We Should Have Seen it Coming: From Reagan to Trump–A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution
Gerald Seib
I have gone missing but I have not stopped reading.
That, I suppose, is a statement always at risk of being true. If so, then it’s more true than ever lately as I find my free time diminished and my workday lengthened by an Continue reading
The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and
the Birth of the People’s Economy
Stephanie Kelton
The only social science that sees its contributions recognized with a Nobel Prize, is economics. So you can forgive the practitioners for mistaking their field of study with chemistry and physics.
If you pause for a moment, though, and consider that the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is not, in fact, one of the prizes established by the inventor of TNT despite all the energy Continue reading
The Day After Election Day 2020
I’ve as much business as anyone mouthing off about an election in which votes are still being counted. Which is to say I really have no business doing so at all.
That isn’t going to stop me, although I’m going to limit myself to a few observations and implications:
• In a binary situation, there are some things we should be able to agree about.
First and foremost I’d put the absence of open violence and armed voter intimidation in the success column. I’m not talking about the ongoing efforts of one shrinking political party to limit the franchise. I’m talking about what in my darkest moments I feared was possible: ‘citizen militias’ showing up at polling places in multiple states. Maybe our civil disagreements can remain heated, but civil.
• There will be plenty of time for autopsies but we need a body first.
I stayed up well past my Benjamin Franklin bedtime and arose before dawn. At each end of my shortened slumbers, talkers and writers were hard at work, explaining away the world as they saw it at that moment. Sure, there are questions. Aren’t there always? Is polling broken? Was the existence of Silent Trump Supporters proven? Whose strategic missteps mattered more? I’m as interested as anyone, but really, don’t we all deserve a break? I kind of feel wrung out.
• As an idea, civic religion may have been oversold.
For months, I’ve listened to pundits talk about the sacredness of American elections and always thought, what malarkey. Religion belongs in your favorite house of worship on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Politics is transactional and that’s not a bad thing. It means the folks voting against your candidate (who may be friends, neighbors or relatives) don’t think the offered policies will much benefit them, nothing more or less. That’s not a failure, it’s a raging success.
• Whatever the ultimate outcome, this year’s electorate has sent a message.
Bear with me as I dust off an old grad school truism: response–whether aggregated or individual–contains information. Understanding that information is where the value lies. Here’s the number one fact: at least 60 million Americans (9:22 AM, 11/5/2020, Washington Post) agreed with enough of President Trump’s message and past actions to say he deserves four more years. They just can’t be ignored or disparaged.
Emotions about politics have never been higher. I think we’d all benefit from turning the temperature down.
But I’ve also been told I think too much.
Thoughts on the Passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Justice, United States Supreme Court
1933-2020
A few years back, catching up with an old friend, I heard a statement that caught me by surprise. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” said the voice from Red State America, “has got to go. She’s the biggest threat to America as a country. ”
It’s still a shocking statement, even if my old buddy now has reason to sleep easier.
How did we get to such a place? Continue reading
Twitter, Impeachment. and Primaries
When I went missing, I didn’t exactly go dormant. Instead, I found myself in that most time-consuming sector of the “internets,” Twitter.
I’m fascinated by Twitter. The ‘culture’ of the Internet continues to strike me as a hotbed of Golden State-utopianism. There’s a reason one of the web’s earliest and most consistent proponents also appears at the Continue reading
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder
Had I not misread an email notice you’d be reading something else right now.
Leave aside the preconceptions buried in that sentence, though, and turn your attention to this latest instance of what I’m thinking of calling instant publishing.
If that brings to mind the freeze-dried crystals that a college friend ate by the tablespoonful to ward off the Continue reading
On the cusp of the 2018 election
I’m very good at miscalculating. So it’s not surprising that with a reawakened client, an assignment to grade, a midterm to draft and too many long books in progress that I’m short a post.
So this week I’ll keep it brief. In the United States we will vote in a new Congress. Whatever your policy views, it’s important to be part of the process and, if you are registered or can still register, vote.
It’s too easy to be cynical. My own politics are too complicated for bumper Continue reading
How the Right Lost It’s Mind
Charles J. Sykes
Stories are powerful. So indulge me in a story.
Once upon a time, I didn’t have a smart phone. I carried a BlackBerry for work, and my trusty flip phone, but I left the iPhones and Androids to others. When asked why, I Continue reading
Ruminations in the wake of Kavanaugh
Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com
It is done.
Now we must pick up the pieces and move on. Why, I wonder, add more words at a time when so many seem so set in their beliefs that persuasion has become chimerical?
When faced with despair–and, given the Continue reading
John S. McCain
1936-2018
John S. McCain III 1936-2018
Senator, aviator, POW
“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Donald J. Trump, Presidential Candidate, speaking in Ames, Iowa, July 2015
When I Google “John McCain war hero” two types of listings appear. The first type is his obituary. The second are blogs intent on validating the Continue reading
An Honest Con 