Politics

Republican Lawbreaking

This blog post started out as a video. You can see it here. Have you noticed that Republicans don’t mind if their leaders break laws? In fact, conviction can be a badge of honor in the fight against “liberal corruption.” Here I explain why. This is a big topic, so I’ll break it into parts. …

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Are we too far gone?

This blog post started as a Youtube video. You can see it here. Today I plan to talk about a question I often get: “Is it too late to save democracy.” A few weeks ago someone asked me this: I’ve observed what seems to be a state of almost constant panic or despair among people …

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How to Weaken the “Strongman”

This blog post started out as a short (14-minute) youtube video. What follows is an edited transcription. The video is here. What follows is an [edited] transcription. The historical background, and ideas for how to weaken the strongman cult, comes from this book by New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat: The question of the hour …

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The Jean Carrol Case

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Jean Carrol’s case. Here is an explainer. Jean Carroll’s case is a defamation case. This isn’t a rape case. This is an important distinction because the rape is outside the statute of limitations. What happened was this: After Trump became president, Jean Carroll said he raped her …

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The Rise of Conspiracy Theorists

As usual, this post started out as a 15-minute video. You can see it here. Harvard Prof. Daniel Ziblatt, one of the authors of How Democracies Die, talks about what he calls the “conservative dilemma” which is this: How can conservatives win national elections with unpopular economic policies? Turns out American conservatives have been quite …

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Demagogues, Fascists, and Confederates

As I’ve been doing lately, this blog post started out as a 15-minute video. You can see it here. What follows is an edited transcript. This week Senate Republicans voted to kill a bipartisan commission to look into the January 6th insurrection. They are also trying to outlaw teaching Critical Race Theory in schools. Critical …

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