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    Trump’s Numbers Game Stops at One

    As the revolt was beginning to brew on streets across the nation on May 30, US President Donald Trump was celebrating the success of SpaceX’s launch of a manned mission to the international space station, the first time a private company has put human beings in space. Although it increasingly appears that Trump may come […] More

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    The Swiss People’s Party Versus COVID-19

    Switzerland poses a fascinating puzzle to anyone interested in contemporary politics. It has a confederate system, which accords a great deal of autonomy and independence to its constituent units, the cantons. Its consociational system is based on consensual decisions, and its extreme system of direct democracy allows Swiss citizens to vote in a slew of […] More

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    America’s Problems Are in Plain Sight

    As protests unfold night after night in city streets across the United States, President Donald Trump, never previously accused of being camera shy, was nowhere to be seen. The New York Times reports on his newfound taste for discretion: “The president spent Sunday out of sight, berating opponents on Twitter, even as some of his […] More

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    What Is Different About George Floyd’s Death?

    “If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, young, gifted, and black in America, you would choose right now,” Barack Obama told a graduating class at Howard University in Washington DC four years ago, drawing attention to Hansberry’s 1996 collection of plays, interviews and letters that bore a […] More

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    The Crisis of Presidentiality in the US

    Poor Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. He currently holds no political office and can’t even circulate in public. In contrast with his Republican rival, US President Donald Trump, he is a mere spectator of the news. Worse, with a raging pandemic now complemented by nationwide violent protests over yet another act of police […] More