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...
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...
The analytical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy now says the United States will become a major energy exporter in a few years. Will this eventually prove to have been an accurate prediction? The forecast is contained in...
The frequency of Internet searches for the term “peak oil” has waned dramatically in recent years; now even the number of articles announcing the “death” of peak oil has dwindled, so universal is the assumption that the concept is...
2016 will be remembered as the year Donald Trump—a wealthy, narcissistic political novice with a strong authoritarian bent—was elected president of the United States after campaigning against economic globalization. The events are fresh enough in many people’s minds that...
In a November 15 press release, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced that there might be a lot more oil in Texas than previously estimated: The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin province...