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US Politics

“While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racist,” King declared. “His candidacy and philosophy will serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes will stand.”

Taylor Branch • Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65

We will be known as a culture that feared death

and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity

for the few and cared little for the penury of the

many. We will be known as a culture that taught

and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke

little if at all about the quality of life for

people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All

the world, in

He reminded me that at the end of 2003, John Kerry was polling seventh in the Democratic primary race... and went on to become the nominee. At this point in the 2016 election cycle, he noted, it was Scott Walker leading the Republican field, followed by Jeb Bush , and “the soon-to-be indicted” Rudy Giuliani , in third.

May the Schwarzman Be With You

So that is the why of Donald Trump. He was the chosen instrument of an insurgent public, and no established centers of power stood in his way. The somewhat different question of how this transpired now needs to be posed. In 1980, 1990, even 2000, Trump’s bizarre trajectory would have been not just impossible but politically suicidal. What has chang

Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

[It is scarcely necessary to remark that in more recent times the signification of these terms has changed. The Republicans are the representatives of the old Federalists, and the Democrats of the old Republicans.—Trans.

Alexis de Tocqueville • Democracy in America, Volume I and II (Optimized for Kindle)

You’d simply drown. We all would. It’s amazing to me that no one much talks about this—about the fact that whatever our founders and framers thought of as a literate, informed citizenry can no longer exist, at least not without a whole new modern degree of subcontracting and dependence packed into what we mean by ‘informed.

David Foster Wallace • Deciderization 2007—a Special Report

And what follows will, as with Roosevelt and Reagan, maintain the core principles of America while radically changing how we experience it.

George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

The second wave of moralism was the radical politics that washed over universities in America, Europe, and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Radical reformers usually want to believe that human nature is a blank slate on which any utopian vision can be sketched.