The governance, or lack thereof, of the great republic.
Respectability politics had what may be its grandest moment yesterday when an office being rented by the Republican Party of North Carolina suffered fire damage after someone threw a Molotov cocktail through a window. Barely had the embers cooled than a group of Democrats — yes, Democrats — started an online …
Polls are frivolous, untrustworthy, and based on inherently flawed methods. They have only heightened the horse-race nature of elections, further sportified our political process, and cause enormous amounts of anxiety in a race that is already painfully stressful. That said, if almost every recent poll is any indication and we …
Last night’s debate between centrist plutocrat Hillary Clinton and (in comedian John Mulaney’s nice phrase) amateur-night pimp Donald Trump wasn’t particularly instructive, but it certainly seems to have thrown a significant portion of the populace into a tizzy. The ‘town hall’ format, allowing as it did for hooting orangutans and …
A lot of people I know seem to think that you can’t possibly object to Hillary Clinton’s campaign based strictly on ideological differences, so I’m often called upon to make penance by saying that Donald Trump is bad. I feel like I’ve said that enough; I had a piece published …
Well, look at this! It’s the night of the very first and very exciting presidential debate, in which Hillary Clinton, a woman who embodies the American ideal that if you want something really bad people should give it to you and not ask a lot of annoying questions, and Donald …
The release last week of Census data concerning recent trends in employment in the economy has been widely circulated, not only as evidence that things are getting better, but that we have our nation’s Democratic leadership to thank for that. In a particular partisan view, the country is doing fine, …
So another handful of ‘polls’ have been released, which seem to indicated that presidential heir apparent Hillary Clinton has failed to charm the electorate and that Chee-To-dusted stray stem cell Donald Trump is closing the ‘gap’ which allegedly exists between them. Many explanations have been offered for this development: It’s all …
Every election year, we are asked to make a momentous decision: to choose between the two official party-approved multimillionaires who are allowed to become President of the United States. This year, the choice seems especially important, because one of the candidates is a wealthy, unlikable real estate speculator who feels …
I woke up this morning to have my vacation spoiled by lots of social media chatter about what a terrible job the American media, and in particular Matt Lauer (who is, I suppose, technically a journalist), did of handling Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump last night. Lauer was selected, by …
America has always done things differently. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not. Falling firmly on the “not” side of the divide is the way this country observes — I don’t say celebrates — Labor Day. In most other countries, the holiday that celebrates the working class falls on May Day, …
THIS AND THAT, THEY MUST BE THE SAME Of all the beloved tropes in the modern liberal catalog, none is so valued as profound mockery of the idea that “both sides do it” — that is, that the reason blinkered malcontents foolishly vote for third parties (or, quelle horreur, do not …
Imagine yourself far away, in a landlocked country in the southeastern part of Asia. You are a farmer’s wife. You have never had anything to do with politics; though you are aware that the Pathet Lao, the nation’s communist guerrillas, are plotting against the monarchy and are working with military …
Socialism has, to put it mildly, a bit of a bad reputation. This may sound like an absurd statement in this year of 2016, especially if you live your life on the internet. It has only been a few years since socialist candidate Kshama Sawant won a spot on the …
One of my historical obsessions is the Second World War and its immediate aftermath — a period which directly shaped our current political climate, but which far too many people know very little about. Almost everything we can learn about the current state of world affairs can be traced back …
I won’t be watching the Democratic National Convention this week. I don’t care for pomp in a time of hardship; I’m not interested in seeing elites congratulate themselves on their moral rectitude; and most of all, I watched enough of the dismal Republican get-together and there’s only so much shit …
