Political Theatre category archive
The Music of the Fears 0
Shaun Mullen has tired of listening to Congressional Democrats play their favorite musical instrument: The Dithering-do.
Open Heartland 0
In the Hartford Courant, Richard Brown and Ron Formisano argue forcefully that the term “American Heartland” is woefully misused when viewed as referring only to the Midwest and Plains states and, by extendion, their residents. Brown and Formisano posit that such usage ignores too many other hearts in the American land. They conclude
I commend their piece to your attention. Follow the link for their reasoning.
Lowering the Barr 0
Connie Estrich, who went to law school with Attorney-General William Barr and remembers him as an honorable man, wonders what has happened to the Bill Barr she knew.
No excerpt or summary can do justice to her article. Just read it.
Minimum Qualifications 0
Paul Ekman, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, identifies six personality (as opposed to political) characteristics which he considers desirable in a president or presidential candidate. They are:
- Not impulsive
- Comfortable with ambiguity
- Tolerates taking risks
- Values transparency
- Takes the blame for mistaken actions
- Seeks to act consistently with our American heritage
Follow the link for his reasoning, and, as you do so, reflect on how well the incumbent embodies these qualities.
Stray Thought 0
I’m so old that I can remember when politicians of a certain age voluntarily entered retirement.
Purity 0
I have from time to time complained in these electrons of political “purists,” those who, if a candidate or nominee does not agree with their positions in their entirety, run whining off to throw their votes away on a Jill Stein or a Ralph Nader.
The other side of “purists,” I reckon, are the cultists, those who support their idol regardless of what he or she does, even if that includes, say, just to pick a fr’instance from thin airwaves, shooting someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue.
At Psychology Today Blogs, Adrian Picotic explores the latter. A snippet:
Foxy Shady 0
Atrios points out that Fox News inhabits (creates? perpetuates?) an alternate universe.
Devolution 0
In The Atlantic, George Packer tracks the devolution of the modern Republican Party. A snippet:
Republicans have chosen contraction and authoritarianism because, unlike the Democrats, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. Its character is ideological. The Republican Party we know is a product of the modern conservative movement, and that movement is a series of insurgencies against the established order. Several of its intellectual founders—Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, among others—were shaped early on by Communist ideology and practice, and their Manichean thinking, their conviction that the salvation of Western civilization depended on the devoted work of a small group of illuminati, marked the movement at its birth.
Via Juanita Jean.
Afterthought:
I think the author failed to give adequate emphasis to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, in which appeal to racism and racists became an overt tactic of the Republican Party. The Southern Strategy was key to the Republican Party’s march from being personified by Nelson Rockefeller and Everett Dirksen to being personified by Steve King and Louie Gohmert.
“On His Knees, Staring at His Reflection in the Pool” 0
Does this article remind you of anyone?