Political Theatre category archive

A former Federal prosecutor comments on the pardon of Rob Blagojevich. A snippet:

We have stepped through the looking glass, or entered George Orwell’s dystopia. Criminals are victims. Public servants are criminals. Truth is a lie, and lies told loudly and persistently carry the day. We are at a tipping point where the bedrocks of our society are under attack.

Elsewhere, Leonard Pitts, Jr., has a somewhat different interpretation, arguing that we are not, indeed, living in “post-fact America,” but rather in “post-integrity America.”

Experiments fail, even noble ones.

The twits are in bloom(berg).

Remember, if you see it on “social” media, distrust but verify.

At the Idaho State Journal, retired professor Leonard Hitchcock fears that the rule of law is endangered. Here’s a bit from his conclusion; follow the link for his reasoning.

In all of this mess, we mustn’t lose sight of the overriding issue. As the petition of ex-DOJ employees reminds us, “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”

Here’s another take on “socially liberal, fiscal conservative.”

In the context of discussing Michael Bloomberg’s presidential aspirations, Werner Herzog’s Bear explores the internal contradictions posed by this statement:

I am socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

Here’s the nub; follow the link for more.

. . . it’s a total contradiction, because socially liberal things like affordable housing, livable wages, and the social safety net cost money.

Via Juanita Jean.

PoliticalProf.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., suggests that the spread of the coronavirus bears a message for wall-eyed pikers everywhere. A snippet:

History has frequently conspired to show us the folly of believing we can wall ourselves off from the world’s woes. But it has seldom produced a reminder as elegantly ominous or insidious as this.

Aside:

The one bright spot is that the illness the virus causes could be much worse than it is. As warnings go, it could have been a lot worse.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Susan Krauss Whitbourne offers a guide to Trump and Trumpism Machiavellian manipulators.