There is a section of America that lives in an alternate universe. The right-wing media ecosystem, online disinformation, and Donald Trump combined to create it.
The result is that alternate realities, not ideology, split politics.
Just look at the 2020 election. The idea that there was extensive voter fraud in 2020 is a disprovable fallacy, a lie cooked up by Trump to soothe his own ego, but a significant part of the country believes it as fact. This distrust of national electoral institutions has never happened before in the United States.
The increasing authoritarian bent of the Republican party is…
Every once in a while, we’re reminded of how dystopian America can be. Mass shootings never went away during the coronavirus pandemic, but they were simmering under the surface. It was easy to forget about them.
They most recently returned to the public consciousness with a blitz of major incidents: 10 dead in Boulder, nine in Indianapolis, eight in Atlanta, and now six in Colorado Springs. These incidents initiated the same routines that we are all too familiar with, ones that slip the collective memory until the next mass shooting.
You probably heard about the Mr. Potato Head saga this week. Hasbro dropped the “Mr.” from the brand name in a move to be more gender-inclusive. This might mean something to you; it probably doesn’t. It is such a minor move that only the name on the box will change, not the characters themselves. I will never get back the three minutes it took me to find that information.
Why did you hear about it? It’s become the latest small-scale battlefield in a large-scale culture war that has overtaken American politics. No one will ever win this battle. But we…
After Joe Biden’s early flurry of executive actions, Republican leaders complained. That is to be expected; they are the opposition party, after all. But the way they complained, especially in the aftermath of all that has happened recently, signals that Republicans have no desire (or incentive) to become a healthy participant in democracy.
Most of the early complaints revolved around Biden’s supposed violation of “national unity” in pursuit of his “radical” agenda. There is all sorts of irony and blatant hypocrisy here, of course. …
In an attempt to overturn a free and fair election, supporters of Donald Trump invaded the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday. They walked through unimpeded, waving confederate flags and breaking windows. A woman was shot and killed. Trump put out a half-assed call for peace, then later expressed outright support for the domestic terrorists.
The country watched on live TV as the complicity of the police in the country’s ills was laid bare. …
Donald Trump and his supporters are in the process of contesting a decided election. Trump lost to Joe Biden, and will be removed from office on January 20. But the fact that he lost does not apparently apply to these people. Trump will cry voter fraud until the day he dies, and some 40 percent of the country will stand behind him. It is a sad state of affairs.
We knew it would go down like this. Trump has been preparing for months and years for this moment, and millions of people have been bamboozled enough to believe every word…
Everything about this election was predictable. Bernie Sanders called it exactly. Donald Trump would appear ahead early on, with the first ballots counted being the ones from election day. And then, over time, the mail-in votes would flow in crucial states, and eventually states would flip to Joe Biden.
We knew that many mail-in votes would go to Biden. One of the biggest reasons for that trend is Trump’s established hatred for mail-in balloting. He advocated against his supporters using them. Not unrelated, most mail-in votes went to Biden and now Trump will most likely lose the election.
Thursday evening…
You’ve probably heard a lot in recent weeks about how important this election is. It is contentious, polarizing, omnipresent and chaotic. The stakes are high.
For one: Donald Trump represents the most significant threat to the function of our democracy since perhaps the Civil War. His rhetoric indicating that he may not accept the election result is completely unprecedented. There are scary methods, including the courts, that he may use to retain power at all costs. He will have guaranteed support from an unflappable base and spineless Republicans.
The unrest that could be generated on and after election day is…
The most notable moments of the Vice Presidential debate came when Kamala Harris and Mike Pence sparred over fracking and packing the court. Harris denied that Joe Biden would ban fracking, and danced around the question of whether a Biden administration would try to add more judges to the Supreme Court. Pence pushed the issues hard, when he wasn’t telling you he was going to cut your taxes.
During the debate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Fracking is bad, actually.” Both candidates, the only two with a chance to take the White House, spent the debate evading each other, trying to appeal…
I’ve written a lot of stories criticizing Donald Trump. While he clearly deserves the criticism, I thought it would be beneficial to look at some of the specific positives of Joe Biden’s campaign, and what exactly he offers.
Many people are prepared to “settle for Biden” — a slogan indicating that the necessity of beating Trump outweighs Biden’s lack of progressive bonafides. I’d count myself among those people.
I will, however, give a few examples in this article of promising policies that Biden offers:
He will aim for legitimate campaign finance reform
Biden is generally a moderate candidate, but he…
