A Promised Land

America as a Developing Country

To Beat Trump’s Big “Stolen Election” Lie, Promote the Big Truth

Hitler, the Confederacy and today’s authoritarians show the price we could pay for not pushing back in a big way.

One Month Later

It’s been almost a month since Twitterless Donald Trump flounced down to Florida. Some hoped that, having lost his presidential and social media platforms, his Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen would flame out.

No such luck. In voting to acquit him at his impeachment trial, 43 out of 50 Republican senators yet again caved to his control. In the House, Arizona, Texas and Michigan, his loyalists keep pushing his party line or pushing out figures who don’t fall in line.

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Trial and Error

A Brief Democratic Kerfuffle. A Possible Republican Debacle.

A Jury of Our Peers

A Kerfuffle

That was fast. Five days after Donald Trump’s impeachment trial started, it ended on Saturday, as planned.

On Friday night, however, evidence from Republican Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler and other sources kicked off a last-minute kerfuffle over extending the trial. In the wake of Beutler’s earlier statements at a town hall, they confirmed to news outlets that, amidst the Capitol riot, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had an expletive-laced shouting match over the phone with Trump. McCarthy urged presidential action to stop the attack; the president dismissively focused only on his political fortunes.

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Norway???

The good, the bad and the ugly of GM’s Super Bowl ad.

If you watched the Super Bowl, or even if you didn’t, you might well have seen the General Motors ad that features Will Ferrell pitching GM’s electric vehicles. It opens with Ferrell explaining that “Norway sells way more electric cars per capita than the U.S.” He then declares, “Well, I won’t stand for it,” before punching a globe and claiming that, with GM’s new electric battery, “we’re going to crush those lugers. CRUSH THEM! Let’s go, America.”

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From Russia, With Love

Lessons for the Republicans’ leadership, starting with 1917.

Adopting a policy of “no enemies to the left,” Russian prime minister Alexander Kerensky freed Vladimir Lenin from jail shortly after he tried but failed to overthrow Kerensky’s government in July of 1917.

In November, Lenin succeeded.

An excellent essay by Slate’s Fred Kaplan draws parallels between Kerensky and most of today’s Republican leaders. Kerensky thought that his greatest threat was forces seeking to return czarist rule to his country. He accordingly sought to align with the very Marxists who soon toppled him.

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Go Global

To fight Covid, there's no alternative.

“Vaccine Nationalism”

As vaccinations bring the first flicker of light at the end of the Covid tunnel, the emergence of more transmissible and somewhat vaccine-resistant variants seem to stand in the way.

But there’s a path forward. In fact, as a matter of both principle and self-preservation, it’s the only path: Go global. Get the whole world vaccinated much more quickly than currently planned.

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