We can be shocked by the events of January 6th, but we shouldn’t have been surprised. Anger and cynicism toward the Federal government has been stoked by conservative media and the Republican Party since at least Ronald Reagan. History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued … Read more
One of the hallmarks of Democracy is the peaceful transfer of power from one elected administration to the next. This is especially important when the outgoing and the incoming administrations are from opposing parties. It is, of course, difficult to lose a hard-fought contest, but the mature response is always for the loser to stand … Read more
If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis.” Barack Obama Information is only as good as the quality of your sources. Social media in particular is … Read more
In the election of 2020, nearly 73 million Americans voted for autocracy over democracy. Most of these people are under the brain-numbing influence of lies, manipulation, and conspiracy-thinking. The frightening thing is that even without Trump in the White House, they could still be a potent and dangerous political force. Currently, the most obvious effect … Read more
On January 21,2010 the Supreme Court decided that “Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections.” This was the infamous “Citizens United” decision. People generally don’t know that the organization called … Read more
Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through … Read more
In a New York Times interview on May 4, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin next year.” That this could possibly happen is supported by the fact that, in October 2016, Trump would not promise to … Read more