The D.C. newspaper novel, the media, the Washington area, tech and other surrealism: David Rothman at large
One bloody American Civil War is enough. The cannons I photographed this week are at Fort Ward in Alexandria, Virginia, just a walk from my place. They inspire reflection. The best way to prevent Civil War II—-scary enough even as an unlikely possibility—is to punish President Trump and other psychopathic officials for treason and countless […]
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Got a beef with establishment Democrats? I do—more than a few. I worked for a once-thriving factory town newspaper in Ohio that today operates out of a hamburger stand. Bipartisan trade policies over the years were toxic to the local steel industry without the workers getting the much-ballyhooed retraining that free trade boosters talked about. […]
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Herbert Hoover didn’t singlehandedly cause the Great Depression, but he fumbled in his efforts to fix the American economy. One upshot was the name given the shantytowns housing hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken Americans. “Hoovervilles” popped up near free soup kitchens. Should Donald Trump now face similar obloquy, by way of the term “Trump Virus”? […]
Read MoreA nuclear bomb from China or North Korea—that’s how I expected to die if Donald Trump was too inept to handle a major crisis. The Trump-worsened coronavirus threat is so prosaic by comparison. No, this monster-buffoon didn’t cause the virus, but thousands of Americans may die unnecessarily because he downplayed the threat early on, and […]
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I’m proud of my vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary. As an FDR Democrat, how could I have acted otherwise? Roosevelt gave us huge public works projects when we needed them — but, like Sanders, he was far from a Stalin or Castro. Contrary to hints from his enemies, Sanders is not […]
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Do you remember the start of The Social Network? In the 2010 movie, future Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg gets an earful from the Boston University coed who’s been dating him. “You are probably going to be a very successful computer person,” Erica says in response to his social and intellectual snobbery. “But you’re going to […]
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In Blowout, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow plumbs the toxic influence of the oil and gasoline industries on the economies and governments of Russia, the United States and other countries. Energy companies free of constraints can be harmful to your homeland’s economic and civic health, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia just might be Exhibit Number One. Here’s a […]
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Oh, the fickleness of Trump-era news cycles! I was going to write about how the Democrats could defeat Donald Trump in part by wooing young voters in critical Electoral College states. And then along comes the Ukrainian bombshell raising serious questions about whether Trump will even be around to run against. But let’s suppose Trump’s […]
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A brilliant thinker like Elizabeth Warren would be copacetic if electability weren’t Criterion #1, but the best anti-Trump defense would be, yes, exactly what some have already called for: a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket. How might this and other actions unify the Democrats before it’s too late? What follows is in the realm of “could and should” rather than “will.” But an old Biden friend just may be reading this column—I won’t go into the details—and I fervently hope she passes it on to him.
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Our “extremely stable genius” loves to depict himself as a victim of witch-hunters. Impeachment? Bring it on! That’s what Donald Trump has said. Although Trump has been sending off mixed signals, I still believe that he pangs for impeachment. But what if witch-hunters and friends came up with a well-crafted impeachment strategy for the here […]
Read MoreCharlottesville. Neo-Nazis. Kluxers. Joe Biden homed in on Trumpish grotesqueries in the video kicking off his presidential bid—as if to say, “You need me to return us to the good old days of yore.” No one except bigots or Republican hacks would deny the cosmic-level threats here, or President Trump’s crooked and traitorous ways. Why, […]
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Elizabeth Warren, in so many ways, is catnip for progressives as fed up with the status quo as I am. “How did we get here?” she asked in a New Republic interview. “Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie, and they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice. They crippled […]
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