Common-Sense Extremism

Plus: Why hotness counts as diversity, why Kamala should run (and win), why communism sucks, and why you need to see that movie everyone's talking about

Jul 24, 2026

IT’S FRIDAY, JULY 24, 2026

The Odyssey is a film that more and more people are talking about, including a lot of very smart people. I saw it over the weekend with my wife, who has had a debilitating crush on Robert Pattinson since the Twilight movies. For this and other reasons, I enjoyed watching him die. (Spoiler alert.)

Christoper Nolan’s latest work stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, a troubled man who finds himself at an off-grid psychedelic wellness sanctuary. Charlize Theron plays the aging hippie guru who—as far as I could tell—helps Odysseus confront his unresolved trauma and rediscover his authentic self through a series of increasingly vivid guided hallucinations. Adventure ensues. Or was it all a dream? There’s no way of knowing.

Nolan is what cinema experts might call a “cerebral auteur” whose creative flair is on full display from beginning to end. It’s truly remarkable of what the human mind is capable of dreaming up in the digital age. (More spoilers below.)

Under the guru’s care, Odysseus begins to identify as a legendary Greek warlord, which sets the stage from some thrilling combat scenes. His inner demons manifest as mythical beasts that slaughter his crew, a mob of preening squatters scheming to bed his wife, and a directionless man-child claiming to be his son.

In the end, Odysseus triumphs and sails off into the sunset musing about bronze. He slays the demons and finally gets rid of the annoying kid. I know it sounds like a happy ending, but we’re also forced to confront a terrifying possibility. Did the New Age harlot deliberately infect his mind with anti-war gibberish, or was Odysseus a secret coward all along?

Either way, it’s actually a pretty decent film. The Odyssey did not fail to entertain, but it was hard to look past some of Nolan’s casting choices. Damon, for example. In real life, he’s a well-known American celebrity and podcast guest, which made the scenes at the wellness retreat convincing enough to overlook his character’s unusual name.

Alas, the trippy action scenes with “Odysseus the ancient warlord” felt more contrived. No amount of fancy camerawork could disguise the blatantly scripted dialogue, or the fact that Damon—a stockbroker’s kid from Cambridge, Mass.—was pretending to be a grizzled Greek monarch who sails around in a Viking ship and dabbles in archery. Theron, on the other hand, was perfectly cast as the aging hippie.

Final verdict: 6.5/10

Hope you enjoyed this review!

COMMON-SENSE PROVOCATEUR

Sophie Cunningham is a powerful testament to the American Dream. Determined to find success in the WNBA, a league that has historically excluded attractive white women such as herself, Cunningham worked hard and beat the odds. This week Cunningham used her platform as one of the WNBA’s ~~most~~ only recognizable stars to speak out against transgender participation in women’s sports.

“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told ESPN. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

Doing what comes naturally, the journalists pounced, but Cunningham held her ground. “I said what I said,” she told the aggrieved. “I think it’s kind of common sense, and I think I’ll always believe in that.” The Athletic wrote that the WNBA star had “doubled down” on an “increasingly politicized issue,” which is an odd way to describe stating an opinion shared by nearly 80 percent of Americans—and an increasing number of national and international sports organizations.

For what it’s worth, Cunningham tripled down on Instagram. She said what she said.

New York magazine, among others, spoke up for the radical fringe, accusing Cunningham of being a MAGA stooge for daring to express a mainstream opinion—one that even two-thirds of Democrats agree with.

“Cunningham’s concern about ‘biological men’ sounds a lot like the popular conservative talking point that baselessly frames trans women as a threat to cisgender female athletes,” wrote Kathleen Walsh, a Brooklyn-based “night blogger” whose other bylines include “Lenny Kravitz Has a Great Excuse to Wear Leather to the Gym” and “Donna Kelce Says Tayvis’s Wedding Was ‘Magical.’”

We’ll see how it plays in the WNBA, one of the only non-academic institutions that still haven’t moved past the woke insanity of 2020-21. Cunningham was not invited to participate in the upcoming 3-Point Contest despite having one of the league’s best three-point shooting percentages. Neither was Sabrina Ionescu, the winner of last year’s contest. Both are attractive white women with multiple endorsement deals. Inviting them would only make sense if the WNBA cared more about drawing viewers and (someday) turning a profit.

The same is true of “sports” journalism. ESPN’s profile of Cunningham included several quotes from the director of the Center for Race & Ethnicity in Sport at the University of Michigan. On Thursday, USA Today “sports” columnist Nancy Armour (sort of) apologized after invoking the lynching of Emmett Till in an article bashing Cunningham’s All-Star teammate, Caitlin Clark. Armour accused Clark of putting black players in “danger” by complaining to the referees. The columnist opined at the start of the World Cup that the United States had “already lost” by being a “hateful and greedy nation.”

Blah, blah, blah. How insightful. How sports.

America is just fine, thanks. If Sophie Cunningham can make it in the WNBA despite her good looks, minority background, and common-sense opinions, there’s hope for all of us.

STILL UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN

The 2028 Democratic primary is going to be hilarious. It will be even funnier if Kamala Harris runs again and wins the nomination. New York magazine makes the case that Harris is the obvious frontrunner if she decides to run, which she might just do in order to silence the haters, of which, sadly, there are many.

Harris reportedly believes she would have won in 2024 if political consultants hadn’t given her bad advice. Either that, or the election “wasn’t winnable” because of Joe Biden and because Harris—the sitting vice president—didn’t have enough time to introduce herself to voters. Why not give it another go?

Most party elites want her to go away forever. Some are hoping Harris runs because “then she will lose and we will never have to hear from her again.” None are especially eager to be called racist, which is what will happen if they don’t let South Carolina host the first primary.

Just ask Christale Spain, the black South Carolina state party chairwoman who told the New York Times that letting a heavily Latino state such as Nevada vote ahead of South Carolina would be “telling Black voters that you matter less than brown voters. And I refuse to believe that our party wants to send any type of message like that.”

Yeah, that’s the good stuff. They should make every primary candidate rank the minority groups from most to least important. Voters deserve to know where they stand.

Harris would be tough to beat in South Carolina thanks to her enduring popularity among black voters. The party establishment doesn’t want her, but they also don’t want a left-wing lunatic. Graham Platner, for example, could easily gain traction as the “Jews framed me for rape” candidate.

This is purely hypothetical, of course. Harris is a terrible candidate. Incoherent, convictionless, pathologically indecisive. Her own worst enemy. This is why she needs to run. Imagine the Democratic disarray if working-class black voters—a group that party elites and dirtbag socialists alike claim to speak for—delivered her the nomination. After everything the Democrats have gone through in recent years, I can’t think of a better outcome.

Good luck to all!

COMMUNISM SUCKS, BRO

The outcome of the U.S. Senate race in Michigan could have major implications for 2028. The Democratic primary is a showdown between Haley Stevens, the folksy establishment choice, and Abdul El-Sayed, the pocket-sized, Hamas-adjacent radical socialist. Naturally, Kamala Harris is undecided.

El-Sayed has welcomed the support of Hasan Piker, the U.S.-based anti-American influencer who enjoys terrorism and considers Mao Zedong to be “one of the great leaders of this world,” which could explain Piker’s fetish for strongman chic. He recently hung a framed copy of the Sept. 12, 2001, edition of the New York Times in the bedroom where he tortures his dog.

Piker’s defenders, of which, sadly, there are many, complained that people were taking his Mao fandom out of context, or something. “The Great Leap Forward maybe killed around 40 million largely by accident,” wrote some idiot with 165,000 followers.

Hate when that happens.

At the risk of saying something unfashionable: Mao was bad. Communism, also bad. Piker’s favorite candidate in 2028, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, shrugged off the growing number of self-described communists on the left. “It’s a free country,” she said.

Exactly. America is free because we have consistently defeated communism and its overeducated fanboys. They’re allowed to be lunatics, and the rest of us have a duty to stop them from ever taking power and getting what they want.

One chart that explains everything: In terms of education and income, the demographic most likely to vote for Democrats are advanced-degree-holders earning less than $60,000 a year. The group least likely to support Democrats are middle-income Americans who didn’t go to college.

PALATE CLEANSER

The best soccer teams in the world played each other for two hours on Sunday and scored a grand total of one goal. Ultimately it was Spain that prevailed over Argentina to win the World Cup on Donald Trump’s watch. Again, soccer doesn’t really count as a sport, so the Spanish players don’t deserve much credit. Their WAGs (wives and girlfriends) on the other hand, have been cheering them on this whole time, indulging their little hobby. They are the real heroes.

María Hurtado