Reading Time: 7 minutes The midterm elections are over. But, in a sense, it doesn’t matter—because the virulent, now-years-long epidemic afflicting American politics remains: cynical Republican mendacity, which is to say, purposeful lying and duplicity—spearheaded by former president Donald Trump. And zero accountability so far for the merchants of this corrosive assault on the nation. Make no mistake, this […]
2022 midterm election
Posted inPolitics
Gen Z in the House, abortion rights wins, and other highs from Election Day
Reading Time: 3 minutes Democrat Maura Healey is projected to be the first female governor of Massachusetts and the nation’s first openly lesbian state executive. Maryland elected its first black governor, Democrat Wes Moore. The first member of Gen Z is headed for the House of Representatives, and several states affirmed abortion rights.
These long-overdue historic feats are just some of the high points of the 2022 midterm elections.
Posted inCritical thinking
The work goes on: 7 post-midterm podcasts for a better democracy
Reading Time: 12 minutes Are you doomscrolling around the ongoing US midterm count? The closeness of many races, the losses on some key issues, and the spectacle-driven politics that a tightly split House of Representatives foretells certainly weigh on the US today. Will results be contested on the grounds that they didn’t yield a massive sweep for one side? […]
Posted inPolitics
Vote for character, not shady characters
Reading Time: 3 minutes When you go to the polls to vote in Tuesday’s midterm election, if you didn’t vote early, keep one word in mind: character. The critical importance of that under-emphasized virtue to the health of the republic is eloquently underscored in a wise (as always) essay by David French in The Atlantic magazine’s “The Third Rail” […]
Posted inPolitics
The crisis of democracy: on remaining vigilant without freaking out
Reading Time: 4 minutes The fiery rhetoric of the campaign trail might make you might think American democracy has failed or is failing. There is declining trust in government, elections, and in democracy itself. And some people are freaking out. This is a crisis of democracy. But there is no such thing as a stable, happily-ever-after version of democracy. […]
Posted inThe Color of Disbelief
It’s secularism, stupid: Why Latino voters aren’t abandoning the Democratic Party
Reading Time: 6 minutes Throughout the 2022 midterm election cycle, there have been countless stories about Latinos abandoning the Democratic Party. A closer examination of the polls and questions around Latino religiosity tells a different story, one rooted in the most dramatic development in Latino politics: the rise of secularism.
Posted inPolitics
Secular and blue? How the religiously unaffiliated could be significant in the upcoming elections
Reading Time: 4 minutes The heavy Democratic lean of the nonreligious vote presents both an opportunity and a problem for the party.
Posted inThe Secular
2022 Midterms: Will the nonreligious be decisive?
Reading Time: 6 minutes The dynamics of nonreligious growth suggest that many are disengaged from politics, and those that are engaged cannot be assumed to fall in step with a single partisan identity. But the very diversity that makes for a frustrating political coalition could inspire and continue deeper cultural change.
Posted inThe Secular
Understanding the secular vote
Reading Time: 6 minutes Already influential, secular voters will soon be the dominant voice in US elections, says political analyst Juhem Navarro-Rivera.
Posted inPolitics
From Hitler to Trump, strongmen’s lies have devastated the world
Reading Time: 3 minutes At the risk of exaggerating a connection to today’s American political environment, bald-faced lies disingenuously and persistently applied over time destroyed Germany’s pre-World War II Weimar Republic. The lies were spread by the racist Nazi Party’s fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, in a cynical and diabolical propaganda campaign inflicted on the German people during years of […]