The answer to how and why the modern conservative movement got so bat-shit crazy, to use Lindsey Graham’s words, is complicated. While it is beginning to seem like the big tent of the GOP has too many competing agendas to continue to function as a national party, these same groups coexisted and thrived for over forty years […]

Read more "Anti-Intellectualism and the Christian Right"

In Fox News latest car crash/GOP Primary Debate, Ted Cruz garnered big applause in claiming that the fall of Detroit (and implicitly, the Rust Belt) was the result of 60 years of failed liberal government, claiming that “destructive tax policies,” and “weak crime policies” drove citizens out. Cruz says that this is a story the […]

Read more "Who Killed Detroit?"

I don’t know Donald Trump’s heart. I cannot tell you if he is, at his core, an unrepentant racist. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if he is or is not. I can tell you that his behavior caters to racists and enables open and unabashed acts of racism and bigotry.

Read more "Donald Trump and Enabling Racism"

Thanks a lot for stopping by. My friends in the industry appreciate your business and understand that putting up with your leering and flirting– right or wrong– are part of the job. But it would sure be nice if you could act like a human once in awhile. For instance, say you are a guy […]

Read more "To the creepy regular at the bar…"

As Black History Month comes to a close I’d like to spend a few minutes addressing controversy over Black Lives Matter being used in the teaching of black history. This discussion must include a brief explanation of the purpose of history education in the schools, the growing cowardice of school administrators across the country, and […]

Read more "Is Black Lives Matter Too Political For the Schools?"

Conor Friedersdorf’s How the Conservative Movement Enabled the Rise of Donald Trump over at The Atlantic today is a must-read. In it he details something I have been shouting since last summer– that the space for Donald Trump’s vacuous populism was created by the GOP selling their soul to the right-wing infotainment complex. Conservative establishment talking heads […]

Read more "Creating a Monster"

File this story from Gawker under “I” for insane. In response to faculty concerns that Texans who legally own firearms will be allowed to carry their weapons on campus starting August 1 this year the University of Houston held a “campus carry dialog” where they discussed the dangers of armed students. You see, students on […]

Read more "How Not to Get Murdered on a Concealed Carry Campus in Texas"

I caused a bit of a dust up back home with my piece “Why I Can Never Go Home Again.” A range of people reached out to me via Facebook, email, and text. The overwhelming majority were positive, saying I had captured the essence of their experience (white and black) and the sense of disappointment […]

Read more "God, Guns, and Glory"

Americans, on a whole, are ahistorical thinkers. Despite our professions of love for the past, most of us have little knowledge of the traditions, competing ideologies, and causal factors that formed the world we live in. Where we invoke the past, we typically do so in shallow, presentist terms. This tendency leads us to make a […]

Read more "Jacksonian America"

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap […]

Read more "Remembering the Dead"