The Trump administration is likely to feature the largest number of retired generals in modern history. Retired four-star generals James Mattis and John Kelly have been selected to lead the Defense and Homeland Security Departments, respectively, while retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has been appointed to serve as National Security Adviser. Several academics, commentators, and … Read more
Many were shocked to wake up on the Wednesday morning after the election to hear that Donald Trump had defied predictions and won the Presidency of the United States. On election day, Nate Silver’s popular website FiveThirtyEight had forecast a 71.4 percent chance of Hillary Clinton winning. Experts and voters alike expected Trump’s more controversial … Read more
Twenty-four years ago a charismatic and slick governor of Arkansas usurped the presidency after 12 years of Reaganomics and a Republican in the White House. Despite his opponent, sitting President George H. W. Bush, having a 90 percent approval rating following the successful ground invasion of Iraq, Americans’ opinions turned sharply negative when more than … Read more
On Friday, January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump officially takes office as the president of the United States, a group of Americans plan to gather at the U.S. Capitol in protest of the inauguration. The rally, entitled “#NotMyPresident,” has attracted tens of thousands of RSVPs in its Facebook event, and it’s just one of many … Read more
“Oh my god…this is horrible.” Those aren’t the words of a baritone announcer for a dystopian movie trailer, but the words of David Coppes, Director of Water Works at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, when he responded to the alarming 2010 Boston water emergency. The emergency, which MWRA’s executive director Frederick Laskey called “everyone’s worst … Read more
The uptick in mass shootings over the past few years has led to widespread calls for gun reform and the defeat of pro-gun lobbyist groups opposing it. Since the gun lobby currently employs many of the same tactics used by the powerful tobacco lobby, some have reasoned that the same blueprint used to weaken the … Read more
In the months leading up to and the weeks immediately following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage across the country, discussion of LGBTQ+ rights advancement dominated media on both the national and local levels. The court’s decision will go down as one of the most important … Read more
Pollsters and their adherents would probably have bet their savings on a Clinton presidency at the end of October. On October 28, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, the site whose electoral predictions are often considered the most accurate available, gave Hillary Clinton an 81.5 percent chance of winning. On the same day, FBI director James Comey … Read more
I can count the number of Trump supporters I know on one hand. Throughout the past few months, my social media has been filled with posts about shattering the glass ceiling, furthering the progressive agenda, and stopping Donald J. Trump. I read the New York Times, the Atlantic, FiveThirtyEight, The Onion. My Facebook feed is … Read more
In the opening to his book Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard articulates his understanding of the central phenomena of modernity: replication and replacement. He conceives of the emergence of a “real without origin in reality.” Baudrillard remarks, “Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory,” referring to a Borges short story. We ought not … Read more