attack on US Capitol

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares139 Views

    American Democracy: We Have Misread the Signs of the Coming Storm

    by

    The January 6 storming of the US Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election has left many of us pondering the future of democracy in the United States. The symbol of American democracy withstood the onslaught this time, but the question remains whether the rule of law, free elections and a free press will prevail, or whether the country will succumb to the whims of mob rule and authoritarianism? The outcome of the second impeachment trial of former President Trump on charges of insurrection will shape the answer to that question.

    We have watched the rise of authoritarianism in Poland, Hungary, Brazil and other former democratic regimes, assuming that our institutions and our Constitution were too strong to be compromised by right-wing populist movements. Looking back over the past five decades, it is clear we missed or misread the signs of the coming storm.

    Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

    READ MORE

    Beginning with Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” to Ronald Reagan’s “government is the problem,” to the acceleration of neoliberalism and globalization under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, to the rise of the Tea Party during the Obama administration, the threads of extremism were being woven into the tapestry that Trump donned in 2016. This underlying malaise became the core of the movement that erupted in insurrection on Capitol Hill.

    Knowing the history of its evolution does not explain why the passions associated with each of these threads created a violent revolt. One author who was particularly prescient on this question is Eric Hoffer, sometimes called the working man’s philosopher. Writing not from the ivory tower of an elitist, but from his working-class background, in 1951, he articulated in “The True Believer” what has been described as the best analysis of the origins of fanatical or extremist movements. Two points are particularly salient in understanding Trumpism and today’s political environment.  

    .custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
    .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
    .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
    .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
    -moz-user-select: none;
    -ms-user-select: none;
    user-select: none;
    order: 1;
    color: #ffffff;
    font-weight: normal;}
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
    right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
    .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

    First, Hoffer writes, “though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out.” The language of the extreme right has become more vitriolic as individuals become caught in the information vortex of social media. In the echo chambers on the internet, ideas become overwhelmed by angry rhetoric demonizing those who have legitimate differences on issues.

    The vocabulary of dissent becomes more hateful, a rigid us-versus-them construct is formed, and a collective narcissism fed by a narcissistic leader emerges based on a sense of aggrievement. Differences become reasons for a “war” or a “battle” to reclaim control of the future so that it will resemble the past. The language of war cheapens the values of democracy, which, while encouraging passionate stances on issues, requires resolution through thoughtful and respectful dialogue and the rule of law.

    The language for fomenting an insurrection has been there for all to read prior to the emergence of Trump as president, but as a nation, America ignored the warning signs, content that the future would advance securely without addressing the social fractures of its past. After all, we have been reassured by Francis Fukuyama that we are at the end of history. What we seem to ignore — what Hoffer recognized in 1951 — is that a leader with authoritarian tendencies can give shape to an insurrection movement by stoking the seething discontent and perceived injustices of the past, a leader with clearly definable traits. Hoffer’s enumeration of the required traits of such a leader is chilling for it describes Trump so clearly:

    “Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable. The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it.”

    Given what we know about President Trump’s character and leadership style and compare it to Hoffer’s list, his role in encouraging, throughout his time in office, what finally transpired on January 6 is not surprising — nor should his unprecedented second impeachment be. Now the challenge to secure a resilient democracy is to learn from our recent history. The outcome of the impeachment trial and the Republicans’ subsequent behavior will determine the resolve of our political system to thwart authoritarian passion. Democracy requires a Republican Party grounded in principles and policy rather than one guided by personalities, conspiracies and seditious impulses. 

    More broadly, how do we transform groups with collective narcissistic mentalities into proponents of deliberative democratic action? How do we stay alert to the ascent of autocratic leaders with the character flaws Hoffer has enumerated? If we do not address these two questions, the ashes of the Capitol Holl insurrection will be the foundation for future mass movements of violent political disruption. Maintaining a vibrant democracy in the United States requires vigilance and the recognition that exceptionalism does not make us invulnerable to the autocratic impulses of our past.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    More stories

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      When Auschwitz Loses Its Meaning

      by

      Andy Warhol is credited for the bon mot that in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Robert Keith Packer would probably agree. A nobody from Virginia, Packer made international news for the sweatshirt he wore during the recent assault on the US Capitol. Sweatshirts bear all kinds of imprints, such as the name of a university. The imprint on Packer’s sweatshirt was a little bit different. It read “Auschwitz Camp.” Below there was the claim that “Work Brings Freedom.” The back identified the wearer as “Staff.”

      Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

      READ MORE

      It stands to reason that these days, wearing this kind of sweatshirt is not entirely politically correct. Unless, of course, you do it on purpose with the intent to send a strong message, to make a point. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in semiology, or history or cultural studies to interpret the meaning behind the message conveyed by Packer. Auschwitz has become the universal symbol of genocide in the service of safeguarding not only the purity and integrity of the race, but of its very survival. More on this later.

      Work Makes Free

      “Arbeit macht frei” — “Work makes free” — the slogan that graced the entrance of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, from Dachau to Mauthausen, from Auschwitz to Flossenbürg, was a cynical notion that had nothing to do with reality. More often than not, “work” was used by the Nazis as a way to send their victims to death. For popular consumption, however, the Nazi narrative suggested that for the first time in their lives, Jews would be forced to perform “useful” labor rather than taking advantage of the hard work of their “hosts.” In 1938, after the Nazis incorporated Austria into the Third Reich, Jews were forced to clean Vienna’s streets with toothbrushes.

      Embed from Getty Images

      I don’t know whether or not Packer was aware of this. The fact is that within the context of Donald Trump’s promotion of white supremacy and his campaign’s characterization of his opponent as a dangerous socialist, the imprints on Packer’s sweatshirt convey a clear message: The only way to assure the survival of white America is to eradicate all those who threaten its supremacy. At the same time, politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in general should finally be forced to do useful work rather than living off hard-working, tax-paying (white) Americans.

      I guess, many among the Confederate flag-waving mob, proudly displaying their allegiance to QAnon and other equally ludicrous conspiracy theories, fundamentally agreed with Packer’s message, even if they probably had no clue about what it entailed. As Thomas Edsall has recently put it in the pages of The New York Times, behind the conspiracy theory-inspired assault on the Capitol was the attempt “to engineer the installation in Washington of an ultraright, ethnonationalist crypto-fascist white supremacist political regime.”

      As a German, I know a little bit about this kind of regime. I grew up in a small town in southern Bavaria, which was severely damaged by American and British bombers in the last months of the war. Not far from the town, in the forests, there were the ruins of huge bunker installations where slave laborers were working on assembling fighter planes. The workers came from a satellite camp that was part of the Dachau concentration camp, many of them Jews. Many of them died of exhaustion and malnutrition. Once dead, they were dumped into mass graves. Immediately after the war, my father was among the young men forced to dig up the corpses and rebury them in a proper cemetery. He never talked about the experience. I learned about it from my mother.

      The Jewish Question

      I doubt that the likes of Roger Keith Packer have ever bothered to get a sense of what Nazism really entailed. It seems to me that for him and his comrades in spirit, Auschwitz has become an empty signifier devoid of real-life meaning and, therefore, perfect as a vehicle for resentment. The fact, however, is that Auschwitz stands for something — namely a bureaucratically efficient, quasi-industrial annihilation of hundreds of thousands of human lives for no other reason than that they happened to belong to a “race” the Nazis deemed equivalent to a highly noxious bacillus. This was the core of Nazi ideology on race, most prominently espoused by Heinrich Himmler, the undisputed head of the SS.

      Among the top echelons of German Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is among the most notorious. An unassuming agronomist with round spectacles, he was a far cry from the Aryan ideal official ideology espoused. And yet he was the most fervent promoter of the “Aryan race”: blond, blue-eyed, close to the soil, epitomized by the SS — a new order of quasi-medieval knights, ascetic, dedicated to their leader and prepared to give their lives for a greater cause. According to a contemporary urban legend, Himmler considered himself as an incarnation of Heinrich I, a medieval king who is credited with being the first to unite the disparate German “nations” under one flag.

      Today, of course, Heinrich Himmler is almost exclusively known for his eminent role in promoting the destruction and extermination of Europe’s Jewish population — a “task” he considered his ultimate mission in the service of the German people. At the end would stand, or so he envisioned, the “final solution to the Jewish question,” the complete eradication of anything that might remind future generations of the presence of Jewish life in Europe.

      Practice and Practitioners of Holocaust Denial

      READ MORE

      Heinrich Himmler was exceedingly proud of his ability to execute this “historical mission” of saving the German “race” from being destroyed from the inside by the Jewish “bacillus.” We know that because he himself said so, in his notorious speech to high-ranking members of the SS in Poznan, in occupied Poland, in October 1943. The speech is remarkable for its candor, a candor quite unusual for official references to the Holocaust.

      Himmler not only acknowledged the “extermination of the Jewish people,” he also charged that Germans had “the moral right,” the “duty” to the German people “to kill these people who wanted to kill us.” In fact, he noted, “we have carried out this most difficult task out of love for our own people.” This, he continued, was “a chapter of glory in our history which has never been written, and which never shall be written.”

      Anyone who reads or listens to Himmler’s speech understands that the physical liquidation of Jewish life in Europe was central to Nazism. Hitler himself had made that quite clear in a speech in 1939, commemorating his Machtergreifung, his seizure of power in 1933 — an event, he attributed to divine providence. It is in this vein that Hitler touted his prophetic clairvoyance, particularly with regard to what would happen to Europe’s Jews. If the “international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe,” he insisted, “should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Three years later, high SS officials in occupied Serbia proudly proclaimed that it was the first country where the “Jewish question” had been successfully solved.

      “Chapter of Glory“

      There can be no doubt that leading Nazis considered the liquidation of Jewish life in Europe the most significant accomplishment of the Nazi regime. In fact, toward the end of the war, at a time when German troops were under increasing pressure on the eastern front, Nazi authorities continued to divert vital resources such as trains to assure that the death machinery could continue unimpeded. After all, as Himmler had put it, the annihilation of Jewish life in Europe was a “chapter of glory” that would indelibly be associated with the Nazi regime.

      Curiously enough, intellectual Nazi apologists such as David Irving and pedestrian neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States want nothing to do with the Holocaust. In fact, the most fervent champions of the National Socialist cause are adamant in their disavowal of what their heroes considered their greatest accomplishments. As Hitler put it in his last will, “I call upon the leadership of the nation … to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry.” Yet Hitler’s contemporary would-be acolytes don’t seem to be eager to embrace Hitler’s racist heritage — an instance of opportunism, hypocrisy, or both?

      These days, genocide is no longer considered a Kavarliersdelikt — a cavalier’s delict. As a result, Packer’s sweatshirt has stood out and, for good reason, gained widespread media attention. It suggests that the physical elimination of fellow human beings is okay, perhaps even an honorable feat, as long as it is done in the name of the greater good — in this case, the defense of white supremacy. It boggles the mind that the United States, which after all was instrumental in defeating Nazi Germany, has been fomenting a type of ideology derived from the worst of German racist thinking. But then, after all, Donald Trump has always been proud of his German heritage.

       *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      Who Owns Susan Collins’ Brain?

      by

      As a senator from the state of Maine with a college education (though not Ivy League), Susan Collins must be considered an intelligent woman. She’s also a Republican. When an intelligent and responsible public figure writes an op-ed recounting an important event, we might suppose she would seek to show off her intelligence rather than the opposite. Not Susan Collins, who included this statement in her op-ed for the Bangor Daily News: “My first thought was that the Iranians had followed through on their threat to strike the Capitol.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      First thought:

      Often the most pertinent idea resulting from strong intuition, but sometimes exactly the kind of misguided musing no serious person would ever want to admit having allowed to cross their mind unless their aim was to cast doubt on the idea that they even possess a mind.

      Contextual Note

      Susan Collins may be spending too much time listening to recent speeches by Mike Pompeo or remembering past pronouncements of John Bolton. In her op-ed, she claims that she was “well aware that emotions were running high because of the president’s repeated claims that the election was ‘stolen,’ despite the fact that approximately 90 judges, including the Supreme Court justices, had ruled otherwise.” That would be enough of a clue for most intelligent people when the rumbling of mutiny began to become audible inside the Capitol on January 6.

      Even with that knowledge, the only credible explanation that popped into Collins’s brain was that it was an attack by Iran. Had she been a Democrat, she probably would have assumed that it was Vladimir Putin in person trying to break down the doors, armed, of course with a hammer, and sickle. But Collins is a Republican. Each party sees its own preferred goblins under the stairs.

      Cody Fenwick, writing for Alternet, judges that Collins “underestimated the true threat of Trump’s radicalism and right-wing extremism, and she is likely overestimating the threat posed from countries like Iran.” But it wasn’t about rational risk assessment. Collins’ comment tells us something deeper about how politicians think. First thoughts belong to the same family of mental events as Freudian slips.

      Embed from Getty Images

      They reveal processes that are anchored in a region of impulses and automatic reflexes that sits below the faculty of reasoning and decision-making. Politicians possess a Freudian unconscious meticulously programmed by their party’s ideology and propaganda. It can even prevent them from seeing or seeking to understand what is happening around them.

      Collins knew on that day that thousands of members of her own party were mobilizing to protest Trump’s electoral defeat. Unless she exists in a different universe, she knew something about who they were and how MAGA crowds and the adepts of QAnon typically behave. In her eyes, they were known to be rowdy, but they weren’t evil. As Trump himself had said concerning the events in Charlottesville: “There were good people on both sides.” 

      Despite that knowledge, her programmed logic assumed that an assault on the US government could only be attributable to a force officially classified as “evil.” It’s a time-honored Republican tradition. Reagan programmed the nation to fear the “empire of evil.” George W. Bush called it an “axis of evil.” And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who now baselessly claims that “al-Qaeda has a new home base in Iran,” has been pushing the idea that Iran is the center of the axis. He added a more sinister commentary: “I would say Iran is indeed the new Afghanistan.” Afghanistan is a code word for “justified war.” 

      Since the Cold War, US foreign policy requires the inculcation of a Manichaean mythology that fixes in people’s brains the idea of a metaphysical combat between pure existential good (the US and at least one of its allies, Israel) and pure existential evil. Iran has been at the top of the rankings for the Trump administration, if only because of Obama’s shameful “Iran deal.” Al-Qaeda, of course, has remained the symbol of absolute evil since 9/11. This is true even when the US provides al-Qaeda’s affiliates with weapons in Syria, because Bashar-al-Assad, as the head of state, is even more evil.

      Balance is always important. Giving all the publicity to evil would be wrong. In her breathtaking account of the Senators’ daring escape from imagined Iranians, Collins also finds a way of highlighting the existence of pure existential good. She recounts the charming story of how Senator Todd Young, a Marines veteran, “moved over near Sen. Lisa Murkowski and me. Only later did I learn that he was positioning himself to repel the rioters and defend us.”

      As Joe Biden would say, God bless the troops. America’s military heroes, even after choosing a political career, are always ready to act when an evil enemy is at the door. This may help to explain why an overwhelming majority in Congress voted to override Donald Trump’s veto and approve the $740-billion Defense Authorization Act in December. After all, without that bloated expenditure, it is likely that there would be fewer well-trained warriors in the Senate to protect defenseless damsels in distress.

      In the end, the Iranians hadn’t mounted the nuclear attack all Americans (and Israelis) fear, or even a non-nuclear attack. The MAGA fanatics never managed to reach a single lawmaker. All was well that ended well, or at least not too badly, with only a handful of fatalities of unimportant people. It gave Collins the opportunity to vaunt her own bravery. She and her colleagues courageously stayed on to finish the job and defend the Constitution. As she proudly announces, “There was no way I was going to let these thugs succeed in their attempt to disrupt the constitutional process and undermine our democracy.”

      Historical Note

      Collins never tells us whether the heroic Senator Young also believed it was the Iranians pounding on the doors of the Capitol. Her harrowing tale is nevertheless worth reading. It evokes the atmosphere of the Viking siege of Paris in 885, when the monks at the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres woke up to discover a host of marauding Norsemen. Collins’ account may not be the equal of the lengthy poem by the Benedictine monk, Abbo Cernuus, “Bella Parisiacae Urbis,” but it does give an idea of the frightening unexpectedness of the threat.

      .custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      Senator Young never had to step up to play the role of Count Odo or Bishop Gauzlin, two heroes who had some initial success displaying their prowess to fend off the invaders. The Viking siege lasted for nearly two years before the Holy Roman emperor, Charles le Gros (Charles the Fat), intervened and bought them off with £700 of silver — an astronomical sum at the time — complemented by a land grant at Rouen, on the condition that they leave Paris to the Parisians.

      When the Vikings arrived in Paris with an estimated 12,000 men on 300 ships, they simply requested free passage to sail further up the Seine. The authorities refused, and, for the following two years, mayhem and slaughter became the norm in and around Paris. When the dust finally settled, the Norseman appeared pleased with the gift of what would become the Duchy of Normandy. The Norman nation quickly prospered. Within two generations, all Normans spoke French and, a century later, in 1066, they conquered England, a nation whose people never managed to master French grammar. Nevertheless, centuries later, the British, possibly inspired by William the Conqueror, used their own ships to subject much of the world, including the Indian subcontinent and the east coast of North America, to their rule and their language.

      One protester who penetrated the Senate chambers donned an impressive costume inspired by Viking mythology. He sat down in the vice president’s chair. The latter-day Viking provided the imagery to make the event legitimately hyperreal. Whether last week’s assault turns into the equivalent of the Viking siege of Paris over the next two years remains to be seen. For one thing, we are all wondering what Donald the Fat will do after being released from the White House. Will his Vikings offer us a new episode of hyperreality TV or even a lambent civil war? Will Joe Biden befriend the evil Iranians? The world is waiting for the next episode. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      A Perspective on America’s Imperfect Democracy

      by

      It is a well-established fact that America, as it approaches its 245th birthday, is a divided nation. Red versus blue, conservative versus liberal, right versus left, black versus white, rich versus (a growing number of) poor, urban versus rural. Further divisions may be drawn along education, religion, class, gender identity, ethnicity, language of origin and …
      Continue Reading “A Perspective on America’s Imperfect Democracy”
      The post A Perspective on America’s Imperfect Democracy appeared first on Fair Observer. More