Which is more decadent, Donald Trump or the Annual Gala of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York? Okay, trick question, because there is no wrong answer. But putting the Donald in perspective does take some work. Yet the sources of the Donald aren’t hard to find: the stumblings and…
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Please God, let Bernie be crushed
I know that’s not much of a prayer, but that’s how I feel. But, even if my wish comes true, and Hillary Clinton can earn a majority of delegates prior to the convention this summer, Bernieismo has already taken its toll on the Democratic Party, pushing a donkey that was not terribly “progressive” in the…
Neoliberalism and its discontents
Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a contemptuous take down of Thomas Piketty’s then notorious book, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. If anyone has been citing Piketty’s arguments in the current presidential primary season, I’ve yet to hear it, but that hardly matters, because global capitalism is taking a pounding from all quarters, a…
Robert Kagan, hoist on Fareed Zakaria’s bare bodkin
At the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria notes the long-time silence of “principled conservatives” regarding decades of Republican thuggery in the name of power. Zakaria seems to take particular pleasure in skewering Robert Kagan, whom I skewered earlier for his tardy recognition of Republican sins. Sure, Trump is terrible, says Fareed, but how and why is…
Robert Kagan, struggling with the math
Bipartisan neocon Robert Kagan, who has served in the administrations of both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, has a prescient rap on the Donald Trump phenomenon up at the Washington Post, denying that Donald hijacked the GOP. Instead, says Bob, Donald is “the party’s creation, its Frankenstein monster, brought to life by the party, fed…
Why did the GOP fail to stop Trump? Because Republicans voted for him
At the Washington Post, Dan Drezner serves up “My very peculiar and speculative theory of why the GOP has not stopped Donald Trump”, receiving an approving nod from the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, “How the GOP Failed To Stop Trump”. Drezner’s take: “My hypothesis is that GOP decision-makers also read the same analyses [from political…
An embarrassment of parties, an embarrassment of elites
The New Hampshire results are in, and both parties look terrible. For the Republicans, the base is worse than the leadership. For the Democrats, the leadership is worse than the base. Half the Republican base generally regards foreigners as job-stealing, welfare-loving rapists and terrorists. Such rank nativism hasn’t played a significant role in American politics…
Jessica Jones: Phillip Marlowe gets a vagina, and additional superpowers
Hey, we Americans love our TV, don’t we? Sure we do! And why not? Because TV these days is great! Great, great, great! Well, some TV is, or was, pretty great, like Sex and the City and Monk, though I guess they weren’t really great great—not, you know, Don Giovanni great—but, still, great enough.1 I’ve…
Hey, Alan Vanneman! The U.S. had TWO debates on foreign policy, while you weren’t listening!
Well, indeed we did. I recently complained, rather at length, at the failure of the U.S. political system to generate a meaningful discussion of U.S. foreign policy, noting that, for the past several decades, we’ve been allowed to choose between “idealistic” hawks like Hillary Clinton and, well, shotgun-wielding freaks. But just before the holidays, both…
Cognitive Dissonance at the Washington Post
Last week, the Washington Post bitterly, and correctly, chastised the entire flock of Republican presidential candidates for their conduct at their most recent debate for remaining very largely mute while Donald Trump went on his now-standard war dance against folks who ain’t like us, and the Constitution, not to mention simple common human decency, be…