The biggest problem in politics right now is not Donald Trump. It’s also not Nancy Pelosi. It’s the concept of base-driven elections. In a normal democratic society, the goal of politics and elections would be to convince the most people that your policies are right and that you’re the most capable leader. And when […]
Last week, Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar called former President Barack Obama a murderer who got a pass from Democrats because he was “polished.” This was after she claimed that Americans who support Israel were “pushing for allegiance to a foreign country,” a shameful anti-Semitic trope that American Jews are far too familiar with from […]
The psychologist Abraham Maslow identified the feeling of belonging as a central human need, ranked only behind physical safety and sustenance in his eponymous “Hierarchy of Needs.” Humans need to be accepted, to feel part of a group, even from a very young age. This is, perhaps, a primal response based on the safety of […]
I grew up in Virginia in the 1980s. My high school’s sports teams were the Rebels, and our mascot was Johnny Reb, a cartoonish soldier holding a bugle and a Confederate flag. My high school was located on Old Lee Highway, named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and I lived in a neighborhood called […]
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a rock star. Amassing and leveraging millions of Twitter followers, “AOC,” as she’s come to be known, has become the perfect progressive counterweight to President Donald Trump. Charismatic and utterly unafraid, AOC has sparked the imagination of millions across the country. Chellie Pingree … hasn’t. Despite her best efforts to become […]
Books are dirty. And really good books can be really, really dirty. When I read about state Rep. Amy Arata’s bill attempting to ban “obscene” books from high school libraries, it made me realize some of the filthiest things I’ve ever read had their genesis in the pages of some of the greatest writing of […]
