A few weeks ago I had coffee with Connie Barlow, an author of popular science books (including The Ghosts of Evolution, 2002), as she and her partner Michael Dowd stopped in Santa Rosa en route southward. Among other things,...
A battle is raging in Washington for ultimate power, and while it’s being defined by personality (specifically, one “yuge” ego), it also hinges on political philosophies. The common terms liberalism and conservatism have lost their usefulness in navigating these...
With Donald Trump’s election and the rising perils of war, climate upheaval, accelerating inequality, and civil unrest, some of the richest people in the United States are making escape plans. In a recent New Yorker article, “Doomsday Prep for...
Millions of Americans now share the profoundly disturbing experience of watching and waiting as their nation lurches toward authoritarianism. In a previous essay, I described the Trump administration as a “presidency in search of an emergency”—i.e., a crisis that...
In last week’s essay I used the phrase “hard-nosed optimism” to describe the attitude needed now as “an alternative to the lies of divisive bullies who take advantage of the elites’ failures in order to promote their own patently...
Eight minutes into his inauguration speech, Donald Trump presented one of his key policy shifts. “America First”, he announced. And then, again, in case anyone had missed it, this time more slowly and deliberately, “America First”. He went on to...
Our new American president is famous for spinning whoppers. Falsehoods, fabrications, distortions, deceptions—they’re all in a day’s work. The result is an increasingly adversarial relationship between the administration and the press, which may in fact be the point of...
Donald Trump’s voters have high hopes that he’ll boost the economy and protect jobs for those who’ve been left behind after three decades of flat or shrinking paychecks. They didn’t vote to make the super-wealthy even wealthier. Even Steve...
The first week of the Trump presidency has seen an extraordinary and unprecedented confrontation between, on one hand, the new leader and his spokespeople, and on the other, mainstream American media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington...
Not since the Civil War has an American presidential Inauguration Day been so fraught with fear and dread (on February 23, 1861, Abraham Lincoln traveled to his inauguration under military guard, arriving in Washington, D.C., in disguise). The incoming...