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A Reflection on Trump's Uncharted Presidency
James Fallows has been a journalist with The Atlantic for 38 years, and has covered presidential administrations since Jimmy Carter. “The administration of Donald Trump is less charted, more...
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‘American Carnage’: The Trump Era Begins
For my sins, I have read every U.S. presidential inaugural address ever given, and played a small part in writing one of them—Jimmy Carter’s, delivered 40 years ago today.The first one I remember...
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A Video for the New Age
As a study of oratorical styles, this is genuinely worth watching, even if you don't understand a word of Italian. Spend even 30 or 40 seconds and you will see what I mean. Or for a highlight skip to...
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On the Future of the Time Capsules
Back in May, I kicked off a Trump Time Capsule series, designed to note what we knew, when we knew it, about the man who was trying to become president. Earlier this month, just before the election, I...
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Missing Thanksgiving Day
When you are an American living overseas, Thanksgiving is an even more powerful nationally unifying holiday than the Fourth of July. All the Americans know something special is going on; for everyone...
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Action at the Local Level, D.C. Edition
As I mentioned yesterday in another note on Erie, Pennsylvania, I’ll try to send out some reports on still-functional local-level activities around the country. This one is an update on the D.C.-area...
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A More Detailed Guide to Dealing With Trump's Lies
I have seen this portrait, at Mar a Lago, with my own eyes, and took this photo. (It was years ago, during an entirely non-Trump-related event that happened to be held there.)Yesterday from China, I...
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‘There’s No Such Thing Anymore, Unfortunately, as Facts’
This morning, straight off the plane from Shanghai, I was on The Diane Rehm Show with Margaret Sullivan, much-missed former Public Editor of the NYT who is now with the WaPo, and Glenn Thrush of...
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Meanwhile in America: ‘New Americans’ in the Rust Belt
If you’ve read or heard about Erie, Pennsylvania, since the election, it’s likely to be with framing as “declining Rust Belt city that illustrates the fears and dislocations that led to Trump.”Over the...
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How the Vote Broke, in Historical Perspective
The projected count for the electoral college in 2016 via WikimediaFrom the inbox, an engineer who is directly involved in the technology for tabulating votes in a number of states sends this report on...
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How to Deal With the Lies of Donald Trump: Guidelines for the Media
The WashingtonPost on November 27. Headlines like this are a step toward recognizing the plain reality of today’s politics.A man who will literally have life and death power over much of humanity seems...
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‘With Such a People You Can Then Do What You Please’
Are Donald Trump’s latest attacks on the press really that bad? Are they that out-of-the-ordinary, given the famous record of complaints nearly all his predecessors have lodged? (Even George Washington...
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Giving Trump a Clean Shave
During Richard Nixon’s years as a slashingly anti-Communist U.S. senator and vice president, The WashingtonPost’s famed cartoonist Herblock (Herbert Block) was a relentless critic. His trademark was...
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Trump's Credibility Crisis Arrives
Donald Trump’s first two months in office have obviously been rocky. But the disruptions have mainly been internally generated—Trump’s tweets, the tensions and shakeups in his staff, his battles with...
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Stories From Another Time, for Our Times: ‘We Do Our Part’
Tales from yesterday, for tomorrow.To the extent I spent any time studying in college, it was to learn about American history. The main impression the lectures and readings left on me was the...
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‘Our Erie’ Tells Its Story
Some of the people behind a new video about economic and technological promise in Erie, Pennsylvania. We have met most of these people over the past year. (Jefferson Educational Society of Erie.)As...
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Mark Colvin, of Australia and the World
Today the eminent Australian broadcaster Mark Colvin died at age 65. This is a sad moment for his country, for his many friends (of whom I was glad to be one), and for his craft. Mark Colvin’s impact...
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Five Reasons the Comey Affair Is Worse Than Watergate
The tangled affair now known as Watergate began 45 years ago, before most of today’s U.S. population had even been born. (The median age of Americans is about 38, so most people in the country were...
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Rules for Engagement, from the University of Vermont
The scene this morning in Burlington (Josh Brown, UVM).This morning I had the privilege of giving the commencement address at the University of Vermont—UVM, home of the Catamounts, in Burlington. My...
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Zbigniew Brzezinski
I started off on the wrong foot with Zbigniew Brzezinski, which is why I hope I will sound all the more sincere in saying how much I came to admire him, how great a contribution he made to America and...
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