Stormy Weather

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you already know about the conflict between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump. While the Trump administration seems to be setting a new record for corruption and other “dishonesties” in the White House, this isn’t the first time in U.S. history politicians have yielded to temptation and the abuse of power. As Lord Acton pointed out, power corrupts, and that has certainly been true for U.S. Presidents.

As is true today, our Founding Fathers tended to be the rich and powerful. One of the ways they used their wealth and power was . . . → Read More: Stormy Weather

What A Week, Part 2

My last post with the title, “What a Week,” was about racial violence. Although it would be easy to write a new post on all the racial violence that has happened since, I will focus instead on the political mess we (those of us in the States) have created for ourselves. I’ve seen a lot of elections over the years, and I can’t recall any previous election when so many people disliked both candidates. Hold Your Nose and Choose provides a strategy for deciding between the lesser of two evils. One of the jokes making the rounds about the upcoming . . . → Read More: What A Week, Part 2

Possibilities and Necessities

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In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post (Liberals and conservatives don’t just vote differently. They think differently.), Chris Mooney addressed some of the reasons the differences between liberals and conservatives have become so acrimonious over the past few election cycles. According to Mooney, “There’s now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information . . . → Read More: Possibilities and Necessities

Coping with Complexity

In a recent article, Spencer Critchley discussed the difficulties a number of “conservative” Republicans are having coping with the complexities of the modern world. The part of his essay that caught my attention is the following:

The truth, as usual, is complex. But complexity is what the right-wing historical revisionists don’t like. They prefer to reduce it to binary choices of right-wrong, good-evil. We see this on the extreme left, too, where some argue that because the founders did not extend full rights to slaves, women or Native-Americans, they were no better than any other white, male oppressors. For . . . → Read More: Coping with Complexity