Columns, pieces and posts
Wistful August tapers down. Headlines feel far away but stalk us by phone. The writer Philip Howard calls the news cycle “both terrifying and tedious.” He’s right. So I’ve decided it’s a good time for an homage to the HBO series “The Gilded Age.” We begin with what’s wrong with it, just to show we’re […]
This summer the knowledge settled in about where we are with artificial intelligence. Almost everyone is rattled by the speed of its development. The story is no longer “AI in coming decades will take a lot of jobs” or “AI will take jobs sooner than we think.” It is “AI is here and a quiet […]
There have been reports all over of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in workplaces—restaurants, construction sites, farms. In a June ICE raid at an Omaha, Neb., meatpacking plant, more than 100 employees suspected of using false IDs were taken away. The owner of the plant told the New York Times that some of them had […]
I have been thinking about the assassination attempt on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., last year. A strange aspect of that day, at least for me and as seen through screens, was the disquieting matter-of-factness with which so many in the crowd accepted the fact of the shooting, and the sight of so […]
We just witnessed a bit of political history. The Jeffrey Epstein story is big, and though it will be quieted eventually, it won’t go away, it will stay as a fissure and may widen over time. The Trumpiest part of President Trump’s base showed him—and showed itself—that it can buck him, push back in unison. […]
Isolationism is essentially emotional. You’re angry at the cost in blood and treasure of your country’s international forays and adventures and want to withdraw from the world. Emotionalism can hold sway and dominate politics for a time, even an era, but you can’t build anything on it. It doesn’t last because emotions change because facts […]
This is how I read Donald Trump now: He’s in the greatness game. He’s already won the other games in politics. He’s established himself as the powerhouse who transformed the nature of a major political party; he’s the colossus who’s changed the direction of politics in other major democracies. It’s big, but it isn’t all […]
The fiery Tucker Carlson interview with Sen. Ted Cruz is the perfect distillation of the split among conservatives on Iran. And that split is all about the unhealed wound of Iraq. Mr. Cruz made his personal case—it seemed to rest on his reading of the Bible—for joining the Israeli action against Iran. Mr. Carlson pushed […]
I’m going to say something old-fashioned. It’s a thing we used to say a lot but then we got bored with it or it seemed useless. “We don’t do that.” If we don’t say it we’ll forget it, so we have to keep it front of mind. President Trump this week gave a speech at […]
I want to attempt a sort of bird’s-eye view of both parties as we enter the first summer of the Trump administration. For the Republicans, the headline is moving forward on various Trump policies (immigration, trade, budget) that, in the aggregate, have sparked neither widespread support nor overwhelming alarm. It’s all wait and see. The […]