It shouldn’t be a difficult choice. Published in Washington Monthly August 15, 2018 (link to article) Imagine your house is on fire. Do you reach for a bucket of water or gasoline? That shouldn’t be an agonizing decision, but for American politicians these days, it is an open question, with a majority of them seemingly…
Category: Articles
A Buckeye’s Lament: What Has Happened to Ohio and the Midwest?
Away from the large urban centers, the Midwest has transformed into a stronghold of derivative Southernism: country music and mores, religious fundamentalism, the cult of the good old boy, reactionary conservatism of a primitive type. Published on Thursday, August 09, 2018 by Common Dreams Link to article By now, you’ve almost certainly seen the photo taken at…
C’mon, Just Say It!
Why can’t journalists state the obvious? According to an Annenberg survey, only a quarter of Americans can correctly name the three branches of the federal government. Is that sad fact, like the weather, something that just happens, beyond anyone’s control? Or does something make Americans resistant to the most elementary information? Could the manner in which…
Will Republicans Ever Stop Lying About the Debt?
Despite all his anti-Trump bluster, John Kasich peddles the same deceitful pronouncements about the debt as the rest of the GOP. Gage Skidmore/Flickr Publish in Washington Monthly ( Link to article) It is an established convention of the mainstream media that when journalists stumble across a Republican who can walk fully upright and doesn’t club…
How Academic and Media Excuse-making Normalizes the Abnormal
So much for the precise correlation between economic factors and political preference based on rational choosing to maximize one’s own material advantage Published July 13 in commondreams.org ( link to article) Ever since the 2016 election we all know that economic distress and anxiety out in the Great American Heartland caused white working people to vote…
Pity the Right-Winger: He Gets No Respect!
Notes from the Never-Ending Culture Wars Published in Commondreams.org (link to article) “Conservatism in its present form,” writes Lofgren, “is a funhouse-mirror exaggeration of many of the pathologies that have built up in the United States under the rubric of American Exceptionalism.” (Photo: via TownHall.com) One of the signature stereotypes of present-day political controversy is…
The ‘Deep State’ Strikes Back—Against Torture
Published in Washington Monthly ( link to article) Why generals oppose the nomination of Gina Haspel as CIA director. Our constitutional form of government, beleaguered as it has always been by the forces of power and money, has come under even more pressure in the 21st century: unprovoked wars, torture, and warrantless surveillance are now defining…