Trumpism Is Destroying America’s Civic Morality
Cruelty, corruption, and spectacle have become defining features of American public life. Rebuilding democracy will require restoring the expectation that power must answer to decency.
Trumpism
The Four Ideas That Explain America’s Democratic Crisis
These concepts provide a framework for understanding how ignorance, hierarchy, and anti-democratic politics converged in the Trump era.
The K-Shaped Economy Is Reshaping American Cities
Trump pledged to rebuild cities like Detroit. Instead, his policies have made urban life increasingly unaffordable, forcing working- and middle-class residents to absorb the costs of a system tilted toward the wealthy.
What Trump’s Trade War Is Doing to America’s Farmers
Trump promised to revive rural America. Instead, trade wars, soaring input costs, and industry consolidation are pushing family farms to the brink
What the War on Terror Built
Two decades after 9/11, the outcomes of U.S. military interventions in the Middle East—from ISIS to regional instability—raise hard questions about cost, accountability, and repetition.
Trump’s Foreign Policy Has a Model: The Barbary Pirates
Trump’s foreign policy treats global alliances as protection rackets reminiscent of historical tribute systems: pay up, submit, or face threats.
Why ‘Flooding the Zone’ Works for Trump
As crises and news events pile up, the connection between them becomes the story the American media machine is least equipped to cover.
The Politics of Permanent Disaster
By flooding the system with one outrageous act after the other, the Trump administration sidelines Congress and exhausts the public. His power concentrates while the problems metastasize.
America’s Polycrisis Has Arrived
Democracies do not fall from a single blow, but from cascading failures that overwhelm public attention. The U.S. is now in the midst of deliberate, converging assaults on American life and political structure to the benefit of no one but Trump.
How Trump Turned the Presidency Into a Profit Engine
‘State capture’ systematically rewires government so public power feeds private wealth, and it’s an authoritarian framework undoing American democracy.