Thomas Jefferson was so dismayed by political deceptions that he coined a word for it. “Twistifications” referred to a brew of willful misinformation, tortured logic, and artful language designed to sway credulous audiences. This would be a good moment to resurrect Jefferson’s term—to better describe the “post-truth” Donald Trump, especially after Sean Spicer and Kellyanne […]

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“Read the first page of Many Minds, One Heart,” Larry Goodwyn said. It was the last time I saw the Duke University historian, at his home in Durham six months before his death in September 2013. Goodwyn, best known for his defining work on American populism, almost recited the first paragraph of Wesley Hogan’s history […]

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Since the dawn of the internet and the concurrent surge of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, the various forces on America’s right and far right have cleverly and disingenuously labeled themselves “conservatives.” They have then successfully cemented two “big lies” in the consciousness of a majority of the American public: first, that the media […]

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I vowed to create a Trump-free space on Christmas day, to nurture the holiday spirit and to get out from under the toxic presence of everything associated with the President-elect. In this regard I found I was at least partly aligned with most Americans…

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Author Michael Payne interviewed Ralph Nader about Breaking Through Power and the future of the progressive movement. You can read that discussion here.   The end of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign left many progressives wondering, “What now?” With the exception of a small minority of holdouts, most Sanders supporters went over to Hillary Clinton. […]

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