Month: October 2025

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…

Not a day goes by, sometimes not many hours, before the Trump administration commits yet another atrocity against an alleged foreign adversary or against its own American people. We appear to be headed inexorably toward our own destruction without a clue of what awaits us. As citizens of a nation heralded for its unprecedented wealth…

Friends often ask me why people don’t see the threats coming from the White House. It’s as plain as the noses on our faces, blatant and incessant, they say. What can be wrong with Americans that they don’t stand up and quit supporting Trump and his MAGA lieutenants? What’s the matter with the Republicans? Why…

This morning as I sat in the doctor’s waiting room, I looked around at my fellow patients and wondered who these people were. They looked old, worn out, and a lot like the old people I knew growing up, a generation I frequently dismissed as a “bunch of old guys” with whom I had little…

I spent thirty years teaching history in colleges and universities and am hard pressed to recall one instructor or assistant professor who would have signed the “compact” for higher education offered by the Trump administration. Oh, there might have been one or two driven by politics or their contrarian nature, but most junior faculty would…

All of us, regardless of political affiliations or sentiments – whether Democrat, Republican or independent – should take a long hard look at the state of our politics. We must temporarily ditch our political beliefs and personal thoughts about single issues to take stock of what is happening in the United States today. We must…