To many people, Trump seems impossibly new and unique, unpredictable and outrageous, and his followers inexplicably oblivious to his dishonesty, irrationality, and incompetence. To scholars of rhetoric, it’s “Oh, yeah, this again.” Rhetoric—what Aristotle called “the art of finding the available means of persuasion”—is an old and universal art. As soon as we communicate with […]

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On the last day of 2018, Elizabeth Warren became the first woman and the first of the presumed Democratic front-runners to signal her intent to run for president. “The anti-Warren narrative was written before the Massachusetts senator even announced,” observed Natasha Korecki in Politico. Anyone trafficking in analysis lite on the 2020 race—which at this […]

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On November 3, one of my cherished mentors, Ramona Ripston, passed away at the age of 91. She had been the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California for 39 years, between 1972 and 2011. Her husband and soul mate Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who served on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court […]

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Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 90 on January 15th this year. All fifty states now celebrate the national holiday commemorating Dr. King’s birthday, though several go out of their way to direct the focus away from his legacy. Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas brazenly continue to pay tribute to slavery by honoring Robert E. […]

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Do we have any potent checks on Trump, after voters overwhelmingly supported Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the biggest wave election in years? Yes, definitely, but none of the formal or legal checks on a president are immediate. Still, one formidable constraint—and a curb on the power of Trump’s Republican enablers—has […]

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