Left Jabs

In these deeply corrosive and soul-trying times, every problem plaguing our nation falls particularly hard on children. Between the cans we’ve kicked down the road and the catastrophic failures we’ve recently blundered into, it’s our children who will ultimately suffer the most, both in their present circumstances and their future prospects. It’s a mistake to blame this solely on Trump, tempting as that may be. The blame rests mostly on the Republican party, which has spent the last several decades waging what has amounted to a war on children. Whether through systematic obstruction of all meaningful legislation, or through the aggressive gutting of all regulatory safeguards, the result is a badly frayed safety net that is putting many millions of families in increasingly dire straits. Children are the ultimate casualties. Every major issue we face has a child endangerment component we ignore at our peril. Starting with the virus. Covid has exposed deep frailties in our institutions, b...

Evolution clearly teaches us that you do not want to come between a mother and her offspring. Which is exactly what Donald Trump is doing, and he will surely regret it. Of all the shots currently being fired across Trump’s bow, the one most threatening — the one he least understands — is coming from mothers. It’s not just about the Wall of Moms, a tactic we’ll be seeing more of as he continues to test-drive his police state. It’s more about the simmering rage coming from moms, a rage that crosses all lines of race, religion, income level, geography, and party affiliation. A working mother of my acquaintance once said “The hardest day at the office is easier than the easiest day at home.” Most mothers I know would readily agree. So would most fathers. And that was before the virus. Being locked down with children of any age is hard enough. Having no choice but to school them yourself — while holding down your own job — is obviously harder, by an order of magnitude. Especially without a ...

I doubt that Donald Trump knows what a meme is. Or that memetics is an actual science. Not many people do. But strangely, memetics is one of the few things Trump is actually good at. Maybe even the best ever, which would surely please him if he understood it. Which he won’t. His skills are totally instinctual. The word ‘meme’ has recently become associated with a kind of visual gag on social media, which is too bad, because it trivializes an important concept. A meme, in its original meaning, is a piece of information that spreads from one mind to another. It replicates itself within the social fabric of the culture, in ways that closely resemble genetic processes in biology. Which is why memes have been called mind viruses, for the ‘viral’ way they spread. The term ‘going viral’ was coined by memeticists. The word ‘meme’ itself was coined in the 1970s by Richard Dawkins, as a conscious analogy to the word ‘gene.' Both are basic building blocks of complex constructs — genes of gene...

It’s strange to think that the fate of the nation hinges on a few square inches of cloth. Stranger still to think of the high-pitched controversy surrounding a thing whose only reason for being is to prevent you from dying. But here we are, precariously poised in the kind of fraught moment only Donald Trump could create. A political fight — literally to the death — over masks. Have you been in a store lately, where at least one person was not wearing a mask? Have you felt the helplessness, as visceral as it is corrosive?  Have you felt the fury come over you till you’re shaking? This is mask rage, t he completely understandable urge to inflict blunt-force trauma on a person so belligerently bare-faced, they would sashay into a store, engage in aerosolized repartee with someone equally arrogant, and leave everyone else in the store speechless with anger. Why these bare faces are so determined to risk not just their own lives, but mine as well, is as air-headed as it is terrifying. I...

My devotion to European soccer has been mostly a solitary one. While there are probably several million fellow fans in the U.S., they are widely scattered, and I’m in touch with only a paltry few. We are easily overwhelmed by the fans of those other sports. But thanks to the idiocy of my countrymen, I am currently being rewarded for this lonely pursuit. While my fellow Americans subsist on reruns of past Super Bowls and NBA highlight reels, I have been watching live sports for over two months. Not that I gloat. The German league — we sophisticates call it the Bundesliga — restarted in May, followed by the English Premier League in June. The Italian and Spanish leagues started in June, as well, but I don’t follow those as closely. Yes, they’re playing these games in empty stadiums, as the leagues are all desperate to preserve TV revenue, their golden goose. But even with no fans in the stands, I can’t perceive any meaningful difference in the intensity of either the players or the teams...

How predictable was it that these red-state governors would ride Trump right to the bottom? How predictable was it that the virus would feed on our stupidity? That it would luck into an administration with just the right blend of cruelty and incompetence? That it would thrive on misinformation? I thought the big surge might happen in May, but the virus doesn’t work on my schedule. It took its time. It wanted to make sure we, as a nation, could take our very best shot at being as stupid as we could possibly be. A shot we did not throw away. Now, the Mississippi legislature, when not making horrendous decisions, has become a Covid vector all by itself, with a full twenty percent of its members testing positive. Now, Houston, with its famously robust medical system, is seeing its hospitals overwhelmed, even as its Fire and EMT units are finding depressing numbers of people dying in their own homes, unattended. Now, Arizona (population: 7 million) produces more Covid cases per day than the...

Has Trump seen “Hamilton” yet?  Does he even know that the blockbuster musical — whose cast openly dissed Mike Pence when he saw it on Broadway — is now available for streaming? We know Pence has seen it. But Trump? Maybe not. There is much there for Trump not to like. For starters, it’s written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose parents came from Puerto Rico, and who has been loudly unappreciative of Trump’s enthusiastic blindness to the plight of that hurricane-ravaged island. Then there’s the show’s recurring theme, immigrants succeeding, which will not play well with Trump. He’ll wonder how Hamilton, the immigrant in question, was even able to enter the country, let alone become Secretary of the Treasury before Mnuchin took over. Why wasn’t he turned away at the border? Why wasn't he separated from his parents? And how did an immigrant get on the ten-dollar bill anyway? Does Stephen Miller know about this? “Hamilton” is set during the American Revolution, a subject in which Trump has...

A few weeks ago, I was writing about race. This is not something I do a lot, and not something I feel particularly qualified for. But I had a story I thought worth telling, and it came with semantic issues that could not be ignored. Specifically, I was wrestling, not for the first time, with how to refer to Black people. I couldn’t sidestep the issue — I couldn’t write my way around it — because their racial identity was central to the story. So I consulted with my son, who is more attuned to the zeitgeist than I, and he told me that “Black with a capital B” was the way to go. He pointed me to an article that laid out the case, which I found interesting and, ultimately, convincing. So I took his word for it, though partly for selfish reasons. Because, as it happens, capitalizing the word ‘Black’ plays right into my hands. With a single keystroke, I am suddenly able to solve writing problems I’ve been dealing with for years. Consider, first, that Black is a one-syllable word. This might...

It’s what Republicans have dreamed of for ten years. The Supreme Court, at long last, is poised to drive a stake through the heart of the Affordable Care Act. And at a perfect time, too. When better than during a global pandemic? Finally, the gleeful snatching away of health insurance from 20 million people is in their sights. But it’s worse than that. If the Court votes the wrong way, Covid victims could end up uninsurable for the rest of their lives. It’s already clear that the Covid-based health issues of today are the pre-existing conditions of tomorrow. Without Obamacare, any condition deemed pre-existing might never be covered again. Of course, when I say the Court, I mean John Roberts. With last week’s Louisiana abortion decision, Roberts made clear that he holds the only vote that counts. The decision was encouraging, but only barely. He held his nose and sided with the liberal wing, citing respect for established precedent. Of course, the Voting Rights Act had plenty of establ...