Live Tonight in NYC: Ackerman, Berry & Wertheim

Edited by Sam Thielman

I'M WRITING IRON MAN FOR MARVEL COMICS! IF YOU PUT IT ON YOUR PULL LIST AT A COMIC STORE (AN ONGOING SUBSCRIPTION WHERE THE STORE RESERVES EACH ISSUE FOR YOU), I'LL SEND YOU FREE STUFF! EMAIL SOME KIND OF RECEIPT TO FOREVERWARS.BULLPEN@GMAIL.COM AND THE SWAG WILL BE YOURS!

IT'S THE DAY BEFORE the 2024 election and I would be lying to you if I said I have a polished piece ready for your inbox. Instead I have a variety of scattered thoughts that I'll be organizing for an event I'm speaking at tonight in Manhattan. If you're around after work in the area and want one last election discussion, why not stop by? There's even going to be a drinks thing afterward. 

Alex Kane of Jewish Currents will moderate a conversation with the Carnegie Endowment historian Stephen Wertheim, the civil-rights activist Maya Berry of the Arab-American Institute and, for a journalistic perspective, me. We'll be at the McNally-Jackson bookstore, located on 4 Fulton Street at the South Street Seaport—once my fave elementary-school field trip location—starting at 6:30 p.m. You can RSVP here. 

I'm told that if you're a Jewish Currents "sustaining" member—click here for that—you'll have access to the livestream of the event. They also plan to release our discussion as an episode of their podcast. I've asked if I can publish the video of the event in FOREVER WARS. In that case, you'll have a (mostly) polished piece on the election and foreign policy ready for your inbox. 

Be in community with us. Honestly, it beats election anxiety. Democracy isn't something that happens in even-numbered years in a voting booth, it's a way of life and a way of relating to one another. I also believe it's inevitable, despite attempts by politicians, institutions, plutocrats and wars to suppress it. But the only way to make something inevitable is to work at it. I'm a little embarrassed at how slogan-y this paragraph is, but I told you I didn't have a polished piece ready for your inbox. 

LET'S SAY YOU WANT to tune out the news ahead of Tuesday. I sure understand that! One fun option is to listen to me talking IRON MAN #1, pretty much page by page and giving a fair amount of behind-the-scenes peeks, with my friend Connor Goldsmith on Connor's excellent and tremendously successful podcast Cerebro. Usually it's Not An Avengers Podcast, but Connor makes exceptions for me.

Personally, I'm going to toggle today between preparing for tonight's election/foreign policy conversation and scripting IRON MAN #7. Not really sure how else to deal with the feeling in the pit of my stomach.

BUT IF YOU WANT SOME GEOPOLITICS to chew on, last week my friend Van Jackson wrote about the avoidance in foreign-policy circles of the truism that global primacy is an adhesive force for adversaries with disparate and not-always-coherent interests and agendas. I feel like we were all just on the verge of this point breaking through when Russia and China declared their "No Limits" partnership just before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Instead, I tend to see analysts look at divergences or complications between Moscow and Beijing and say, "See? Limits." Here's Van: 

Our insistence on primacy—whether we deny that description or not—have made permanent enemies of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Except for Russia, all have shown a willingness to peacefully coexist with America…just not on terms dictated by America. It’s for historians to litigate who among Washington and its enemies deserves the greater share of the blame for the current state of affairs, but about one thing we should have no doubt: US decisions to coerce, combat, and outcompete others makes rivals of them. And rivals are going to move against you.

WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! 

No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.