Apathy appears to have faded

January 7, 2020

Then-candidate Donald Trump told a mostly white rally crowd in Michigan in 2016 that “at the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95% of the African American vote.” How’s that working out? Alas, he has a lot of ground to make up. Yet, he hardly could have sounded more determined at the November “Black Voices for Trump” rally he convened in Atlanta. “We’re going to campaign for every last African American vote in 2020.” Right. The man is nothing if not a salesman. His job-approval ratings among black Americans have bobbed up and down during his term, ...

This is ‘The Year of Reading Women’

January 6, 2020

I’m here to say goodbye to Stephen King. Not that he’s going anywhere. Indeed, I imagine he’s at his desk even now, devising a fiendish fate for some schmuck unlucky enough to be a character in a Stephen King novel. But whatever that fate may be, I will know nothing about it — not this year, at least. I will be similarly ignorant of whatever legal potboiler John Grisham has in the pipeline or whatever magisterial new history David McCullough publishes next. The acclaimed new novels by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Colson Whitehead? They will also have to wait until 2021. This, you see, ...

Turn over new leaf in 2020: Let’s go vegan

January 6, 2020

Happy Veganuary, everyone! Veganuary, for the uninitiated, is the month when people around the world pledge to go vegan in order to help stop animal suffering, protect the planet and improve their health. More than a quarter-million people in 190 countries pledged to go vegan in January 2019. According to the U.S. Veganuary program director, 46% of people signed up for health reasons, 34% cited concerns about cruelty to animals and 12% were motivated by climate change. It doesn’t really matter which reason means the most to you as long as you actually go — and stay — vegan. ...

51-49 vote will ensure fair trial

January 3, 2020

Virtually all experts and observers envision a near-certain acquittal of President Donald Trump by the U. S. Senate after the House passage of two articles of impeachment Dec. 18th. The Constitution requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate to convict and remove a president — or 67 votes. However damning and culpable Trump’s actions in withholding critical aid to Ukraine against Russian aggression to force an investigation of a political rival, very few believe that 20 Republican senators will join 45 Democrats and two independents likely to vote for conviction. But the larger, ...

How 2016’s populist uprising will reverberate in 2020

January 2, 2020

WESTBY, WIS. In a country increasingly engaged in national politics and divided, the next 12 months may feel like 12 years. Voters in both trenches are eager to vote, convinced not only of victory but also of vindication. The shocking result in 2016 wasn’t a black swan, an irregular election deviating from normalcy, but instead the indicator of a realignment. The story of America’s evolving political topography is one of tectonic plates that slowly grind against one another until a break notably alters the landscape with seismic consequences — a sudden lurch long in ...

You are what you grow to be

January 2, 2020

Daniel Mazzacane Los Angeles Times Two years ago, I designed a tattoo for a friend, a celebration of the first anniversary of his gender transition. It was the Deathly Hallows symbol from the “Harry Potter” series, with the quote “You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be” underneath. I was 7 the first time I read “Harry Potter,” curled in bed with my mom, wandering through Hogwarts and finding the world that would define my childhood. Like many in my generation, I grew up alongside The Boy Who Lived. I can still remember ...