Democratic Norms
The unwritten rules that held the republic together, and what their erosion costs.
43 essays
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Gold Leaf Governance
Trump's gilded renovations aren't a matter of taste. They're a disclosure about how he understands power, ownership, and permanence.
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The Projection Gap
Trump governs by projection. The gap between what he claims and what he achieves is finally widening—at home and abroad.
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Duty, Honor, Country: Concepts Too Complex for Donald Trump to Grasp
A soldier who lived beside Arlington on what sacrifice actually means—and why a man who called the fallen "suckers" was never going to grasp it.
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Different Actions, Same Story
How Modern Political Analysis Flattens Difference
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The Table Was Never Set for Peace
Twenty-one hours of talks produced no agreement—because the table was set for affirmation, not negotiation.
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When Authority Follows Action
Tariffs, DOGE, and the courts look unrelated. They share one method: act first, locate the authority afterward.
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When the Story Stops Working
Trump's presidency runs on belief, and belief depends on keeping its contradictions apart. That distance is closing.
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The Bill Comes Due
Prices rise, confidence slips, allies hedge. None of it is ideological—it's mechanical, and mechanics always assert themselves.
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The Lawyer Who Tried to Kill the Law
A failed argument can be tried again. A disqualifying one cannot. How the Big Lie ran out of room.
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When the System Doesn't Need to Make Sense
In a system where contradiction is no longer a liability, coherence ceases to be a requirement. What follows is not chaos, but a form of control that no longer needs to make sense to function.
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The Exception That Proves the Rule
How Trump's Governing Model Produces Cotradictions at Home and Abroad
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Stamped Twice
What You Still Get When Democrats Govern — And What Trump Keeps Burning Down
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The Ugly Americans Among Us
As Americans increasingly view their political opponents as morally “bad,” the old warning about the Ugly American begins to feel less like a stereotype and more like a civic diagnosis.
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When Governance Becomes Political Hostage Taking
Trump told his own party economic relief would wait until they delivered his election-law demands. That isn't coalition governance—it's leverage.
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When the Applause Fades: What Declining Approval Does to Power
Everyone waits for the poll collapse that ends him. But a presidency built on spectacle doesn't retreat when applause fades—it escalates.
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When Courts Rule but Power Doesn't Listen
Why Judicial Power Now Turns on Compliance, Not Rulings
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The Domestic Terrorist in the Oval Office
Trump and the Politics of Permissioned Violence
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When Governance Becomes Personalist Rule
Foreign Affairs took a decade to admit it: Trump governs not through institutions but through himself—appetite as strategy, grievance as doctrine.
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The Luxury of Failing Forward
Civil rights laws didn't inflict mistreatment on white Americans. They withdrew an entitlement—and that is the whole grievance.
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The Cost of Saying It Late
A democracy fails when the institutions tasked with describing reality decide that saying it too plainly might seem unseemly.
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An Opening Message for 2026: Against the Fashion of Despair
Despair has become fashionable—and like most fashions, it flatters the people selling it.
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The Strongman Who Mistook Civilization for Decay
Trump calls Europe "decaying" because it stopped behaving like Trump—a worldview last held earnestly by the generals of 1914.
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The Year the Guardrails Were Removed
Democracies rarely fall with sirens. This one is being dismantled politely, on schedule, with applause.
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Margin of Terror: Why America Keeps Betting on Bad Numbers
America trusts polls the way gamblers trust systems—and democracy keeps paying the house.
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What Trump Understood About the Republican Party
Trump didn't hijack the Republican Party. He drove off in a vehicle already idling, keys in the ignition and a "For Sale" sign in the window.
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The Speaker Who Gave Up His Voice
Mike Johnson found the one way to lead the House by refusing to let it lead—and called the silence holy.
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The Real Heirs of the Republic
Heritage, Myth, and the Power We Inherit
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The Heritage I Actually Have
A genealogy file traced to ninth-century Welsh kings—and what real inheritance looks like in a nation choking on counterfeit heritage.
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The Techno-Monarch They Gave Us
Elon Musk never won an election. He didn't need one—he bought the court instead of the crown.
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The Inheritance They Wish They Had
A Republic’s Real Heirs vs. Its Imitators
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The Heritage Hustle
Welcome to the Ancestral Republic
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The Mirror Holds the Flame (In the imagined voice of Edward R. Murrow)
If Edward R. Murrow walked into a newsroom today, he'd recognize every instrument and few of the values.
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Coup by Courtesy: How the GOP Handed Over the Keys
Power isn't always seized with tanks. Sometimes a party simply hands over the keys—and calls it governing.
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History’s Exit Interview: Notes from the End of Progress
Somewhere between the ruins of Enlightenment optimism and the latest GOP fundraiser, History called it quits.
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The Court of Homeland Security
Two taxpayer Gulfstreams aren't extravagance—they're regalia by invoice, the robes acquired before the coronation.
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No Kings Means Us: The People as the Last Branch of Government
— No one rules by birthright here. The sovereign is the citizenry.
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The Republican Enlightenment: Late, Brief, and Possibly Accidental
A third of Republicans have finally noticed Trump is enriching himself. It isn't conscience that woke them—it's exhaustion.
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Cloaked in Robes: How America's Supreme Court Turned Trump’s Carnival into a Coronation
Keep watching the clown. The real act happens in dim light, where robed hands rig a republic into an elective monarchy.
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Jim Crow 2.0 — Trump Style
The burning cross became a trending hashtag. America's oldest sickness didn't die—it found a business model.
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The Anti-Woke Death Spiral: How Trump’s Culture War Could Kill Conservatism
The crusade meant to save American conservatism is becoming the anchor that finally drags it under.
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Postmortem by Gaslight
Nate Cohn and the New York Times's Autopsy of Democracy, Minus the Mirror
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Dancing on Empty: Trumpism and the Choreography of Illiberal Power
Trumpism didn't invent the performance of hollowness. It perfected it—emptiness staged as rule, chaos scripted as destiny.
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I Came, I Wrote, It Didn’t Matter
A Farewell to the Algorithmic Republic