The polar opposite theory. Incumbent presidents are replaced by their polar opposites. Except for his gender, Trump is definitely the polar opposite of Obama. Obama has big hands. The persistence of sexism. The qualities Americans want in a president are incompatible with pantsuits. False memory syndrome. Some Americans really do want to make America great … More Ten Reasons Donald Trump May Well Be the Next President

Donald trump has been winning over evangelical Christians, but apparently not the ones who actually go to church: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/29/where-is-trumps-evangelical-base-not-in-church. Probably a lot of marginally religious Americans call themselves evangelical Christians without having a clue about what it means. They know they’re not Catholics, Jews, or Mormons. They find Ted Cruz creepy and think Trump looks … More Donald Trump’s Republican Party

Are Trump supporters stupid? It’s probably not politically correct to ask such a question, but Trump supporters hate political correctness. What they love about Trump, they say, is that he tells it like it is. Since he is obviously a pathological liar who makes things up as he goes along, they can’t possibly mean he’s … More Are Trump Supporters Stupid?

The Hillary Clinton forces have just unleashed the first attack ad against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOocb-DId4 The presumptive part has never more important; it means that barring some catastrophe such as Trump having a fatal accident, he will be the nominee, but in his case, desperate Republicans may be planning the fatal accident. The … More American Politics: Candidates or Contestants?

Over the entrance to the library at the University of Colorado, where I was a student in the 1960s, is the inscription, “Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.” It seems a fitting motto for a library. The University of Alberta, where I worked as a librarian for forty years, also has … More The Corporate University

A few years ago, when I was having dinner in a restaurant with my wife, I got up to go to the rest room, which was at the end of a long corridor. A slightly stooped, grey-haired old man was coming toward me, and I moved to one side to let him pass. He moved … More The View in the Mirror

By now it must be dawning on any careful observer of the American political scene that Donald Trump might actually win the presidency. This horrifying possibility seems increasingly plausible. Until recently, I was happily convinced that Trump’s nomination would be a gift to the Democrats. Now that his nomination looks inevitable, I am not so … More President Trump?

The Donald Trump phenomenon can be seen as a white working class revolt against the Republican establishment. That establishment has championed small government, tax breaks for the rich, privatization, and deregulation.  The establishment’s only attention to the increasingly impoverished working class—indisputably devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs to globalization—has been to exploit its fears … More Idiocy Across the Political Spectrum

Bernie Sanders has done it again. He compared poverty in Baltimore to conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank.  (http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/339308/bernie-sanders-compares-poverty-in-baltimore-to-conditions-in-palestine/) Connections have been made between the besieged African American community of Ferguson, Missouri, and the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, but those connections were made by Black Lives Matter protestors. That a mainstream politician and serious … More Bernie Sanders and the Palestinians

In the statement of principles of IFNOTNOW, an American Jewish organization opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, is the claim that there are as many ways of being Jewish as there are Jews. (http://ifnot.net/about-us/our-principles/) This claim is exaggerated, but it contains a kernel of truth. Because no one central Jewish authority … More The Diversity of Jewish Opinion