I Am Ignoring Amy Coney Barrett

And you should too — because she will be confirmed, Trump is trolling us with this nomination, and we have an election to win

I doubt that Barrett drinks a lot of beer or is prone to nasty sexual behaviors. The only thing that could stop her confirmation is a new and damaging revelation about the charismatic, evangelical Catholic group, People of Praise, to which she and her family belong. This is unlikely, and ...
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I Am Ignoring Amy Coney Barrett

QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

Alienation, anxiety, and religion

QAnon is a conspiracy theory alleging that the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, is battling an organized and criminal deep state—which also happens to be a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles engaged in sex-trafficking—and that this battle is moving towards an apocalyptic showdown in which our president will ...
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QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

Restoring vs. Packing the Court

Metaphors Matter

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the likelihood of her quick replacement by yet another Trump nominee, talk of packing the Supreme Court has intensified. Of course, all such talk is rendered politically impracticable if Democrats fail to sweep the 2020 election. Even if Democrats should win control of ...
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Restoring vs. Packing the Court

Remembering and Resisting the Age of Reagan

An activist historian advises his students that the choices they make now will shape their future

______ It was November 1980, two months after my girlfriend and I moved to New York City from Boston, where we had met a year before. I had just started in the M.F.A. program at Columbia and she had just started a job at a small press, managing the production of ...
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Remembering and Resisting the Age of Reagan

The GOP Reshaped America to Hold Onto Power—Can the Dems Do the Same Thing to Save It?

Mitch McConnell understands holding minority power requires ruthless brutality

In the power grab to fill the Supreme Court seat announced the same evening as the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mitch McConnell didn’t do anything new. The GOP has a long history of playing hardball power politics. In the late nineteenth century, Republicans added four states (Nevada, Colorado, North ...
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The GOP Reshaped America to Hold Onto Power—Can the Dems Do the Same Thing to Save It?

Trump’s Sadistic Spectacle of Winners and Losers

When Americans learned to idolize the rich and famous, they also came to secretly despise themselves

The answer: they revile losers and simultaneously fear becoming losers themselves. Trump watchers know that “loser” is the president’s favorite term of derision.  According to the Trump Twitter Archive, 328 of Trump’s tweets castigate “losers.” They are an eclectic lot. Some are the president’s critics, on the right and the left, ...
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Trump’s Sadistic Spectacle of Winners and Losers

Joe Biden’s Campaign Moving to Solid Ground as the Trump Team Distracts

Let’s take a closer look at what the Republicans are distracting us from, shall we?

The idea of defunding cities is vague and it is also odd, considering how many Americans actually live in cities. The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrote to Trump on September 7 to ask him to rescind his memorandum, noting that “attacks on America’s cities are attacks on America itself. America’s ...
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Joe Biden’s Campaign Moving to Solid Ground as the Trump Team Distracts

Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

In 2007, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had its second election victory, increasing its vote share to 47,8 and consolidating power. In the same year, it imposed important regulations to ‘clean’ the Internet of undesirable content. Law 5651, On Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes committed ...
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Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

The Framing of Racism in Higher Education

------ When I was a graduate student at Emory University in 2018, the law school suspended a professor, Paul Zwier, for using the N-word in class. Zwier’s response to the suspension was strange. Inside Higher Ed reported on a letter in which he said, “I’m not sure whether I used the ...
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Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Progressives mourn a SCOTUS legend, famous for potent dissents, who saw gender equity as a path to civil rights for all

----------- Today, flowers are strewn on the steps of the Supreme Court, where “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved in stone. More than a thousand people gathered there tonight to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last night from cancer at age 87. Justice Ginsburg was born in ...
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Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

While Trump Flails, Biden Quietly Moves Forward

Re-election initiatives increasingly look like spaghetti thrown against the wall — and it isn’t sticking

————— It feels like power is slipping away from Trump and his administration, and they are trying desperately to claw it back. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his team are trying to criticize the president without getting sucked into his orbit, so they can focus on moving the country ...
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While Trump Flails, Biden Quietly Moves Forward

Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists

They are collectivists living in fear of being punished by their group

On August 21, people gathered around the Washington County School District building in St. George, Utah. They came by the hundreds to protest the governor’s mandate requiring schoolchildren to wear face masks. According to local newspaper The Spectrum, a protester said during a closing prayer that “safety is not as ...
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Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists