Recommended reading today is at The Bulwark, where Charlie Sykes has a nice piece on political exhaustion. He ably describes the state of being of many of us, and many citizens generally, who are attentive to the news. The Orwellian aspects of Trump-ism, combined with frustrations born of the seemingly endless pandemic, fuse to dishearten and disable public spirited people. Sykes identifies political exhaustion as not just our present condition but a phenomenon that needs to be understood and contended with along with more familiar political and constitutional categories, such as authoritarianism, patriotism, nationalism, white supremacy, fascism, etc. Sykes concludes … Continue reading Political Exhaustion

Robert Kagan has written an extraordinary essay in the Washington Post detailing the danger that Donald Trump and his followers pose to the viability of the American constitutional order. One point that deserves attention is that the many sophisticated academic and journalistic arguments that seek to trace the roots of Trump in conservatism, in the modern Republican party, or in the pathologies of the constitutional order itself unwittingly contribute to the demise of democracy today. It is not that there is no truth to those sophistications. It is rather that the truthful elements pale in comparison to the ways in … Continue reading A Must Read Essay in the Washington Post