The Capitol building in Washington has become a revolutionary space over which to fight. On January 6th, the building, its doorways, hallways and tunnels became an arena for literal combat for or against a Trumpist insurgency. Who would take the rotunda? Who would barricade their office doors? Who would put on their gas masks correctly? On that day the twin causes—so often depicted as harmless swaths of reds and blues on a map—were concretized as the insurgents pushed forward and then were pushed back, the first battle lost…
Tag: Donald Trump
The Weakness of Demagoguery over Summer Rolls
From a dinner of pho and vermicelli, I was walking to my Hyundai with a friend when she posed again the question of the day, the month, the past three years. Daubing a bit fiercely at a spot of hoisin on a button of her shirt, she asked how a man like Donald Trump could…
The Silly Hunt for an Impeachment Smoking Gun
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: The hunt is on for the definitive proof of President Trump’s election meddling by way of strong-arming Ukraine. Former White House Counsel John Dean declared that “we’ve already seen the smoking gun” in what Trump calls his “perfect” conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The news has saturated with…
The Deep State Did Not Begin with Trump
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Fears over the “deep state” have been chalked up to paranoia. And indeed the idea of a hidden counter-government has attracted the ranks of the paranoid. Conspiracies of a tentacled clique of career bureaucrats, wire diagrams of sinister assets and agents have piled up in the Trump era. Still, to write…
‘Deep state’ versus a president? It didn’t begin with Trump.
An article about the tradition of the “deep state” I was interviewed for–Christian Science Monitor.
How Paranoia about the ‘Deep State’ Brought down a President
WASHINGTON POST: With the Mueller report deposited (if not yet released), the right has set its sights on rooting out the “deep state” agents behind the alleged conspiracy to take down President Trump. They look for collusion behind the investigation of collusion. They dig for an illicit report buried even deeper than the report we cannot yet see…
The Irrational Rationality of Conservative Conspiracism
WASHINGTON POST: It is tempting to think of these conspiracies as a rejection of reason, part of the faith- or instinct-based anti-intellectualism of Trump and the right more broadly. And yet such a characterization misses the very nature of political conspiracy. For conspiracism does not reject rational thought, but actually metastasizes reason itself. Conspiracies are based on vast trails of evidence…
Speaking President
WASHINGTON POST: Republican leaders’ focus on Trump’s rhetoric is a striking deviation from how we are used to thinking of the power of the bully pulpit. The key–whether taboo or embraced–has been an unflagging view, a through-line in American history that maintains just how powerful the act of presidential speech is…[FULL ARTICLE]
The Putin Paradox
VOX: It is perhaps a distinctly American faith that authoritarians like Russian President Vladimir Putin rule purely by force, corruption, or trickery…How unctuous to agree with the Russian state media’s contention that Putin is ‘wildly popular’…” [FULL ARTICLE]
the watch 