Willful Ideology or Defective Personality?
Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to bust up NATO and the European Union, together with his penchant for starting trade wars and his repeatedly expressed affinity with autocratic strongmen, have led a lot of commentators to bemoan the threat he poses ...
Read MoreThe president sticks it to the allies, again
In evident anticipation of the upcoming NATO summit, Donald Trump has written strongly worded letters to many of our NATO allies complaining that they don’t spend enough on defense. This is an old complaint by US presidents, of course, but ...
Read MoreTolerance, Civility and Respect in the Age of Trump
Recent events have raised questions about appropriate behavior in confronting the extraordinary ugliness of the Trump presidency. First, Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a “cunt.” Then Robert DeNiro shouts “Fuck Trump” to a cheering Tony awards audience. More recently Sarah ...
Read MoreThe Mean Party
Kevin Drum has put it so succinctly and well that I will simply reproduce without further comment his post today: Donald Trump has made plain what’s long lurked barely below the surface of American politics: it’s not so much a ...
Read MoreSummit in Singapore
The Trump-Kim summit is a positive small step. Positive because it is better than the incipient crisis that the reckless behavior of these two men created only months ago. It could, possibly, lead to a more secure peace for Korea. ...
Read MoreDonald in Quebec
Donald Trump has few fixed convictions. His views on abortion rights, climate change and gun control all underwent convenient conversions when he decided to seek the Republican presidential nomination. But let’s give him credit for something—one thing he seems to ...
Read MoreThanks, Tom Friedman
Thomas Friedman has a much larger readership than I have (needless to say). So, I was very happy to see that Friedman’s op-ed today so well expresses some of my own views, making points that I have made repeatedly in ...
Read MoreHow could it happen here?
Lots of commentators, including yours truly, have been sounding the alarm that Donald Trump poses a threat to American democracy. Since I don’t like to repeat myself, I’m not going to re-state the case for viewing Trump as an aspiring ...
Read MoreImpeachment (II)
Just a short post today, to clarify and qualify my last post on this subject. In that post, I argued that impeachment of Donald Trump was 1) the right thing to do—that is, justified on constitutional grounds, and 2) the ...
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