The Russia Problem
Every once in a while Donald Trump says something that makes sense. For example, he has just asserted, “I want to solve North Korea Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!” It is indeed true that a more harmonious ...
Read MoreAfter Virginia
The victory of Democrat Ralph Northam in Virginia’s gubernatorial election this week was an important and necessary triumph for decency in American politics. Republican Ed Gillespie had run a Trumpist campaign of racial fear-mongering. Had he won, Republicans across the ...
Read MoreShort Takes
Two very good articles that appeared in the last few days take up themes I’ve addressed in past posts. Crazy Republicans–Longtime readers may recall that I devoted several posts to trying to understand the radicalization of the Republican Party over ...
Read MoreMueller Strikes
I have mostly abstained from blogging on the Mueller investigation and the whole question of Trump campaign connections with the Kremlin, largely because from the beginning I have always been more impressed by what we don’t know than what we ...
Read MoreEnough, Already
Donald Trump is a narcissistic boor with a seriously impaired capacity for empathy with other human beings. Those personality characteristics explain his tactless choice of language in his condolence call to the widow of the slain serviceman, David Johnson. And ...
Read MoreColumbus Day
I’ve never been a believer in ethnic pride, so Columbus Day has never been a particularly important date for me. Nowadays, of course, Columbus has fallen into justified disrepute, his cruelties to the unfortunate inhabitants of the lands he “discovered” ...
Read MoreThe Politics of Protest
In an earlier post, I supported the NFL “kneelers” protests as justified and appropriate. But I didn’t deal with a very important relevant issue: the political consequences of the protests. David Leonhardt took up that issue in his op-ed in ...
Read MoreAmerica’s Exceptional Gun Problem
I was planning to do a follow-up post today on the NFL protest controversy, but in the wake of the horror in Las Vegas, it’s hard to talk about anything else, isn’t it? The case for sane gun control laws ...
Read MoreOf Protest and Patriotism
You can never be sure with Trump. His attacks on African-American athletes certainly look like a calculated appeal to his base, who undoubtedly delight in seeing the President of the United States putting down uppity blacks. Or, they could simply ...
Read MoreThanks, Hillary
I enjoyed Hillary Clinton’s interview with Stephen Colbert, but what most made me happy was that, in criticizing Trump’s UN speech, she said that it wasn’t “…the kind of message that the leader of the greatest nation in the world ...
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