The recently released National Security Strategy of the Trump administration to the uninformed or casual reader might sound plausible and positive, but it is nothing, if not disingenuous and shallow. It is a “slight of hand”attempt to deceive the American people, what one of my professors would have called “a smoke enema.” What the Document…

Somehow it feels like one of those times during a football game when you can sense the momentum changing inexorably in favor of the underdog. Slowly the dominance of the favorite team bleeds away and inevitably the challenger wins. I sense, I feel, and I see this happening to the United States. In football, mistakes…

I continue to struggle to understand the popularity of Trump and his policies. This especially disturbs me as I think of friends who continue to support this president in face of his amoral behavior and unprecedented policies. Increasingly, I’ve come to believe that lots of people really don’t follow the news, tune out information they…

Andrew Sullivan recently published comments on The Weekly Dish, his Substack newsletter, entitled “The Question of Decency” that caught my attention.* For those of you who might not be familiar with Sullivan, he is a British-American conservative political commentator and the former editor of the New Republic. I have been drawn to him because I…

I have always set the bar high for religion, insisting at least that pastors and priests among Christian faiths have the courage to take their vows seriously and serve as critics of secular society when needed. Too often churches, to a fault, reflect the social and political mores of their communities instead of standing up…

How’s that for a title? Incongruous doesn’t describe the comparison; it’s simply too absurd to think of the two men in the same breath. See “Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Farewell: ‘I’m Going Quiet’” in The York Times, 1l November 2025. Reading it almost makes you cry that fate has given us Trump instead of a…

Answers to my questions to Trump supporters was underwhelming, to say the least. While I didn’t expect a big response, I really thought there would be a larger response than the four I received. I do understand that most readers are liberals, Democrats or independents along with a number of disgruntled conservatives or Republicans who…

Given the current state of American politics – a partisan polarized electorate, dysfunctional government and civic unrest – it’s time to plumb just where we are as a people and nation at this time. To this point our courts and elected officials have done little to help resolve the impasse where we find ourselves. Eschewing…

On November 1st and 2nd Mexicans celebrate friends and relatives who have died. With typical pageantry they decorate their homes and graves with altars or ofrendas where they provide favorite foods and drinks for the departed, make masks with the names of the deceased and offer poems and light-hearted epitaphs in festive gatherings. As a…

Recently I have been reading a truly seminal book, one correctly praised by historians as being “awesome,” “masterful,” and a “once-in-a-generation” history of the United States and Latin America. In a sweeping narrative Greg Grandin tells the story of the United States and Latin America from the Conquest to virtually the present. America, America: A…