… I have spent this year thinking and writing about the draw to conspiracy theories, the perverse comfort they provide and the damage they can cause. Today in the United States, we are living in an era of segregated belief, of divergent realities, at a time when social media has […] Read more »
‘Slow-motion insurrection’: How GOP seizes election power
In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block then-President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people. In the year […] Read more »
Biden’s struggles shouldn’t eclipse GOP’s year of dangerous falsehoods
America’s running political conversation defaults to the sitting president. Today, Joe Biden’s legislative struggles, pandemic management and weak approval rating drown out most everything else. But in 2021, the performance of his partisan adversaries mattered at least as much to the nation’s future. And in Washington and state capitals alike, […] Read more »
The Republican Axis Reversing the Rights Revolution
The great divergence is rapidly expanding—and President Joe Biden’s window to reverse it is narrowing. Since the 1960s, Congress and federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the floor of basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible on issues from the dismantling of Jim […] Read more »
A new survey provides little comfort about democracy’s future
A new survey from Bright Line Watch, an organization that monitors democratic practices, provides some interesting insights but little solace about Republicans’ commitment to democracy. They might say they support democratic principles (e.g., “All adult citizens enjoy the same legal and political rights”), but they fail to embrace the most […] Read more »
How to Tell When Your Country Is Past the Point of No Return
Political analysts, scholars and close observers of government are explicitly raising the possibility that the polarized American electoral system has come to the point at which a return to traditional democratic norms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. … The activist anti-democratic Trump wing of the Republican Party, committed […] Read more »