set you free.”

‘Looksmaxxing’ Reveals the Depth of the Crisis Facing Young Men by Thomas Chatterton Williams: “The so-called looksmaxxing movement is narcissistic, cruel, racist, shot through with social Darwinism, and proudly anti-compassion. As the name suggests, looksmaxxers share a monomaniacal commitment to improving their physical appearance….Today’s young men came of age on the social internet, during the upheavals of COVID-19, and under the political dominance of the most narcissistic and superficial president in American history. And their generation has experienced so many of the worst effects of decades of social fragmentation, economic anxiety, and zero-sum competition for what can feel like ever more limited opportunities for meaning, fulfillment, and recognition.”

Editorial: We are in moral exile. We must resist. by NCR: “When a society begins to treat lethal force as an ordinary instrument of governance, it has already surrendered something essential — not only justice, but imagination. It can no longer envision safety without coercion, or authority without threat. Violence becomes thinkable. Then acceptable. Then routine.”

State of Siege by Commonweal: “With its reckless siege on Minneapolis—supported by an influx of three thousand agents, or five times the size of the city’s police department—the Trump administration has demonstrated that fraud investigation and immigration enforcement are pretexts for a show of federal force and violent suppression of civil rights and political dissent. What’s plain to anyone who’s seen videos of drivers pulled from cars, American citizens asked for their papers and threatened with gunfire, pastors and parents shot at close range with pepper balls, or schoolchildren caught in clouds of tear gas is that another boundary has been crossed.”

Those Who Try to Erase History Will Fail by Clint Smith: “The Legacy Museum, which opened almost eight years ago, is perhaps the closest thing America has to a national slavery museum. Crucially, however, it is completely privately funded, receiving no state or federal financial support. As such, Stevenson and his colleagues are unburdened by executive orders; they need not bow to pressure to alter an exhibit after a presidential Truth Social post.”

The Logical End Point of Trump Saying He Could Shoot Somebody on Fifth Avenue by Jonathan Chait: “A decade ago, Trump intuited at some level that the end point of his power to command the minds of his followers would be a killing on the street. What was once seen as a joke has attained the status of a prophecy.”

Trump’s Neediness Is Transforming America by EJ Dionne: “Recognizing that the nature of our regime is the central question in our politics will not make other issues go away. But failing to confront what’s at stake would be a generational failure. The danger now is not alarmism but complacency.”

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution by Maxine Joselow: “Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times.”

‘Commuting Is Bad’—Particularly for Women by Stephanie H. Murray: “For one, the longer your commute, the more child care you are likely to need and the less time you get to spend with your kids. But many of the researchers I spoke with for this article believed that the draw of a short commute has less to do with the time people might save in a typical day and more to do with their ability to reliably show up for their kids.”

I ran as a pro-life Democrat and lost—but my neighbors gave me hope for our divided nation. by Jonathan Lucci: “I believe that a politics that calls both extremes away from their self-destruction, that prizes human dignity above all else, is what our nation so desperately needs. I also happen to believe that a fantastic starting point for such a politics is the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Making Men by Richard V. Reeves: “Young men are not shirking responsibility; they are searching for it. They don’t want fewer obligations; they want more. They are stumbling for the sense of place and belonging that our mainstream institutions have failed to provide them.”

Rescheduling Marijuana Is an Enormous Mistake by Charles Fain Lehman: “Rescheduling will not lead to meaningfully more research, more healing, or more Americans avoiding prison. But it will likely lead to more people living with a dangerous habit. And it will certainly lead to more money for a massive industry. Big Marijuana is about to get even bigger.”

In reversal, U.S. loosens guidance on alcohol by David Ovalle: “But the ongoing debate about the health harms of alcohol took a turn Wednesday after the United States dropped its long-standing guidance to consume no more than one or two drinks per day. It marks a pullback in messaging for the federal government — under President Joe Biden, the U.S. surgeon general recommended adding cancer warnings to alcohol products, and reassessing limits on alcohol consumption.”