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Compact ·For the curious

Dwight Macdonald’s American Century

by Geoff Shullenberger

Published 2026-06-12 11:00:15+00:00

Why does the era that built the doomsday machine still feel like a golden age?

0:00 / 12:28 · Narrator Charon

Context

Politicians and television producers alike often treat the decades after World War Two as a lost golden age of American stability. An essay published on 12 June 2026 revives the work of a critic who lived through that era and found it horrifying. Dwight Macdonald looked at the sheer scale of midcentury American power and saw a machine built to erase human individuality. His warnings about automated conflict and manufactured culture ask a question that feels entirely modern: when our systems grow this massive, what happens to the people inside them?

Show notes

A review of the mid-century essayist Dwight Macdonald and his newly collected political writings. Tracing his opposition to World War II and the Vietnam War, the essay outlines his belief that massive military and technological scale dehumanizes society. It connects his past critiques of mechanized warfare and mass culture to modern political conflicts.

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