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
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Views Friday, August 07, 2020 Remind Me, What Was the Civil War About, Anyway? Remember the good old days? That’s when neo-Confederates (who of course never called themselves that; they were just defending their “heritage”) passionately argued that the American Civil War was emphatically not about slavery. Rather, it concerned issues of principle involving states’ rights, or... Read more |
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Views Friday, July 03, 2020 Don't Let the Corruption of the Powerless Bring Down the Democrats “You may not be interested in ideology, but ideology is interested in you.” I have taken a bit of liberty with a quote widely attributed to Lev Trotsky—he actually is supposed to have said that about the “dialectic,” but it’s a two-dollar word that’s almost meaningless in everyday English, so I’ve... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 04, 2020 Beware Donald Trump's Electoral Cleansing On May 26, as the U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 100,000, former Bush speechwriter and NeverTrumper David Frum appeared on a cable news show and made a stunning pronouncement about Donald Trump and his handling of the pandemic. If correct, Frum didn’t merely echo all the armchair psychiatry we’... Read more |
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Views Saturday, May 09, 2020 "Reopen the Economy": the Republicans' Nero Decree The New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman is one of the few fixtures of the major prestige media honest enough to forthrightly explain why there should be no “controversy” (a word beloved of journalists) about Republican policies. These policies are not just mistaken, nor are they something about... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, April 21, 2020 Another Republican "Grassroots" Movement Hijacks the Media The Republican Party and its right-wing allies are incapable of governing. They have no policy principles other than a knee-jerk rejection of the policies of the opposing party; indeed, of all this country’s traditional notions of governance. They have a secret sauce, however, that keeps them... Read more |
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Views Friday, April 17, 2020 The GOP Has Become a Death Cult A decade ago, in my first public writing since leaving Capitol Hill, I warned that the Republican Party, in its evolution towards an extremist conservative movement allied with extremist Christian fundamentalism, was becoming like “one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 31, 2020 How a Yale Academic Trolls the Liberals on Trump's Looming Reelection A recent piece in The Wall Street Journal by Walter Russell Meade has caused a bit of a stir among the chattering classes. Headlined “The Coronavirus May Make Trump Stronger,” it argues that President Trump’s abysmal and malfeasant handling of the greatest public health emergency in a century is a... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 26, 2020 Are Mass Plane Travel and Mass Tourism Unsustainable? “Ah, for the days when flying was a gentleman’s pursuit! – before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and ‘jet off’ to Raleigh-Durham.” —Robert (“Sideshow Bob”) Terwillinger, The Simpsons, “Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming." In recent weeks, the coronavirus pandemic’s... Read more |
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Views Saturday, March 14, 2020 How Authoritarianism Short-Circuits the Lizard Brain The tendency of Republicans both to respond to and sow fear and panic has been with us for decades. Yet during the coronavirus pandemic, to anyone who bothers to look, we are seeing a new and strangely unremarked twist to their behavior, a development that gives valuable -- and chilling -- insight... Read more |
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Views Friday, December 27, 2019 The Stupidest Op-Ed of 2019 Argues Trump Will Inspire a Religious Revival For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. —Matthew 24:24 Just when you thought the soon-to-expire year had long since reached peak stupidity, Newsweek published a piece that set a record for preposterous... Read more |