Wednesday It’s satisfying to see national pundits take a page out of Better Living through Beowulf and turn to the classics to understand Donald Trump. Okay, so NeverTrumper conservative Bret Stephens has probably never read this blog, but we both recognize how literature deepens our understanding of the world, including American politics. I particularly appreciate […]
Thursday Political scientists will debate for years how Donald J. Trump took over and “Trumpified” the modern Republican party. Multiple explanations exist, including George Packer’s theory that Trump represents a longtime rot within the GOP (I blogged about this on Monday). Nevertheless, it still boggles the mind that a disreputable realtor to whom no one […]
Wednesday Donald Trump’s public relations lawyer Rudy Giuliani put on a performance for the ages this past Sunday, reminding me of no one so much as the fox in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Hold on while I explain. Trump often obfuscates to fend off charges leveled against him. If you can cloud the […]
Tuesday Like many, I have been watching Britain’s Brexit disaster with a mixture of horror and sadness. For outsiders like me, the solution seems obvious: have another referendum, this time without Russian interference, and see if the country really wants to leave the European Union. Polls suggest that some Brexiteers are suffering from buyer’s remorse […]
Monday In an important debut article for the Atlantic, former New Yorker writer George Packer mentions a Bertolt Brecht poem to illustrate the threat that the GOP currently poses to democracy. The article contends that Donald Trump is the logical culmination of the Republicans’ 50-year descent into an authoritarian, white identitarian party. According to Packer, the descent […]
Thursday Now that the phrase “hiding in plain sight” is on everyone’s lips, it’s worth revisiting an old post, written 18 months ago, about Edgar Allan Poe’s “Purloined Letter.” After all, since then we’ve had confirmed one of the more spectacular instances of a letter theft committed in plain sight. When Trump said during the campaign, […]
Monday Former federal prosecutor Ken White channeled Sherlock Holmes while explaining the latest revelations concerning Trump and his associates. The expression memorably associated with the great detective first appeared in “The Adventure of Abbey Grange”: All three briefs show the special counsel and the Southern District closing in on President Trump and his administration. They’re […]
Balzac’s dazzling novella “Gobseck” finds the measure of the Trumps and other billionaires who sell out the nation.
