Roundup

About That Kissinger Quote Neil Gorsuch Likes…

by Greg Grandin

A joke? Who was it that said the use of jokes “points the way to their future uses”? It’s Götterdämmerung time.

Barack Obama Radically Expanded Our Appreciation of African-American History

by Robert Greene II

By preserving sites that have been central to the black experience, Obama helped revitalize our civic religion.

Scott Pruitt Will Make America Great Again — For Polluters

by Bill Moyers

In this exclusive web essay, Bill Moyers takes on President Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt.

What Tames Inequality? Violence and Mayhem

by Walter Scheidel

Land reform, democracy, education, and technological change do not reliably lessen inequality. Only war does.

The Jacksonian Revolt

by Walter Russell Mead

Many Jacksonians came to believe that the American establishment was no longer reliably patriotic, with “patriotism” defined as an instinctive loyalty to the well-being and values of Jacksonian America.

Roundup Top 10!

This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

It’s dangerous to flatter Trump’s narcissism with too much attention

by Michail Theodosiadis

If we’re to break out of the narcissistic cycle and solve the problems of which Trump is a symptom, we need to talk and think about it in the right way.

Video of the Week: How Immigration Helped the United States Get Its First Subway System

by Lily Rothman

Thanks to the influx of new residents, it was time for cities to figure out a way for their growing populations to get around.

German Ambassador 1933: “Hostility to Jews Aimed Mainly at ‘Immigrants' ”

by Juan Cole

On the similarities between the Trump / Bannon inaugural speech and Fascist ideology.

Our history shows there’s a dark side to ‘Buy American’

by Dana Frank

Campaigns urging us to buy U.S.-made products are as old as the republic, but they are often shrouded in racism.

Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Illegal

by David J. Bier

Congress long ago outlawed discrimination based on national origin.

From Goldwater to Reagan and now Trump. But Americans will fight this latest brand of cartoon conservatism.

by Heather Cox Richardson

The war against the liberal consensus began as a backlash against Roosevelt’s New Deal. Trump has simply stripped away its genteel veneer.

Adding insult to injury, Trump flirts with classic Holocaust denial

by Chemi Shalev

He excludes Muslim immigrants and expunges Jews from memory but the new president sees himself as 'incredibly inclusive.'

Trump adopts Nixon security model, except worse

by Ray Locker

He's excluded key people, elevated former Breitbart chief Steve Bannon, and put it all on paper.

2017 isn’t ‘1984’ – it’s stranger than Orwell imagined

by John Broich

In Orwell’s Oceania, there is no freedom to speak facts except those that are official. In 2017 America, at least among many of the powerful minority who selected its president, the more official the fact, the more dubious.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Google Search Still Helps Deniers

by Dan Friedman

Google shapes the worldview of billions so if we can’t trust Google, the bullies have won.

Torture works . . . to produce Fake News (and that’s how we Got into Iraq)

by Juan Cole

The psychopaths in the White House will be perfectly happy to run with the fake news gained from torture and use it to bamboozle the public for their own nefarious purposes.

Why Trump’s wall with Mexico is so popular, and why it won’t work

by David Cook Martín

Building walls has rarely has achieved its intended effect, and may result in wasted resources and lost opportunities for the United States.

Roundup Top 10!

This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

What’s the method in Trump’s madness?

by E.J. Dionne

Is Trumpism a scam? And if so, whom is Donald Trump scamming?