Outside the Beltway

Who needs fancy book learnin’ if you already have all the answers?

It beats the alternative but it ain’t for sissies.

Thanksgiving is a giant contradiction, just like America

They were looking for a show to steal. They were fine with contracts that bind. And they were willing to make a deal

Millions turned out in support of basic ideals.

Trump exploits our mistaken beliefs about crime to consolidate his power.

¡Qué horror!

The evil of others rarely brings out our best.

More on the conflict of alleged beliefs and who one follows.

A massive memorial service showed two divergent paths forward.

Reality is easier to ignore if you just pretend it isn’t there.

An attempt to connect higher education and political violence.

When empathy goes too far.

Naturalized citizens advance and vivify the American experiment. 

Cancel culture on steroids.

“He that spits against the Wind, spits in his own Face.”

He has a solution for homelessness.

A shocking, but not surprising, event. I fear it’s a harbinger rather than an outlier.

We must choose hope over despair.

There’s a vast difference between someone getting dogpiled on social media and the most powerful man in the world using the machinery of the state to eliminate dissent.

The slur “Trump Derangement Syndrome” unintentionally captures something real about our world.

The politics of words.

Are Democrats triggering voters by pushing the Overton Window on language, thereby subverting norms and creating barriers to participation?

And other tales of subverting knowledge and expertise on the altar of a preferred mythic narrative.

The cruelty is the point?

The takeaway of Hegseth’s video and the Pentagon’s clarification is meant to be obvious. 

Times have changed!

A simple solution to a complex problem.

Preaching to the choir only works if the choir is in the audience.

It’s bad writing, but a necessary evil.

America is always both what it claims to be and what it actually is. The Fourth of July, then, marks our aspirations—and also our shortcomings.

This ain’t 1976.

The renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk is a prominent illustration.

These sweet, anxious, thoughtful, and genuinely loveable students know in their bones that their future is deeply uncertain and shaped by adults who appear to have no idea what they’re doing.

What it tells us about race and the Trump administration.

A case from rural Alabama.

Machines have been eliminating blue collar jobs for decades. Now they’re coming for white collar jobs.

Liberty may be natural to the individual, but political liberty remains an uncommon achievement.

Eye of the storm, indeed.

Perhaps it’s just as well.

Looking at comparative corruption and development.

Trump’s reaction to the air disaster is telling in a variety of ways.

A billionaire troll with a West Wing office.

Is there an echo in here.

The culture seems to be shifting.

The cruelty isn’t the point.

The politics of humiliation and gaslighting.

There’s a glaring gap in my information consumption.

Our long national nightmare is not over.