American Right
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McConnell’s Calculation
It would seem that McConnell feels a need to disguise the fact that the Senate impeachment trial is a sham and a cover up. Americans expect a fair trial. Assuming most Americans have retained at least some shred of sanity, McConnell's obvious cover up would lead them to vote out Trump and the senators who
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The Archetypal American Divide: Andrew Jackson v. John Quincy Adams
Although Andrew Jackson defended his own authority with resolute determination, he did not manifest a general respect for the authority of the law when it got in the way of the policies he chose to pursue. This character trait, already apparent in his military career, continued to manifest itself during his years in the White
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Drift toward Authoritarianism
I am sympathetic to those who think that liberal democracy is failing, was, in fact, always doomed to failure. After all it gave us Trump, who presently is at an all time high approval rating with Gallup at 46%. The U.S. had a flawed but good run for a good quarter millennium. But it's time
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The Mueller/Barr Report
So like everyone else, I’ve been obsessing about what is going on with the Mueller report. This column by David Leonhardt comes close (with a few interspersed objections) to my own take on this. Here are the last three paragraphs: Barr’s summary doesn’t answer why Russia went to such lengths to help Trump win, writes The Atlantic’s David
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Some Random Thoughts on the American Character
I never quite grasped why Jefferson and Adams were so discouraged by the way the country had democratized by the 1820s. Wasn't that what they, especially Jefferson, had hoped for? I tended to dismiss their concerns as a snooty elitism. But I understand it differently now, especially in light of Trump’s ascendancy. Reading Wood, Howe,
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Albee’s “The Goat” or A Discourse on Ontological Dizziness
Last weekend I saw a very good student production of Edward Albee's The Goat or Who Is Silvia? It's the story of Martin Gray, a successful architect and gentle, loving husband and father, someone that typifies the kind of educated, cosmopolitan person who would go and see an Edward Albee play in Blue America. Martin, however,
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Quote of the Day: Christopher Browning
If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect
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Thoughts on the Kavanagh Affair
When he was first nominated, I saw Kavanagh much as I saw Gorsuch: an establishment figure who leans conservative, and thought that's what you're going to get because clueless establishment Democrats allowed Donald Trump to win the election. But better someone like him than someone like Harriet Myers or Clarence Thomas, or someone else who's
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Zizek, McCain, Trump, and Big Daddy
I'm no expert on Slavoj Zizek, the Lacanian psychotherapist and edgy philosopher from Slovenia, but I find his distinction between the Oedipal Father Figure and the Primal Father Figure an interesting frame through which to observe the events surrounding the death of John McCain in the last week. Elites in the American media and political
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Cultures of Corruption
In a culture of corruption, like the ones that infected companies like Enron and continue to infect much of Wall Street and the political class in places like Washington, D.C., nobody really believes corruption is wrong. It's accepted simply as how things work, and so if you work in places like that, and you haven't