Ask your average American what they think of politicians, and you’ll hear expletive-laced exasperation, even contempt, in reply. I don’t share this sentiment. I admire good politicians. I have worked for a good politician. I respect politics as a vocation. But one look at Paul Ryan, and even I am overcome by sadness. April 11th, […]

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I don’t know quite how it happened, but something seems to have finally shifted in our national conversation about guns. Just a few years ago, the idea that hundreds of thousands of Americans would take to the streets to demand gun control would have been unimaginable. In 2012, twenty children – twenty first graders – […]

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Three weeks ago, in New York City, as I rode the 4-5 train downtown, I was shoved, cursed at, and spun around by an angry young man. The altercation began when he moved my friend, a young woman new to the city, aside, and declared, “I am not going to get fucking stuck.” When he […]

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In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas—the deadliest in modern American history—the obvious must be stated: this happens nowhere else. And even as we allow ourselves the time to reflect on the senseless loss of life, and as we pray for those who have lost loved ones, and reflect on the incomprehensibility […]

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Hillary Clinton has reemerged on the national scene to typically polarized reactions. For my part, I’ve been glad to see her. I have always thought she was brilliant, my criticisms of her notwithstanding. And since she’s begun her book tour, she’s been honest, funny, defiant, somewhat petty (particularly regarding Bernie Sanders), pissed off, hopeful: in […]

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In recent weeks, there have been signs that some members of the Republican establishment are willing to hold our increasingly reckless and vindictive president in check. I am particularly thinking of the two senators from Arizona, for whom the president has shown a special disdain. On July 31, Senator Jeff Flake published an op-ed in […]

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Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, I called my friend Billy Peard, who was working in western Massachusetts as an immigration attorney. Most of his clients were undocumented, and I wanted to get a sense of how people’s fears about the new administration were affecting Billy’s work. This president, […]

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To understand that white supremacy is as harmful to white Americans as it is to nonwhite Americans, you need look no further than the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past week. The white supremacists who descended upon the city, while seemingly finding strength in their numbers, appeared to be some of the most fearful, most […]

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During the 2008 presidential election, I was a high school student with very high hopes for my country, and was deeply inspired by the candidacy of Senator Obama. I was also naïve about Obama’s potential to be a reconciling figure, a healer of divides. Some ideas die hard; the American belief in the inherent unworthiness […]

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I spent most of last Thursday night at my friends’ apartment, recording an episode for their podcast. I left around 11 p.m., and immediately called my friend James, whom I rightly suspected had been refreshing his Twitter timeline for the past several hours, and could give me his best guess as to how the health […]

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