Left Jabs

Deferred maintenance is always an expensive proposition. Whether you’ve waited too long to replace your brakes, or your state waited too long to replace its dams, the bill will always be far more than if you’d just stayed current with the upkeep. Deferred maintenance now defines us as a country. As if the Covid crisis weren’t straining all systems to the breaking point, the cans we have kicked down the road keep piling up unattended. Paying for them will be a crucial issue for the next few generations. Michigan, my adopted state, is a poster child for deferred maintenance. The same state that brought you the poisoning of Flint’s water. The same state where the current governor was elected with the slogan “Fix the Damn Roads.” This time it’s our dams making the news. Two weeks ago, the Edenville dam in Midland burst, destroying another dam downriver, wrecking thousands of homes, and stranding thousands of families. In the middle of a pandemic. The dam was notoriously fragile. Its owners

I have come to accept that there are many thoughtful, intelligent people who firmly believe — as I do not — that abortion is murder. I further accept that there is no moral or philosophical argument I can offer that will convince them otherwise. I would, however, like to offer some practical arguments, which I have not yet seen thought through, or even brought up. If we end up, as we might, in a situation where Roe v. Wade is overturned, what would an actual ban on abortion look like? What would be the challenges to implementing such a ban? How does one go about making government responsible for policing women’s bodies? Because if Roe is overturned, what we certainly will not see is an overarching federal ban — no foreseeable Congress would even consider it. So it will fall to each state to create its own abortion laws. Inevitably, some states will ban abortion altogether. But a ban at the state level will most likely require an expansion of state government to accommodate what will su

What are we to make of the so-called Never-Trumpers? Their steady acceptance by the media seems way out of sync with their actual numbers. True, there is a gaping credibility gap in the Republican party these days — not a word out of their collective mouths can be believed — and these former operatives have deftly stepped into the vacuum. The media can’t get anything accurate from Republicans in power, so they turn to Republicans who are out of power. You know the names — you see them every day. Bill Kristol, David Frum, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Charlie Sykes, Bret Stephens, David Brooks, George Conway, and a bunch of others. Most of them should have left the scene in disgrace years ago. Yet they’re all over the panels on MSNBC, CNN, PBS. They land prized columns at NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and get syndicated all over. It’s like a bad flashback. These were the abettors and enablers of George W. Bush and his puppetmaster, Dick Cheney. But here they come again, their pasts freshly scrubbed — W

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” -       Stephen Colbert, 2006 One of the longest running fictions regularly trotted out by conservative propagandists is that of liberal bias in the media and the classroom. Through incessant repetition, mostly by bad faith actors, this has somehow become received wisdom, despite being utter nonsense. To be sure, both journalism and academia are rife with liberals. But is it a coincidence that these same people are also concerned citizens, that they’re educated voters whose brains get regular exercise? If conservative thought is unappealing, or even distasteful to these people, does that make them biased? What the propagandists call liberal, I’d call intellectually honest. Of course, reporters and academics alike tend to look favorably on things like human rights, basic freedoms, and rule of law. But that doesn’t make them either biased or liberal. It just makes them American — or it used to. To say that a political viewpoint drives their conduc

This is not journalism I'm doing. Nothing against journalism. On the contrary, I’m a big believer in journalism's role — despite spotty performance of late — in keeping the powers that be in check and the social fabric intact. I admire its rules and standards, even as they’re increasingly honored in the breach. But journalism isn’t me. As a career advertising professional, I have little use for objectivity. I am under no obligation to present two sides of anything. I do not default to fair and balanced. I am trained, in short, to write with an agenda. Looked at another way, what I am is a propagandist. Yes, propaganda is a loaded word, almost a pejorative. But propaganda is really just advertising in a political context. The word, as it has evolved, insinuates that it only comes from black hats, but I think that’s simplistic.  Every political stand — love it or hate it, white hat or black hat — has an agenda, and uses various marketing tools to move that agenda forward. Call it

One of the largely untold stories of this era has been the culpability of the mainstream press in our current predicament. For at least two decades, the press has turned a blind eye to the insidious Republican takeover of all the levers of power, consistently treating this long descent into lawlessness and lunacy as if it’s all just politics as usual. What the press has refused to say out loud — in any mainstream media format — is that one of our two major political parties has gone completely off the rails, and is systematically corroding every social, economic, and political structure in its path. You will never hear it said on the air that yes, this mess is entirely the work of one party. Which it is. It couldn’t be more obvious. It’s certainly well documented. In our hearts, we all know it. You would think it might be worth a mention among the pundits we’re so devoted to hearing from. But the core pretense — that we’re a nation of upright citizens, soberly discussing the issues of

It was sometime in the late eighties. I don’t remember why I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but I was within a block or two of where I lived at the time. What I do remember, vividly even now, is approaching the corner of Amsterdam and 92 nd just as a group of three or four Black kids, all pre-teens, were rounding that same corner and bounding toward me. They were horsing around, as kids that age do, and one of them — the shortest, maybe ten years old — wasn’t watching where he was going. He was moving fast, looking in the wrong direction, and had no idea that I was there, closing in on him. Before I could do anything to avoid it, his head slammed into my left hand, just where I wear my watch. It had to hurt. It didn’t do any real damage to either of us, but it spun him around so that he could actually see me for the first time. It also spun me around so I was facing him. My first thought was that he might be hurt, and I blurted out “Are you okay?” He

I hesitate to label anything “fascist,” a word so overused and misunderstood it’s been leeched of all meaning. But it’s a hard word to avoid these days. I no longer want to hear of Trump’s “authoritarian tendencies.” They’re no longer tendencies, they’re naked power grabs, and Trump is grabbing as much as he can before Election Day, possibly for use afterwards. That’s classic fascism, so let’s call it by its name. Fascism, we’re taught, is the concentration of all levers of power in the hands of an oligarchy of wealthy and corporate interests, headed by an absolute leader. We’ve long speculated about whether it could truly take hold in this country, and if it did, what it would look like. Well, this is what it looks like. Minus some of the bells and whistles, which could be on the way. So far, the concentration camps are still largely on the southern border — at least the ones we know about. So far, the police haven’t quite descended to Gestapo level — but the protests aren’t over, and

In the course of several recent bike rides through various Michigan suburbs, I’ve now passed at least two lawn signs that read: “God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Surprised that I’d never seen this message before, it seemed at first a generous sentiment, even for those, like myself, not religiously inclined. Unconditional love? Who wouldn’t want that? And the idea that it happens by default, with no apparent obligation or action required on my part, gives it a certain something-for-nothing appeal. But as I thought it through, I realized something more insidious might be at work here. Taken to its logical conclusion, this could be interpreted as a sort of moral waiver. No matter how you behave — no matter how cruel, greedy, bigoted, or violent you are — you’re off the hook. If God is going to love you anyway — and if there’s nothing you can do to stop it — you’re free to be just as vile as your nature allows. He’s giving you a pass. And with the word “vile” in min