“The very things that can make the center so appealing, however, are also its great weaknesses”
The very things that can make the center so appealing, however, are also its great weaknesses. As worried centrists have long noted, […]
Tag: Politics
“There are really important arenas…where the comparisons between these two countries need to be interrogated, and where deep work has to take place in order to ensure that the two societies are not reinforcing each others’ weaknesses”
There are really important arenas – ideological trends like the rise of nationalism and shifts in how democracy is valued and understood, […]
“Trump’s assault on the premises of democracy is not only unique in modern American history but unique in the annals of modern liberal democracy”
Trump’s assault on the premises of democracy is not only unique in modern American history but unique in the annals of modern […]
“‘Classified’ still conjures images of top-secret government plots, but, in Trump’s Washington, it’s more often used to describe information that the president would prefer to keep quiet”
Trump has been merciless toward anyone else in government who reveals his administration’s secrets, tweeting that ‘‘the real story that Congress, the […]
“When underlying conditions are already suffused with politics, doing nothing can itself constitute a political act”
Change, of course, is inherently destabilizing. It upsets an existing state of affairs that might be unbearable to some but suits others […]
“Politicization is the last refuge of the scoundrel”
Politicization is the last refuge of the scoundrel. To “politicize” something — hurricanes, intelligence, science, football, gun violence — is to render […]
“The existence of multiple moral frameworks with which to view the world is not a sign of confusion; it is a sign of sophistication and strength”
I recognize that there are those people, on the right and on the left, for whom their relationship to Israel is not […]
The Republican Party “became defined by what was left: its resentments and suspicions, its antagonisms and obsessions, its anger and its differences”
The focal point for much of the post-Bush right’s anger and resentment was the Tea Party, a decentralized movement that variously mixed […]
“Trump’s innovation is to have mined a deeper vein of cynicism, exhausting the weary tropes of polite political discourse”
…Trump is pivoting constantly. Or perhaps more accurately, the man is so erratic that he has no baseline of behavior against which […]
“It remains unclear whether anti-establishment voters, in this election or others, tend to choose the most anti-establishment platform, the most outside-the-system leader or the opposite of whoever is in power”
Few systems in the world are more complex than the one between a person’s ears, particularly when he or she is choosing […]
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Tagged Centrism, Politics