John Atcheson
John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, and he has just completed a book on the 2016 elections titled, WTF, America? How the US Went Off the Rails and How to Get It Back On Track, available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @john_atcheson
Articles by this author
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Views Saturday, December 08, 2018 Climate Change Is Likely to Come Sooner and Be Worse Than Latest Worst-Case Forecasts Suggest The news on climate change has been pretty grim lately, but the fact is, it’s possible—even likely—to be far worse than the already sobering news in the latest reports. Read more |
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Views Monday, November 19, 2018 Failing to Learn the Lessons of 2018 The 2018 midterms should have put the debate about whether the majority of Americans are progressive to rest. Yet it still rages. And the consequences for 2020 could be bad—four more years of Trump, bad. But it’s clear that the Democratic leadership hasn’t figured that out yet. For example, the two... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 02, 2018 Haters and Partisans Have Always Been With Us. But This Is Different Hate, blame, greed, bigotry and fear have always been part of our politics. If you doubt that, consider these statements from our second Presidential campaign in 1800, which pitted Adams against Jefferson for the second time. Jefferson’s camp accused President Adams of having a “hideous... Read more |
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Views Saturday, October 27, 2018 A Tragedy in Three Parts: Corporations, Coups, and Crazies The silent coup and the roots of corporate tyranny Nearly 40 years ago, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Republicans and increasingly neoliberal Democrats agreed and told us the... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 12, 2018 Justifiable Anger Fuels Trump's Hold on Power and Democrats Still Don't Seem to Get It Pundits, progressives and the press seem perplexed by Trumpism. How can a narcissistic, fascist, incompetent conman—whose White House seems always on the verge of chaos; whose own appointees fear that he’ll do something so insane that they snatch papers off his desk; whose positions mouth populism... Read more |
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Views Monday, October 01, 2018 Why Kavanaugh Shouldn't Be Confirmed The Republicans managed to make Thursday’s hearing a he said/she said debate, and they managed to make the standard for disqualifying Kavanaugh one of proving him guilty, “beyond a reasonable doubt” exactly as they wanted to do. And by having only two witnesses, Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, it was... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, September 26, 2018 Harbingers: Florence, Forest Fires, and the Future Climate change catastrophe is upon us. We see it in the record-breaking floods from storms like Florence, and in the record-breaking fires across the US once again this year. But the media – which barely mentioned the link between these catastrophes and climate change -- is preparing to move on to... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 04, 2018 Democrats and the 2018 Midterms The collapse of the Democratic Party over the last four decades is nothing less than historic. It’s the kind of thing folks will study in the future, as what Barbara Tuchman called a “ march of folly .” Ms. Tuchman defined a march of folly as “the pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest,” and... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 21, 2018 Inchoate Anger Is the Animating Force in Politics We’ve known for a decade now, that people are fed up with Washington and with politics. We’ve known that they consider politicians to be little more than lackeys to the uber-rich and corporations; and we’ve known that the facts bear them out when we look at the legislation they pass. Republicans... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 14, 2018 With 3 Months To Go, Pundits and Democrats Still Clueless Democrats will win the House in 3 months , and they have an outside shot at the Senate. But it’s not because they’ve figured out how to win elections, it’s because Republicans have – once again -- handed it to them. That’s the only way Democrats win these days. Obama’s victory was a direct result... Read more |