Left Jabs

How many times, over the last few decades, have we heard mention of the Heritage Foundation, and thought nothing of it? It’s always been one of those names in the background, just below the surface of the discussion. It’s often accompanied by the words “conservative think tank,” which led me to wonder what they think about. Especially in this age of big lies, insurrection, and election subversion. So I took a closer look. Turns out, “think tank” is an apt description, because these are the guys who do the actual thinking — such as it is — for the Republican party. Ever since Reagan, Heritage has provided Republicans with the specious reasoning they use to explain — or explain away — regressive policy positions. The arguments are never particularly cogent, and the facts they use to back up those arguments are cherry-picked at best, invented at worst. But in recent years, facts of any kind have been an afterthought. Heritage has gone all-in for Trump, and they’ve stopped pretendi...

One more week off, then I promise I’ll write something new. Meanwhile, permit me to take you back thirteen months to August 14, 2020, when the world looked remarkably bleak. This was the essay that got the blog thrown off Facebook, which I’ve come to see as a badge of honor. My attitude towards Republicans, as you’ll see, was less than charitable at the time, and it hasn’t improved since. As vile as they were then, they’re immeasurably worse now. Indeed, in the five decades I’ve been watching them, worse is all they’ve ever gotten. Worse is what they do, and every day they get better at it.   Fifty years of Republicanism has brought us to this. A pandemic so out of control, the world sees us as a slow-motion car crash they can’t look away from. An economic nosedive, steeper and faster than any before it, with no chance of recovery as long as the virus stays rampant. An unemployment catastrophe, with sixteen million people out of work, with their health ...

  Greetings from Canada, where I’m taking a mental health week, enjoying something of a media fast (which I recommend), and where I’m happily not writing. So this post is a repeat, and a somewhat timely one. First published October 2, 2020 — pre-election, pre-insurrection, pre-big lie — the subject was abortion. While I certainly never saw the new Texas laws coming — let alone the bounty-hunter angle — I’m pleased that the piece seems more relevant now than it was then. Please give it a read, or a re-read, and see if you agree.   Of all the atrocities a six-to-three Supreme Court could inflict on the world, the overturning of Roe v. Wade is, dare I say, among the least of them. Yes, reproductive rights are as important as ever. Yes, it’s obscene that any Western country should still be wasting time on what should be a long-settled issue. But the implications of a Roe-less future needn’t be as bleak as popular imagination would have it. And it could end up ...

Rage over the new Texas abortion laws comes naturally to anyone with either a heart or a brain, let alone both. But beyond the unspeakably cruel restrictions on reproductive rights, beyond the wanton misogyny and toxic masculinity, beyond the predictable media firestorm that turns outrage into clickbait, there is a larger issue on the table. And it’s one we can only hope is not a trend: Texas Republicans are now openly embracing a culture of citizen-on-citizen informing. Anyone in Texas can now inform on anyone having, or even contemplating, an abortion. Informers have been a cornerstone of totalitarian rule throughout recorded history. Dire warnings about the political use of rumor, innuendo, and slander go back at least to Aristotle. But we need look back no further than the Soviet Union under Stalin to see it raised to an art form, an apotheosis of mass cruelty. By the mid-1930s, Stalin had consolidated all the power of the new Communist state, and vested that power in him...

The jerk was making a stink over being forced to wear a mask. No, this was not Alabama or Texas, or even Michigan. It was St. Joseph Island, Ontario — a place I’ve come to most summers of my life. The summer of 2020 most emphatically broke that streak. I didn’t know until three weeks ago if I’d be allowed into Canada even this summer. The jerk was just ahead of us in a short line, waiting to get into one of the few restaurants on the island to survive the pandemic. The restaurant business isn’t brilliant there, even in the best of times. But we were used to having three or four decent choices on the island. The jerk was loudly lamenting that lack of choice. He appeared to be in his late thirties, with a wife, two kids, and a bad attitude he was happy to share. In answer to a question I didn’t ask, he assured me that the failure of restaurants on the island was a failure of the government and its anti-business policies. Which was why we were all forced to wait in line. I conside...

It’s a shame we have to keep dwelling on Donald Trump, so long after trouncing him in the election. But his legacy continues to evolve, even in his supposed absence. It’s a legacy not just of lies, but of lying itself. The entire Republican party — everyone with a public profile — seems to have actively embraced lying as a viable political strategy. They all want to be Trump. Which doesn’t mean they can be. Trump has always been the perfect liar, and he takes con artistry to a new level. He’s a virtuoso, not just at telling outrageous whoppers, but at convincing his marks that those whoppers are gospel truth. He gets a lie in his head and through sheer force of will he makes it true.   Whether he believes it himself is still a mystery. Most people can’t sustain a lie for any length of time. Even if their moral qualms don’t kick in — and Trump’s never do — it’s hard to maintain a fiction once actual facts come into play, as they tend to do. But Trump lies as effortlessly as ...

Once upon a time, there were Republicans in public office who were happy to call themselves liberals. No, really. The sixties and seventies were full of them. Before Jacob Javits was a convention center, he was a Republican senator from New York, who today would be considered well to the left of Barack Obama. Same with Edward Brooke — once a senator from Massachusetts — who was Republican, liberal, and Black. Yes, you read that right. Nelson Rockefeller, the multi-term governor of New York, was a fixture of my childhood. He actually made it to Vice President, though he was appointed, not elected, to the job in the wake of Nixon’s resignation. There were others you could google. Charles Percy of Illinois. Mark Hatfield of Oregon. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. George Romney — governor of Michigan, one-time presidential aspirant —who would probably be called a socialist today, especially by his son Mitt. They were all Republicans. They were real liberals. They...