Sam Smith - One of the ways the editor of a progressive journal knows that things are changing is when a proposition he put forth as far back as a dozen years ago suddenly becomes respectable. This is not typically a joy but just reassurance that he wasn't as crazy as some thought back then. … Continue reading Hey, it’s okay to talk about fascism
Politics
Grifter in Chief
Sam Smith - As I was continuing to puzzle over why it was so easy for me to see Donald Trump as a lying con man while millions of Americans still don't understand it, I happened to pick up an old Raymond Chandler novel, Big Sleep, featuring detective Philip Marlowe. As a teenager I had … Continue reading Grifter in Chief
Reflections of a grumpy Green
Sam Smith – Although I was among those who got the national Green Party going in the 1990s, enthusiastic as I was about its goals, I was never fully pleased with some of its strategies. Even back then, fellow founder Lunda Martin called me a curmudgeon. I felt at times as though I had joined … Continue reading Reflections of a grumpy Green
How we got into this mess
Sam Smith - Disasters like President Trump don’t just happen; they typically have years of unattended, unnoticed and uncorrected precedents. For example, I have argued for at least a decade and a half that America had quietly ended its first republic and that we were in an ill-defined succession perhaps best described by a term … Continue reading How we got into this mess
Trump’s new confederacy
Sam Smith - Almost 60 years ago, when I first started covering Washington, it occurred to me that while the South had lost aspects of the Civil War, such as slavery and secession, it continued to exercise stunning power over a nation that had allegedly defeated it. Congress at the time seemed almost a southern … Continue reading Trump’s new confederacy
A few thoughts for those looking for a presidential candidate
Sam Smith Politics is not a religion in which your faith is being judged, but rather a pragmatic community matter based on consensus. It is okay to support someone who doesn't meet all your standards if they generally good and stand the best chance of winning. There is no lord of politics who won't forgive … Continue reading A few thoughts for those looking for a presidential candidate
What life would be like without liberals
Sam Smith - People who complain about liberals are like the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran's hospital. When he was laid … Continue reading What life would be like without liberals
Finding greener pastures and greener voters
From a talk to the Green Party of Montgomery County, MD, May 14, 2005 Sam Smith - Ten years ago next month a small group of us staged a conference of third party activists that led to several other meetings culminating in this country's first Green presidential campaign in 1996 and, in suitably confused order, … Continue reading Finding greener pastures and greener voters
There’s no business like show business. . .and certainly not politics
Sam Smith – The other day I came across a poem I wrote about a week after the first Kennedy-Nixon debate (probably for Roll Call newspaper where I was working at the time): I’ll Take My Candidate Without Cream or Sugar, Thank You Pollster, spare that candidate Give him a chance to run Free from … Continue reading There’s no business like show business. . .and certainly not politics
What we can learn from the South
Sam Smith, November 2017 - The potential rise of Roy Moore to the United States Senate is another reminder that the Civil War is not yet fully behind us. For example, there were eleven Confederate states, which now constitute about 30% of the electoral vote of the country at large. In the past 15 presidential elections, … Continue reading What we can learn from the South
Trump’s lack of 5th grade skills
Sam Smith - Early this year Sarah Sloat, in Inverse, reported that a “2016 analysis found that Trump’s grammar was roughly at the fifth-grade level. While most GOP candidates used words and grammar on the campaign trail that would be associated with students in grades six through eight, Trump’s were deemed the most immature, the … Continue reading Trump’s lack of 5th grade skills
Post-First American Republic update
Sam Smith As the Review has unfashionably suggested from time to time, the First American Republic ended in the 1980s. I put it like this in in a talk in 2004: We live in a nation hated abroad and frightened at home. A place in which we can reasonably refer to the American Republic in … Continue reading Post-First American Republic update
How the young can save us
Sam Smith Although Trump has caused a huge amount of trouble in just the few months he has been president, this doesn’t necessarily define the future. As the Review has noted from time to time, failing cultures often raise a lot of hell in their declining years, witness the Indian ghost dance cult or the … Continue reading How the young can save us
One good reason why Merrick Garland shouldn’t be FBI director
Sam Smith - Or on the Supreme Court for that matter. I admit to some personal bias in this, but because I was one of 19 plaintiffs in a case that went before DC's Federal Appeals Court that not only affected me but all the other deprived citizens of the nation's capital. After Garland and … Continue reading One good reason why Merrick Garland shouldn’t be FBI director
Did Michelle Obama help Trump win?
Sam Smith Reading Michelle Obama’s rant about Trump dismantling her dietary prescriptions for millions of school children, it suddenly dawned me that she might have contributed significantly to her target’s election as president. Michelle Obama’s plan was not about goals or education but about rules, the failure to follow which could result in a loss … Continue reading Did Michelle Obama help Trump win?
