Consider the childhood experience of Kristina Rizga: When I was about 10, a classmate in my small-town school in Latvia liked to tell me in between classes that he hated Jews. I was the only Jewish kid in school, and one day as I walked home I heard steps behind me. My eyes caught his, and…
Politics
City, Local Government, Planning, Politics
The Erosion of Political Norms (Part 2 in a Series)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Whitewater, as with other Wisconsin cities and towns, has a Planning Commission. Like some towns (but not others), Whitewater by practice places a member of one commission (let’s say, Parks & Rec) on another commission (let’s say, Planning): a representative of one commission to another. So a person might be appointed to serve on the…
America, Local Government, Open Government, Politics
The Erosion of Political Norms (Part 1 in a Series)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 5 Comments
This is the first in a series about the erosion of local political norms. In a recent essay on national politics, E.J. Dionne Jr., Norm Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann write of How the GOP Prompted the Decay of Political Norms (adapted from their book One Nation After Trump): President Trump’s approach to governance is unlike that…
Law, Politics
Podcast: Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s a new podcast from Atty. Preet Bharara, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. I’ve embedded the first episode, below, and readers can subscribe to this and future episodes via iTunes or Stitcher. On March 11, 2017 President Donald Trump fired US Attorney Preet Bharara. Preet tells the story in…
Foreign Affairs, Politics, Trump, Writing
Lauren Duca humbly presents…
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Chris Cillizza, formerly of the Washington Post, presently of CNN, eternally a buffoon, wrote today that he thought Trump’s United Nations address was “much more poetic” than Trump’s prior speeches. From this, one can say that CNN wastes at least as much money as Cillizza’s salary & benefits. (There are, probably, vile limericks that are…
Alt-Right, America, Authoritarianism, Politics, Trump, Trump-Russia
The Premature Question
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Over at the Daily Beast, Joy Reid asks What’s Going to Happen When the Trumpists Realize the America They Yearn for Is Gone? It’s an interesting question, perhaps, but more importantly it’s a premature one. We’ve a long road ahead before Trumpism is finished, and you’ll excuse me if the time for pondering life after…
Alt-Right, America, Babbittry, Bigotry, City, Culture, Liberty, Local Government, Politics
The Existential (Imagined and Real)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It was Michael Anton (writing as Publius Decius Mus) who exactly one year ago famously declared that 2016 was “The Flight 93 Election,” an existential fight for survival for state-loving conservatives: 2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it…
Politics, Trump
What’s Left
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It was Secretary Clinton who, during the campaign, controversially but memorably asserted that “[t]o just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,’” Hillary Clinton said at a New York fundraiser on Sept. 9. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it. And unfortunately, there…
Local Government, Politics, Trump
Trump’s the Failure We Always Knew He Would Be
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Writing in the Journal Sentinel, Craig Gilbert finds that Donald Trump has squandered chance to broaden base, increase popularity, polls show: “He’s done nothing to expand his base and, if anything, he’s sort of where he was, or experiencing greater erosion,” says Lee Miringoff, who conducted polls this month for NBC/Marist in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that showed Trump with…
City, Local Government, Politics
Three Tiers of Public Communication
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Local government – and here I am thinking primarily of a small town’s local government – has three tiers of communication: saying nothing, saying something, saying the right thing. (In the third tier, right refers to a full and fair means of communication, and not right as merely agreeable and pleasing.) Saying nothing. Common enough…
City, Politics, Trump
‘Enough is enough’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Los Angeles Times editorial board plainly states the truth about these times: These are not normal times. The man in the White House is reckless and unmanageable, a danger to the Constitution, a threat to our democratic institutions. Last week some of his worst qualities were on display: his moral vacuity and his disregard…
America, Liberty, Politics
‘Pick a torch, America’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
City, Politics, Trump
Molly Ball on ‘The Trump Show’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Covering Trump’s recent appearance in West Virginia, Molly Ball writes that “HUNTINGTON, W.V.—Every day brings new drama, but the Trump Show’s themes remain the same. He’s come to tell his people that everyone else is wrong and they are right…. They have come here, more or less, to be lied to: Trump, in his speech,…
Politics, Trump
Too Little, Too Late
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Brian Beutler writes that Jeff Flake’s Ridiculous, Fake Anti-Trump Rebellion Should Terrify Republicans: [U.S. Senator from Arizona Jeff] Flake now professes alarm about Trump’s “affection for strongmen and authoritarians,” yet has done next to nothing with his extraordinary power—including a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee—to stop Trump from presiding over a pro-authoritarian administration. Only a handful of…