Notes on American life from American history.
As I compose this sentence, Donald Trump appears beleaguered: thrashing about trying to escape being labeled Loser of the Iran War, facing basement-level approval numbers, seeing Jeffrey Epstein s ghost over his shoulder, and being booed in his hometown sports arena. Still: Trump bestrides the globe. He orders people killed at will or whim, openly pockets [ ]
Mathew Pinsker’s new book, Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln, brings a useful perspective to the Lincoln literature—the Library of Congress lists at least 1,000 Lincoln biographies—and to our contemporary politics. Pinsker describes the many ways in which Lincoln built, led, and managed party organizations, first Whig and then Republican. Staying focused on [ ]
In the midst of his excursion (or, avows Hegseth, his crusade) against Iran, Donald Trump took a break to post a video of a Haitian immigrant beating a woman to death. The New York Times noted that “Mr. Trump and his top aides believe it is a winning political strategy for Republicans to connect the [ ]
[I am re-posting this item with the full text instead of sending readers to The Dispatch, where it appears here.] The 20th century changed much of the American way of life, but the largest change came in Americans’ personal security, their and their families’ safety from life’s hazards. At the start of the century, debilitating illness, [ ]
The 20th century changed much of the American way of life, but the largest change came in Americans’ personal security, their and their families’ safety from life’s hazards. At the start of the century, debilitating illness, disabling accidents, economic failures, and interpersonal violence frequently derailed Americans’ life trajectories; a century later typical Americans could reasonably [ ]
In America today, there are conservative and liberal jeans (Levi Strauss versus Wrangler), beer (Heineken versus Coors), and footwear (Birkenstocks versus cowboy boots). The MAGA movement itself is seen as tied to Kid Rock and eating steak. In an era when partisan division is so febrile that acceptance of political violence has grown and violent [ ]
This post takes a sideways glance at the field of personality psychology. A concept in that field might partially explain why many Americans are bewildered by contemporary politics. Psychologists have identified a set of personality types that see the social world as harsh— as threatening, dog-eat-dog, malevolently controlled. Acting on such a world view helps [ ]
The 1950s loom large in the imagination of MAGA leaders and followers; that decade is the when of America’s past greatness. Steve Bannon praises the “1950s values” of “decent folks” and laments the legacy that the baby boomers threw away in the successive decade. J.D. Vance’s attacks on childless people and on two-earner families hearken [ ]
Note to readers. It seems odd to write about anything other than our national emergency, the campaign to assemble unfettered autocratic and extortionate power by taking over or hobbling the free institutions of civil society that make Democracy in America possible: law, journalism, business, the arts, the sciences, the academy, philanthropy, and more. Lacking expertise [ ]
This essay was first published by The Dispatch on March 10, 2025. Americans are about to undergo a dramatic social experiment. For generations, our values and ways of life have shifted leftward—that is, toward a more individualized, permissive, secular, do-your-own-thing direction. Now, members of Donald Trump’s coalition have signaled their intent to use the levers of national [ ]