There was a post-superpower quality to this week’s Democratic debates. On both nights, foreign policy came up near the end, and the discussion focused mostly on the need to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, avoid war with Iran and, in Michael Bennet’s words, “invest in America again.” That’s fine, as far… Read the Rest »
Last night’s Democratic debate showed how America’s political parties have turned upside down. At center stage stood Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, making arguments about decriminalizing illegal border crossings and abolishing private health insurance that would have sounded fantastical just a few years ago. Throwing darts from the edges were… Read the Rest »
Over the past two weeks, as President Donald Trump has picked fights with Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and now Elijah Cummings, a consensus has emerged: Trump has begun his reelection campaign. He’s stoking bigotry to motivate his conservative white base. It makes sense. But if Trump… Read the Rest »
If you listened earlier this month to Republican responses to Donald Trump’s call for Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to the “places from which they came,” you noticed something odd. Trump’s defenders kept mentioning Israel. “They hate Israel,”replied Lindsey Graham when asked about Trump’s… Read the Rest »
Most of the time, conservatives and Republicans want the bar for what constitutes bigotry to be set extremely high. When President Donald Trump tweeted last weekend that four nonwhite Democrats in Congress should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he… Read the Rest »
If Joe Biden revives his flagging presidential campaign, journalists may record that the revival began this weekend in New Hampshire. In a series of speeches, Biden finally did what he needed to do weeks ago: He attacked his rivals on health care. He defended the Affordable Care Act, and argued that… Read the Rest »
What politicians don’t say is often as important as what they do. In his foreign policy speech on Thursday at The City University of New York, Joe Biden warned about the “Rapid advance of authoritarianism, nationalism and illiberal tendencies around the world — not just in Russia and China but among our… Read the Rest »
In two essays, “Illness as Metaphor” in 1978 and “AIDS and Its Metaphors” in 1988, the critic Susan Sontag observed that you can learn a lot about a society from the metaphors it uses to describe disease. She also suggested that disease itself can serve as a metaphor—a reflection of the… Read the Rest »
On June 29, a video appeared showing masked activists wearing black clothing—the garb commonly associated with “antifa,” the self-described anti-fascist movement—assaulting the conservative journalist Andy Ngo in Portland, Oregon. As if in unison, conservative publications published articles accusing the “left,” “liberal journalists,” and “reporters” of condoning the attack. That’s a disturbing charge…. Read the Rest »
Among the many things we’ve learned so far in the presidential campaign is this: The Democratic candidates are talking more honestly about health care than about immigration. To develop a coherent approach to immigration in an era of rising asylum claims, Democrats need to explain—among other things—whom they would and wouldn’t… Read the Rest »