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Bobby’s moment comes when a man wanders into the motel parking lot and heads straight for the scuffed picnic tables that have become one of the makeshift playgrounds for the children who call the Magic Castle home. Bobby spots the man, identifies him as a threat, and leads him away from the childre…

In America, we are raised to believe that there is something intrinsically sick about criminal behavior. It is always wrong to steal, because what we own makes us who we are, because—the logic goes—we have earned it. To steal what belongs to someone else is to steal their virtue, to defraud them of…

Is it really much of a scam to lie with transparent childishness to the grown-ups around you? The way Moonee and Scooty and eventually Jancy go about getting their ice creams is by telling fibs that reveal the simple truth of their lives: they don’t have any money. And what is the alternative, exac…

[...] You are walking through your own dreams, and realizing they are all copyrighted.

Capitalism, like all abusive relationships, creates a sense of learned helplessness in its victims. We are complicit in what it makes of us: we want so badly for what it tells us to be true. Of course we do. I…

“It is just so clear, marketing is terrible for children. It limits their imaginations. It makes them sick,” Campbell told me. “As a kid, you figure out who you are by being around other people. . . . It’s challenging enough to be developing your social relationships on these disembodied platforms.…