Left Jabs

The flashpoint of the next civil war won’t be slavery. It will be abortion. And it’s already here. It’s a war that may never get to the point of armed conflict, but it will be no less hard-fought and bitter for all that. The states are already lined up, more or less, the same way they were last time, which makes it hard to think well of the American South, which is now joined by much of the Midwest, and a lot of the northern border states. I’m sure there are good people in all these states. I’m sure there are even Democrats. But good people don’t get much traction in an electorate where the ignorant and apathetic are being brainwashed by the cruel and crazy. The Dobbs decision has opened the door to a new era of state-to-state conflict, in which the laws of one state will be diametrically opposed to, challenged by, and possibly undermined by the laws of another state. The war will be fought mostly in the courts, which will be tied up for years and years, sorting out the multi-j...

Since I last posted here, it’s been a whole month of long-awaited schadenfreude. It’s okay, we deserve it. And we’re too battered and bruised to take it for granted. But the sheer throw-weight of legal firepower now aimed squarely at Donald Trump and his band of crazies is truly heart-warming. From DOJ to New York State to Manhattan to Georgia — and to any number of investigations percolating under the surface — Trump and his minions are finally on the run, with rightwing media struggling to invent reasons, most of them cringe-worthy, for the naked criminality now being exposed in all its squalor. Weisselberg is in handcuffs. Giuliani is a target. Graham is being forced to testify. Phones are being confiscated, homes raided, subpoenas flying in every direction. Creeps are going to prison. And Republican leaders everywhere are losing sleep over those boxes from Mar-a-Lago and those texts from Alex Jones’ phone, and how they might just want to hire a lawyer, y’know, just in case. T...

I have now subjected you to a full month of reruns, but I don’t feel too guilty. In that time, the news has been nothing short of astonishing, yet I’m not tempted to weigh in on any of it, at least not yet. Being outside the country, with no TV and limited internet, I find I have little to add to the blizzard of punditry from which I’ve been semi-isolated. With that in mind, let’s revisit my post from January 12, 2021, less than a week after the riots of January 6, when we were still struggling to digest those horrific events. In it, I argued for accountability, a word that is very much front and center today. I got some pushback on my post from last Tuesday. It was the day before the Capitol insurrection (or whatever history plans on calling it). In that post, I urged career civil servants to come forward and report any felonies that Trump appointees might commit as they slither out the door. The pushback came from a Canadian friend who was rightly concerned tha...

  I promise to write something new soon — right now, it's not in the cards. Regardless, there are still a few past posts that I think are worth revisiting. This one goes back to March 2021, two months after Jan 6 and the subsequent Biden inauguration. The timeline and its context notwithstanding, I don’t think there’s a word I would change. If anything, I’m guilty of understatement, as the Trump cancer continues to metastasize to the point where it will clearly outlive him. The Trump legacy is still a work in progress, but the outlines are already on full display. I tried to watch the Former Guy’s CPAC speech. I really did. I hung in there for almost two minutes before I needed a shower. But at least one thing came through loud and clear. In the last four years, Donald Trump gave all Republicans a license to lie, cheat, and steal just as much as their natures allow. And that license has not expired. Trump led by example, and they were happy to follow. We w...

  Full disclosure, I’m still on vacation, still with extended family, still not finding time to write much, which is not necessarily a bad thing. So I’m treating this hiatus as an opportunity to take another look at some of the history behind what’s happening today. This is from roughly a year ago. 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...