When it comes to modern life, honesty can sometimes be farcical, so don’t bother lying unless you’re going to lie big — I was raised to believe that honesty was next to godliness, or at least something very close. We were told repeatedly that nothing was as bad as lying. The first time I came home drunk — to a very strict, fundamentalist Christian home, I might add — what I got…

The 2016 election was a fluke, a perfect storm of incompetence, misogyny, and apathy that gave us the worst president in US history — You wouldn’t have thought that Democrats would have proven to be so superstitious. I certainly didn’t. This is supposedly the party that refutes magical thinking, is skeptical about religion, and believes in the supremacy of the scientific method. They would have been the last group I suspected of being irrationally…

Don’t cheer, you Philistines — it’s only because we’re moving it to its own publication — In 1995, John F Kennedy, Jr. launched a new political magazine called George. I was in my late 20s and just becoming politically aware. We were still a few years away from Aaron Sorkin premiering The West Wing, but already there was a sense that politics could be exciting and…

The Florida governor is a calculating opportunist who has miscalculated his authoritarian path to power — Ever since Trump implausibly won the presidency in 2016, America has endured a seemingly endless series of embarrassments, slights, abuses, and degradations at the hands of unscrupulous carpetbaggers and craven opportunists. Justice has been interminable, and accountability almost nonexistent. But there are signs that the tide just may be beginning…

Or why I can’t find the joy in conflict like other Americans — I’ve never thought of myself as particularly combative, despite what other people think. I avoid conflict like my life depended on it, but somehow I find myself perpetually involved in minor skirmishes with a whole slew of personalities, misfits, establishment types, and ne’er-do-wells. I’m left to deduce that either I’m…

As a man of a certain age, I have chosen to lean into my peak years as a GOM, taking advantage of my position while I can — I’m still trying to decide who I want to be when I grow up. I’ve been a “grumpy old man” since I was eight or nine. Frustrated with the incompetence of adults, irritated by the gross inequities of life, disgusted by the sheer nonsense of it all. The third grade…

One man’s struggle with the paradox between apathy, engagement, meaning, and faith — “Thus it amounts to the same thing, whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre I have my good days. I have my bad. It’s not all Shangri-La here in the darker corners of my brain. Someone once said their mind was like a…

Aaron Sorkin’s homage to smart, compassionate government, also celebrated reasonable, sensible opposition — One of the delightful aspects of watching The West Wing, back in the early aughts, was how Republicans were not vilified on the show, even as they were clearly framed as the opposition. They were given brilliant, logical voices capable of defending their positions with reason and heart. They weren’t…

The impasse of dealing with an opposition that refuses to operate in good faith — There is a widespread belief in America that our present difficulties surrounding partisan bickering, a manufactured culture war, and the polarization of tribal politics is, at its roots, a simple matter of communication, or lack thereof. Rather than being caused by a fundamental difference of opinion on how best to…