revenge politics and taylor swift

why are we so focused on vengeance?

Hi friends.

Okay, here’s my first hot take –Thanksgiving should be in the Spring or perhaps the early Fall. Switch Labor Day or Memorial Day with Thanksgiving. November and December have too many travel holidays too close together, plus all the prime family holidays are within a few weeks of each other. This makes no sense. All the politicians reading this must stop being cowards and embrace my idea.

If this sounds stupid to you, you’re in luck – this newsletter is not about holidays, but about something entirely different – the way we think about and value revenge. (Also, below is the picture that came up when I typed “revenge” into image search…I laughed out loud.)

Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash

The nature of my career means I spend a lot of time thinking about revenge. Revenge as a concept, I mean, not revenge as a goal. Vengeance as a personal aspiration is something on which I spend almost no mental energy. And yet, I still find the idea of revenge quite interesting.

The reason why is because I think revenge is the primary cultural and institutional value in America. At the very least, it’s the primary value of our criminal legal system — After all, what is retribution if not revenge?¹

A few things have been making me think about revenge a lot lately. The one I’m writing about today is, strangely, Taylor Swift.