Columns, pieces and posts
We often make historical parallels here. History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme, as clever people say. And sometimes it hiccups. Here is a hiccup. We start with the moral and political catastrophe that was the French Revolution. It was more a nationwide psychotic break than a revolt—a great nation at its own throat, […]
I want to kick away from the daily and get to something larger. We are a nation of just under 330 million. We have a lot of disputes, always have, argument is one of our traditions. To make it all work, to keep this thing going, we have to give each other a little room, […]
Three small points we labor mightily to connect: Joe Biden has me thinking about . . . Julius Caesar. The political class of Rome wanted Caesar gone and successfully dispatched him with 23 wounds. But the conspirators themselves came to unhappy ends—Caesar’s base hated them and chased them out of town! Nobody loves an assassin. […]
I’m not really big on purple mountain majesties. I’d love America if it were a hole in the ground though yes, it’s beautiful. I don’t love it only because it’s “an idea,” as we all say now. That strikes me as a little bloodless. Baseball didn’t come from an idea, it came from us—a long […]
I’ve received tens of thousands of letters and other communications from Trump supporters the past few years, some of which have sparked extended dialogues. Two I got after last week’s column struck me as pertinent to this moment, and they make insufficiently appreciated points. A gentleman of early middle age in Kansas City wrote to […]
It was four years ago this week, June 16, 2015, and a great professional gift was given me. I had just watched Donald Trump’s announcement speech and was pondering its impact. This guy isn’t going to be president; we’ve been reading about his tabloid antics for 30 years. But he’ll have some impact, some support. […]
Now and then a country needs to get slapped. England does, or rather the United Kingdom, but I say England because I really mean London. Its entire leadership class has been undone since Brexit passed, three years ago this month. They’ve been overwhelmed, not equal to the moment. They are like the hysterical blonde in […]
I’ll start with a personal experience and then try to expand into Republicans and big tech. In the spring of 2016, Facebook came under pressure, stemming from leaks by its workers, over charges of systemic political bias. I was not especially interested: a Silicon Valley company that employs thousands of young people to make decisions […]
The investigation is complete, his office is closed, he returns to private life. And Robert Mueller leaves in his wake a great murk, doesn’t he? Even in his statement this week, presumably aimed in part at making things clearer, he spoke between the lines. What did he say, between the lines? Apparently I was too […]
A friend trying to help me work through a problem once told me the story of life is competition: Everyone’s trying to beat everyone else, and I should give more weight to this fact. There’s some truth in what he said, yet I thought his comment contained more autobiography than wisdom: He was the most […]