A Historical Quirk (That Works Against Republicans)
Published: The Good Men Project (December 5, 2015) The last president to be elected without winning his home state was James Polk in 1844. The last one to be re-elected without conquering his own political stomping grounds was Woodrow Wilson in 1916. These data points become a bit more interesting when you look at the current field of Republican presidential candidates. The frontrunner, Donald...
Why Jews Like Me Fear Trump
Published: Salon (December 5, 2015), The Good Men Project (December 3, 2015) If you are a Jew, you should be very afraid of Donald Trump. For a while I explained this sentiment thusly: Trump may not be personally anti-Semitic, but anti-Semites sure seem to love Trump. After all, I've received countless emails attacking me for being Jewish when I've written articles criticizing the Republican...
What the end of the NSA’s bulk phone record collection really means
Published: The Daily Dot (December 2, 2015) It’s official: The NSA was legally required to terminate its bulk phone record collection program this week. That may not provide much comfort if you happen to use the Internet (and particularly if you communicate using social media)—but it's a major win worth acknowledging. If you’re wondering why the government can still monitor what you do online...
Can Iron Man and Captain America Lead America in 2016?
Published: The Good Men Project (December 1, 2015) When future cultural historians look back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I suspect they will find the character arcs of Iron Man (aka Tony Stark) and Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) to be particularly fascinating. Whether intentionally or otherwise, each superhero has wound up embodying distinct aspects of our contemporary political...
The problem with comparing Trump to Hitler
Published: MSNBC (November 30, 2015) Pundits and candidates alike are now accusing Donald Trump of being a fascist or neo-Nazi. Some are even comparing him to Adolf Hitler. This is a serious problem – not for Trump, mind you, but for our collective intelligence as Americans. When we imply that the sinister Trump phenomenon represents something new on the American scene, we gloss over the ugliest...
5 reasons why modern wing-nuts would’ve hated the founding fathers
Published: Alternet (November 29, 2015), Salon (November 27, 2015) If you’re a Democrat (or, for that matter, a progressive of any stripe) the chances are you’ve heard conservatives evoke the founding fathers when dismissing your beliefs on economic issues. The term “socialist” has become such a toxic epithet in our political culture that the two chief candidates for the Democratic presidential...
The real reason many Americans don’t vote
Published: Salon (November 28, 2015), The Daily Dot (November 11, 2015) Earlier this week, the Nation declared its support for an online petition urging President Obama to declare Election Day 2016 a national holiday. In doing so, they have joined forces with presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has already introduced a bill to do the same thing. Not surprisingly, the movement...
Campus protests can go viral in no time–so can the backlash
Published: The Daily Dot (November 27, 2015) It’s hard to follow the recent flurry of college protests without being reminded of President Harry S. Truman, who famously said that “there is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” As the media continues to fete attention on high-profile student demonstrations at Yale, Wesleyan, Princeton, and the University of Missouri, one...
Autistic Reflections on Thanksgiving
Published: The Good Men Project (November 26, 2015) On Thanksgiving Day 2015, I am thankful for the following. Growing up, it seemed like everyone rejected me as an oddball. If I didn't correctly read the thoughts and emotions people attempted to communicate through their facial expressions and body language, I was weird and rude. When I talked too much about subjects that the people around me...
If Donald Trump becomes president, it’ll be our fault for treating him like a celebrity
Published: The Good Men Project (November 24, 2015) - co-authored with Jill Di Donato Donald Trump’s ascent as a presidential frontrunner is, without question, one of the major political events of our lifetime. Even if he doesn’t ultimately win the Republican nomination next year, he has already dominated in the polls long past the time when most experts believed his star would wane. As a...
An aggressive military response is precisely what ISIS wants
Published: Salon (November 20, 2015), The Daily Dot (November 18, 2015) As the world reels from the last Friday's terrorist attack in Paris, millions of people have taken to Twitter to share their grief and outrage... and many echoed Donald Trump's call to "bomb the shit" out of them. The desire to immediately strike back at ISIS with overwhelming force is understandable. It took under 48 hours...
Why no one watched the Democratic debate
Published: The Good Men Project (November 17, 2015) The most recent Democratic presidential debate was the lowest rated of the six held by either party this election cycle, drawing in only 8.55 million viewers. This may seem like bad news for the Democrats, but the truth is actually more disturbing - in all likelihood, they planned it this way. We can start our analysis with the day on which it...
On Autism and Loneliness
Published: The Good Men Project (November 12, 2015) I recently discovered some lyrics from a Beatles song that resonated so strongly with me that I needed to include them here. Courtesy of "Eleanor Rigby": Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice In the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window, wearing the face That she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for? For a moment,...
Hey progressives, Hillary isn’t the enemy
Published: Salon (November 12, 2015) The inevitable has finally happened: Bernie Sanders supporters are beginning to openly proclaim that, if Hillary Clinton defeats their champion in the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries, they will not support her in the subsequent election. I refer to this trend as “inevitable” because, as a Sanders supporter myself, I’ve heard this sentiment...
Campus PCness and the Price of Free Speech
Published: The Huffington Post (November 11, 2015), The Good Men Project (November 10, 2015) This is an editorial for my fellow liberals. Because progressive ideas on political and social issues often challenge conventional assumptions, liberalism as an ideology depends on freedom of speech for survival. It isn't enough that the state be prohibited from suppressing dissenting political opinions;...
Unprecedented Presidents: A History of Firsts
Published: The Good Men Project (November 5, 2015) The past century has proved to be a golden age for unprecedented presidents and vice presidents. Before the election of 1928 (more on that in a moment), every candidate for America's two highest offices fit into a very narrow demographic profile: Protestant, male, of northern and/or western European descent. By contrast, the 2016 presidential...
Ireland is right—it’s time to rethink how we treat heroin users
Published: The Daily Dot (November 5, 2015) This week, Ireland took a bold step in ending the war on drugs: The nationannounced this week that—as part of a broader program to decriminalize not only cannabis but cocaine and heroin—the country will create specially designated rooms in Dublin where addicts can safely and legally inject themselves with small amounts of their drugs. This plan...