[ Posted Friday, January 15th, 2021 – 17:20 UTC ]
Throughout his entire presidency, Donald Trump has continued to top himself in the category of "most intense week ever." Over and over again, people thought: "Well, that's it -- he'll never sink lower than this," only to have this turn out to be mere wishful thinking, when the following week turns out to be even worse.
So why was anyone surprised when Trump rolled out his "season finale" (and "series finale," one would like to hope) of his made-for-television presidency in the first week of January? We all knew that whatever the end would look like, it would be spectacular (or, perhaps, "spectacularly bad"). And here we are.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 13th, 2021 – 18:26 UTC ]
That headline is meant to evoke an earlier phrase from American history which (even before a book and subsequent movie popularized the term) denoted one of the most existentially-dangerous times in not just our country's history, but in that of the entire world: the "thirteen days in October" of the Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. Kennedy was informed that the Soviet Union had installed nuclear-tipped missiles a mere 80 miles from the United States, and he began a series of moves which could very well have ended up as the start of World War III. This is not an overstatement or exaggeration. If open hostilities had broken out during the height of the Cold War, it is almost certain (especially seeing what caused the crisis in the first place) that there would have been an exchange of nuclear weapons between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. For 13 days, from October 16 to 28, 1962, the world teetered on the edge of all-out nuclear war. Thankfully, sanity prevailed, and both sides agreed to face-saving measures which ended with the Soviets removing their missiles from Cuba. Kennedy gambled, he gambled big, and he won.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 12th, 2021 – 16:39 UTC ]
Younger readers may be surprised to hear it, but the Republican Party used to stand foursquare for law and order. Indeed, it was a big part of their whole political brand. Republicans used to actually sanctimoniously lecture the rest of us on the righteousness of taking personal responsibility for our actions, and how there simply had to be severe consequences for bad actions. Society absolutely depended on it, they told us.
That was then. This is now.
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[ Posted Monday, January 11th, 2021 – 17:34 UTC ]
Republicans have always been much better at the spin game than Democrats. That's a generally-accepted fact. Which is why it is so important right now for everyone to reject, repudiate, and heap withering scorn upon the latest GOP talking point about last Wednesday's seditious insurrection at the United States Capitol, which tried to forcibly overthrow the will of the people as expressed in a presidential election.
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[ Posted Friday, January 8th, 2021 – 17:54 UTC ]
The sixth of January, 2021, has already gone down in American history as a day of infamy. This is, of course, the same phrase Franklin Roosevelt used to describe the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and it certainly seems appropriate right now.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 6th, 2021 – 15:21 UTC ]
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.--Hosea, 8:7
All I can say is: I don't want to hear any Republican who is not condemning and denouncing what is currently happening right now get sanctimonious about "law and order" EVER again.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 5th, 2021 – 15:01 UTC ]
Our title today is (of course) the core belief of Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The entire book hinges on this concept, in fact. The end of the book comes after the totalitarian, personality-cult government reprograms Smith into not just repeating as the party line but actually believing that two plus two really equals five, not four. His belief in this falsehood is total at the end -- the party tells him it must be so, and so he believes it to be true.
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 30th, 2020 – 18:26 UTC ]
Welcome back to the second part of our annual year-end awards column series! If you missed it, you can check out last week's installment too. But a warning -- for both this column and last week's -- they're long. Incredibly long. Monstrously long. It's been that kind of year, what can we say?
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[ Posted Monday, December 28th, 2020 – 14:28 UTC ]
OK, to begin with, a word of warning: our schedule for this week is going to be light. Today (obviously) there will be no new column, and tomorrow will be a re-run column, just to warn everyone in advance. Then Wednesday will be the second installment of our year-end awards (see below). Thursday I will try to write a column, but if the "banished words" list comes out early (sometimes it is posted on the last day of the year, sometimes on the first of the new year), then that's what it will cover. Friday, naturally, there will be no column, as we all nurse our first 2021 hangover. Starting Monday, we'll be back to a full schedule once again, as we count down the last 20 days of our national nightmare.
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020 – 18:01 UTC ]
What a year. Seriously, that was a tough one for us all, wasn't it?
Before we begin with the awards, I would just like to thank all the people -- both online and in person -- who helped out by giving me their suggestions and nominations for all of these awards. I have tried to credit individuals where appropriate, but I probably forgot to do so here and there too, so I apologize in advance.
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