In the TV show Designated Survivor, Kiefer Sutherland plays a neophyte president, Tom Kirkman, who tries to bring decency and common sense to the Oval Office after a terrorist attack has wiped out most of the U.S. government. In one episode in the second season, President Kirkman is dealing with the loss of someone close… Continue reading Trump’s War on Intelligence
Thousands of people, mostly women, protested the food shortages in their country by banging on pots and pans as they marched in the streets. They loudly opposed the socialist policies of the government. The police eventually dispersed the protestors, but pressures on the government were mounting. In response, the government complained loudly about a U.S.-led… Continue reading Venezuela: No to Intervention, No to Maduro
It’s not in the text of Dante’s Inferno, but I suspect that those residing in the upper circles of hell regard their neighbors in the bottom circles with a mixture of pity and relief. Cleopatra, buffeted by strong winds in the second circle for her lustful behavior on earth, glances down at the traitor Judas,… Continue reading Deal, No Deal: Britain’s Fearful Future
The second meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un is scheduled for next month. The most likely location will be Vietnam. The agenda is much the same as before: how to get North Korea to denuclearize and the United States to dismantle its sanctions regime. The question remains: which side will make the first substantial… Continue reading The Next US-North Korean Summit
Donald Trump wants to pull U.S. troops out of Syria as quickly as possible. Well, it’s Wednesday, so that’s what the president wants now. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe he’ll insist that Syria pay for the pullout. Maybe Trump will decide to hold a summit with Bashar al-Assad after deciding that the Syrian leader’s not such… Continue reading Trump Punts on Syria
Review of Un-Su Kim, The Plotters (Doubleday, 2019), translated by Sora Kim-Russell Assassination has been an integral part of Korean history. So many leading political figures have been felled by assassins – or, at the very least, threatened by them – that you might think that plotters are constantly at work behind the scenes of… Continue reading The Plotters (Review)
Review of The Great Successor, Anna Fifield (Public Affairs, 2019), 308 pages North Korea is a notoriously unchanging place. In its nearly 75 years of existence, the country has had only three leaders – and they were all related to each other. The Kim dynasty has presided over the closest thing to a totalitarian… Continue reading The Great Successor (Review
Review of BG Muhn, North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism (Seoul Selection, 2018), 80 pages Americans, if they have seen anything of North Korean art, have probably caught glimpses of the propaganda posters that occasionally appear in newspaper photographs of North Korean street scenes. The more knowledgeable North Korea watcher might be familiar with the… Continue reading North Korean Art (Review)
The Republican Party, since its takeover by Reaganauts in the 1980s, has long favored shrinking the federal government to the point at which it can be “drowned in the bathtub,” to use Grover Norquist’s colorful phrase. Tax cuts reduce the federal budget. Budget cuts weaken social programs. Even cutting remarks have their effect. Reagan got… Continue reading Will Trump Rule by Decree
As he nears the end of his second year in office, Donald Trump has reached the high point of his influence and power. For the last two years, the president has relied on a Congress controlled by the Republican Party. He took advantage of this congressional control to appoint two Supreme Court justices. He also… Continue reading Peak Trump
You know the story: the globalists want your guns. They want your democracy. They’re hovering just beyond the horizon in those black helicopters. They control the media and Wall Street. They’ve burrowed into a deep state that stretches like a vast tectonic plate beneath America’s fragile government institutions. They want to replace the United States… Continue reading The New World Order Is Here
Popular culture is full of alternative histories. Mackinley Kantor wrote a famous article in Look magazine in 1960 about what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America imagines a world where Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in the 1940 elections and ushers fascism into the… Continue reading The Importance of the New Netflix Dystopia
Even popular series can hit rough spots in their second seasons. Take The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the Amazon breakout about a young Jewish housewife in the late 1950s who improbably establishes a connection with Lenny Bruce and becomes a hilarious, foul-mouthed stand-up comedian in her own right. The first season sparkled. The second season brings… Continue reading Review: Trump Presidency Season Two
“Get me outta here.” At the recent G20 meeting in Argentina, Donald Trump was on the world’s stage when he muttered this aside to an aide. He was supposed to be getting ready for a photo op with the other global leaders at the conclusion of the meeting. And, after some confusion, Trump eventually did… Continue reading Trump Turns the G20 into the G19
Nation-states: what a quaint notion. As a means of organizing territory, they seem to be a brief transition period between large empires and an even larger, borderless world. Sure, nation-states might live on in the form of anthems and flags and independence days, but the idea of fixed borders just doesn’t make sense in a… Continue reading It’s a Borderful World
Remarkable changes are taking place on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas are actually starting to demilitarize the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Just in the last couple weeks, they have taken down 22 guard posts, demined the Joint Security Area, and established a no-fly-zone about the peninsula’s dividing line. They’ve pulled back from confrontation along their… Continue reading Is Korea’s Cold War About to End?
You’ve done enough escape rooms to know the drill by now. You are escorted into what seems like an ordinary room. There’s a table and a chair. On the table is a book. As soon as you step across the threshold, the door closes behind you. You hear the lock click into place. You are… Continue reading Welcome to the Ultimate Escape Room
In the week before the mid-term elections, Donald Trump returned to his bread-and-butter issue: immigration. He knows that the only thing that will turn out his base, and possibly swing some independents over to his side, is fear. Economic indicators are in reasonably good shape (for now). Hillary Clinton is nowhere near power (for now).… Continue reading Trump’s Only Electoral Strategy Was Racism
In his recent speeches and articles, Bernie Sanders has been talking about forming a Progressive International. It’s about time. The alt-right, thanks in part to Steve Bannon, has formed an international network centered in Europe on the National Front in France and the Northern League in Italy. Authoritarian leaders from Vladimir Putin in Russia to… Continue reading Bernie Sanders and a Progressive International
Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia are the latest members of a select international club. Assassins Without Borders has roots that go back, in the modern era at least, to the policies of the Soviet Union, Chile, Israel, Bulgaria, and the United States. All of these countries share a single trait. They were willing to… Continue reading Assassins without Borders
Less than a month ago, the candidate leading in the polls in the Brazilian presidential election was a jailed ex-politician who technically couldn’t even run for office. It gets even weirder. Brazilian voters have put corruption near the top of the list of their concerns this political season. Yet Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the… Continue reading Why Is the Radical Right Still Winning?
The news that Canada has caved on trade has me depressed. The glee with which Donald Trump has announced his latest “victory” is galling. Sure, he didn’t force Mexico and Canada to do everything he wanted in the NAFTA replacement. But he certainly can claim a public-relations coup. And his supporters in Congress are milking… Continue reading Do Bullies Always Win?
Nuclear weapons have held the world hostage for more than 70 years. Although they possess terrifying power and the world has come close to nuclear war on several occasions, these weapons have only been used twice, in 1945, by the United States against Japan. Advocates of deterrence believe that nuclear weapons actually kept the peace… Continue reading North Korea: Nukes vs. War?
The famous tenor Enrico Caruso went on trial in 1906 for an incident at the monkey house in Central Park. He was accused of the indecent assault of 30-year-old Hannah Graham. Caruso in turn accused one of the monkeys of pinching the victim’s rear end. Other accusations of sexual harassment emerged at the trial. The… Continue reading #MeToo Goes Global
During a lifetime of make-believe, Donald Trump has never pretended to be a conventional politician. When he finally decided to make a serious bid for office, he built his presidential aspirations on the flimsiest of foundations: a wild conspiracy theory about Barack Obama’s birthplace. His leadership bona fides were equally laughable, having presided over bankrupt casinos and failed real-estate projects,… Continue reading Say Goodbye to the Guardrails of Governance
Donald Trump is the epitome of irrational exuberance. You might remember that phrase from the 1990s. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, was describing how the tech boom was creating a bubble by generating enthusiasm way out of proportion to the actual value of the new companies. Such an unwarranted… Continue reading There’s a New Crash Coming
The recent anonymous op-ed in The New York Times about the resistance to Trump within his own administration was supposed to reassure the American people. Don’t worry, the writer was saying: We the “steady state” are making sure that an unhinged president doesn’t blow up the world. Behind the scenes, the “adults in the room”… Continue reading The GOP Wants Trumpism without Trump
John McCain was an American politician. That sums up his best and worst qualities. He was not a maverick. As a rather conventional politician, he wasn’t even particularly courageous or much of a straight talker. He represented establishment values as the establishment tilted ever rightward. And yet, in comparison to what passes for political orthodoxy… Continue reading Who’s the Real Maverick: Trump or McCain?
Donald Trump has many enemies. And he has long had an enemies list: all the people that he has attacked repeatedly in person, in print, and on Twitter. But now Trump, as president, has drawn up a formal enemies list. At the top is John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency who… Continue reading What Trump Means by the Deep State
Candide is the first and most amusing example of the powerlessness of positive thinking. In this 18th century novel by Voltaire, the naïf Candide suffers one misfortunate after another – kidnapping, torture, earthquake. Still he adheres to the philosophy of his mentor, Dr. Pangloss, who insists that all is for the best in this best… Continue reading The Best of All Possible Worlds?