Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Reporticus Americanus: endangered species, seldom seen in the wild
It has become increasingly difficult –in fact, is now almost impossible — to think constructively about events that happen at a distance. It’s bad enough that almost every event has associated with it at least two competing sets of “alternate facts,” we’ve become used to that and can with patience and research sort through it all and triangulate the location of probable truth. But research requires the existence of at least some honest brokers of fact, reporters who will record that was raining that day without calculating whether the fact that it was raining benefits one tribe or the other tribe. Continue reading
One of the Sunday magazine shows the other week devoted a segment to a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. It featured interviews with earnest, articulate people professing their belief in the proposition that the earth is flat, and their scorn for all the so-called “evidence” to the contrary: the moon landing, the space station, the stunning images from orbiting satellites — all fake. 
“The domestic radical right has killed more people than radical Islam since 9/11 in the United States, without a doubt.” Those are the words of Ryan Lenz, principal writer of a 
He was a charming man, and I took to him immediately when I met him at a social function. Well into his eighties, he had the appearance and energy of a much younger man. And his stories, oh lordy the stories he could tell: about living in his native Germany under the Nazis, of scrounging for trinkets to sell to soldiers so his own family could eat; about the apprehension that permeated life in a repressed country that was losing a war; about coming to America speaking no English, and the struggle of adapting, learning a trade, starting a business and raising a family. I loved this guy. Then, for some reason, he felt it necessary to make an announcement. “I voted for Trump, you know.” 
I have read Bob Woodward’s book on the Trump presidency, titled 
It remains to be seen what additional services Robert Mueller will do for his country, but he has performed a great one for me personally: what has come to light about Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, as a result of the Mueller investigation, has explained a big chunk of my life that was previously obscure to me. I realize this is a revelation that is of interest to no one but myself, but it 
This is a story, boys and girls, about how Donald Trump’s world could end — not with a bang, but a whimper. These are not like the crimes you and I make, or the 
The brainwashing of America is just about complete, and it will soon be time to rinse and repeat. The latest load of suds to be applied to the task is the announcement that the gross domestic product — the value of all the goods and services produced in the country — grew at a rate of 4.1% during the second quarter of this year. The Industrial Hallelujah Chorus is in full-throated harmony, with every politician and pundit in the land agreeing that this is a very good thing, and competing with each other to invent ever-more-effusive ways to describe the economy — “booming” is just about everybody’s favorite. 
