American Right

  • How Does this End Well?

    The big question for me going forward is to what degree the craziness of the hard right in this country will retain the level of legitimacy it now enjoys? A related question is what has to happen for its grip on so many Americans to loosen? The answer to the second question is foundational for

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  • Have you know sense, sir?

    This is a text I received from a prominent conservative Christian minutes after President Biden’s Inaugural Address: “I broke down sobbing. It’s been a long five-and-a-half years.” Shortly after that, Scott Dudley, senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., emailed me a note that said, “I never thought I would be moved to

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  • Proud Boys See the Trump Truth

    After the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Trump. In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail

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  • Why Trump?

    Why? Why has Trump, of all people, evoked such devotion from so many Americans who should know better? Why do so many decent Americans identify with a man who is so blatantly indecent? What's at stake for them? What part of their souls have they surrendered to him? Why is the prospect of a Biden

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  • Four Years Too Late

    Mr. Trump is set to depart office on Wednesday with an approval rating of 29 percent, the lowest of his presidency, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center. About 75 percent of the public said Mr. Trump bore some responsibility for the violence and destruction of Jan. 6, which put the lives

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  • The Reckoning

    In the final days of his presidency, Mr. Trump has been snubbed by foreign allies and banned from social media. Some members of his cabinet fled, and some in his own party helped deal the final blow of a second impeachment. High-profile friends, like the New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, are declining national honors

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  • From Edsall’s Column This Morning:

    Bernard Grofman, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, put it this way in an email: We would not have Trump as president if the Democrats had remained the party of the working class. The decline of labor unions proceeded at the same rate when Democrats were president as when Republicans were president;

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  • Reason for Hope

    During his political career, Trump has given comfort to and conferred logistical coherence upon a coalition that will not die without him—but also will not thrive. The United States is a divided nation, but only a tiny fraction of Trump’s more than 74 million voters showed up in Washington, D.C., eager to fight. The way

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  • Two Profiles

    Kevin Haag, 67, a retired landscaper from North Carolina who ascended the Capitol steps as the crowd surged forward, said he did not go inside and disapproved of those who did. Even so, he said he would never forget the sense of empowerment as he looked down over thousands of protesters. It felt so good,

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  • No Appeasement

    I'm not going to belabor this because I think it's obvious. With the hard right we are not dealing with justifiable grievance. Are there real, understandable grievances driving them? Yes. Must the underlying causes be addressed? Yes. But if the establishment, and that's now the Democrats and principled conservatives, don't crack down on the hard

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