Mike Lofgren
Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His books include: "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government" and "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted."
Articles by this author
 |
Views Tuesday, September 17, 2019 Are We the People Unfit for Democracy? In typically subtle fashion, Politico reported on a recent conference of political psychologists on the present state of democratic systems. Its arresting headline: “ The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy .” It seems one of the participants, Shawn Rosenberg , professor of political... Read more |
 |
Views Wednesday, August 07, 2019 No Cause Has Achieved the Same Combination of Deranged Views and Raw Power as the Modern American Right-Wing First, the usual disclaimer: every cause, movement, ideology, religion, or political party necessarily attracts its fair share of kooks, neurotics, con artists, and would-be Führers. It is in the interaction between the lonely, isolated soul that paradoxically seeks both self-expression and... Read more |
 |
Views Wednesday, July 17, 2019 When It Comes to Plutocrats Like Epstein and Trump, Always Assume the Worst By now, everyone not vacationing in a sensory-deprivation tank knows the outlines of the sordid tale of self-proclaimed hedge fund magnate Jeffrey Epstein. In the fallout from his July 6 arrest, the implications of the case, especially considering the plutocrats, politicians and other elites who... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, July 01, 2019 Integralism: The Shiny New Toy of the Right The Next Big Thing in American right-wing circles is integralism, or, in the original French, intégrisme . Founded in early 20 th century France, integralism stresses a comprehensively integrated social and political order complete with religious and cultural conformity. Of course, somebody would... Read more |
 |
Views Wednesday, June 26, 2019 Reverse Darwinian Selection Afflicts Trump’s Washington In the 1960s, at the very dawn of the New Right rebellion, William F. Buckley, Jr., declared that he would rather be governed by persons selected from the phone directory than the faculty of Harvard. Conservative egghead bashing has a long pedigree, and even Buckley, an aspiring patrician with one... Read more |
 |
Views Monday, June 03, 2019 Enough. Wake Up, Sheeple! George Bernard Shaw once wrote , “We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely... Read more |
 |
Views Saturday, May 18, 2019 Iran and the Coalition of the Weird Ordinarily I am out of sympathy with the sort of disappointed right-winger who makes excuses for Trump because the complete fascist program hasn’t (yet) been instituted. Poor Liddle Donnie, or so goes their dirge, is an involuntary captive of the Washington Swamp, the Deep State, or whatever their... Read more |
 |
Views Friday, May 10, 2019 Just When Did America Go Nuts? “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” —Matthew 24:24 “At first we thought they were just another snake cult, but now their towers are everywhere.” —Conan the Barbarian... Read more |
 |
Views Tuesday, April 23, 2019 Two-and-a-Half Cheers for the Mainstream Media Even in its redacted form, and even without the counterintelligence investigation material that was part of its task, the Mueller Report has largely vindicated the last three years of media coverage of Donald Trump’s and his presidential campaign’s connections to Russia. The report doesn’t contain... Read more |
 |
Views Friday, March 22, 2019 Seymour Hersh's Anonymous Sources Ever since 1969, when he rose to national prominence with the story of the My Lai massacre , Seymour Hersh has been one of the best-known investigative journalists in the world. His career has not been without controversy . His most recent piece, about the recently deceased George H.W. Bush’s role... Read more |