• Politics/Culture - Psychology

    Veep Pick Tim, Second Gent Doug & Ex-Prez Donald: Notes on Modern Masculinity

    August 24, 2024 - By 

    Has there been a stranger, more cataclysmic turn of events in recent American history than what we have been witnessing since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump just six dizzying weeks ago? It brings to mind the quote of unknown origin but frequently misattributed to Lenin: “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” The failed assassination, remarkable for many reasons including that it is almost completely out of the news now, marked the beginning of multiple events that have changed virtually every dynamic of the 2024 presidential race. Until then, the campaign had resembled…

  • Politics/Culture

    A Measure of Justice, At Last

    June 1, 2024 - By 

    Friday morning, feeling my way down under the outward, cork-popping joy of the previous evening’s news regarding Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of felonious conduct, I found something more basic: a sense of simple yet profoundly felt relief. Something akin to the completion of a long project that had presented multiple obstacles and taxed my patience and commitment and faith that I would ever see it come to fruition. Finally! All his life, Trump had sneered at decency, laughed off honesty as fit only for suckers, marshaled his millions of inheritance dollars to hire an army of lawyers and…

  • Politics/Culture

    Nancy Pelosi Goes Mano a Mano on the Border Wall

    January 25, 2019 - By 

    In the runup to the mid-term elections last year, I was among many Democrats who felt a bit queasy about the prospect of Nancy Pelosi returning as Speaker of the House, assuming the Dems took control of the chamber. Fresh start, clean slate, she’d been so demonized by the opposition as the quintessential radical San Francisco liberal—maybe we should start anew with a younger face who wouldn’t be yoked to the past so we could usher in a less encumbered generation of leadership. All of that was in the air, and I was breathing it in, not in great gulps, but tentatively,…