The appalling siege of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists, on the heels of their upset defeat in two Georgia Senate races the previous night, will require soul searching among Republicans about the direction of their party. Republicans will certainly seek to pivot from the riot, but the nativism, extreme […] Read more »
Americans’ Political Ideology Held Steady in 2020
Americans’ overall ideological views were about the same in 2020 as in 2019, with 36%, on average, identifying as conservative, 35% as moderate and 25% as liberal. … Although Americans as a whole are a mix of ideological viewpoints, the two major political parties have become increasingly polarized over the […] Read more »
How Trumpism May Endure
One hundred and fifty years after the emergence of the Confederate Lost Cause ideology, a new Lost Cause invaded the U.S. Capitol with the incitement of the president of the United States. Waving American, Confederate, Gadsden and, especially, Trump flags, Donald Trump’s loyalists desecrated the greatest symbolic edifice of America. […] Read more »
The American Abyss
… Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to […] Read more »
Republicans Confront the Consequences of Their Doomsday Rhetoric
The Republican Party’s “Flight 93” revolution tragically, but almost inevitably, came full circle this week in a storm of insurrectionary violence at the U.S. Capitol. Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, an anonymous author, eventually revealed as Michael Anton, a conservative scholar who later joined the Trump White House, described […] Read more »
Trump Helped Take Extremist Views From The Fringes Of Society To A Mob Attacking The Capitol
Faith in the integrity of the presidential election has been concerningly low for months — in large part because of President Trump’s repeated false claims that the election was stolen from him. And on Wednesday, we saw an extreme example of the consequences of that mistrust when pro-Trump extremists briefly […] Read more »