On Federalism: Two Narratives

In the 1780s the so-called Founding Fathers created a Constitution rooted in the principles of federalism. In theory, a federalist system features (1) a unified national government with limited powers, (2) a strong system of checks and balances to reign in abuses of executive, legislative, and judicial power, and (3) autonomous states with a great deal of freedom to run their affairs as they see fit. Looks great on paper, right? 

The authors of the Federalist Papers (James Madison, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton) insisted that a strong national government was needed to protect democracy and individual freedoms. The Anti-Federalists (most notably Patrick Henry and George Mason) argued that a national government would inevitably suppress states' rights and individual freedoms. They also worried that presidents would over time become tyrannical monarchs as bad as King George III.  Madison, Jay, Hamilton and others successfully persuaded enough states to accept the Constitution and its vision of federalism, but the Anti-Federalists succeeded in getting the Bill of Rights attached to it. 

You would have to be willfully obtuse to argue that the powers of the federal government have ever been "limited" in a meaningful sense. In 1787, when Revolutionary War Veteran Daniel Shays led a western Massachusetts rebellion sparked by high rates of poverty, farm foreclosures, and unfair taxes, Madison and other former rebels concluded that a strong national government was needed to put down such unrest. The debate over federal power has never been about whether or not the feds should wield power, but about how that power should be wielded and on whose behalf. 

As a Rhetorician, one of my main academic interests is the language used to justify the exertion of federal power. A major principle of modern Rhetoric as a field of study is that the behavior of individuals and institutions is correlated with the narratives (i.e. stories) that they construct, accept as true, and preach.  

So if it is true that the federal government exerts extraordinary powers reaching into every part of our lives, it behooves us to understand what stories the representatives of that institution are governed (no pun intended) by.  My argument is that at its best, the federal government is guided by a "for the people" narrative that challenges and often forces states to make the privileges of American citizenship available to everyone. When the federal government is at its worst--which is unfortunately a period we are living through right now--it is guided by an authoritarian narrative that widens divisions between people while privileging the desires of the few over the needs of the many. This latter narrative of federal power is essentially what is meant by "oligarchy."  

Allow me to provide two examples from our history when the federal government, as represented by leaders empowered to make transformative policy changes, was guided by the for the people narrative. They are the Civil War period and the New Deal era of the 1930s.    

The Federal Narrative In the Civil War Period:  From March 4, 1789 (when the Constitution went into effect) until 1860, federal power in relation to slavery was exerted in a mostly shameful manner. Powerful members of Congress, federal judges, and most presidents of the period--even those who thought slavery would and should eventually come to an end--could not accept the abolitionist movement's narrative of the slave as a human being whose oppression required a second American revolution to right a monstrous wrong. The majority of feds in Washington spent decades appeasing, enabling, and compromising with slavery interests. 

Even Abraham Lincoln, who campaigned in 1860 on a platform of keeping the union together--and who justified the Civil War strictly on those grounds for most of 1861and1862--only slowly came around to articulating federal power as a force for emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 represented a transformative moment for American federalism, and contributed to empowering the "Radical Republican" Congress to successfully pass the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, 15th) that were rooted in a narrative of granting American citizenship--and the rights and privileges that come with it--to African Americans. 

The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the idea of federal power in America upon its official release in January of 1863. For the first time, the federal government would take the side of an oppressed group. President Lincoln released a preliminary version in September of 1862. 

Sadly, the radical Republican reforms faced a wicked backlash, and the United States entered a long period of Jim Crow laws and Robber Baron takeover of government that put federal power once again at the service of racists and plutocrats. The most noble leaders of the post-Civil War progressive movement, such as Wisconsin's Fighting Bob LaFollette, spent most of their careers expressing dissent against a federal government aggressively enabling segregation, child labor, oppression of women, and imperialist adventures abroad. It was not until the 1930s, in reaction to a brutal economic depression, that the federal government acted according to the precepts of a more humane narrative. 

The Federal Narrative in the New Deal Era: 

Most Americans believe the United States has experienced one "Great Depression," the one that started in 1929 and lasted officially until the United States entered World War II in 1941. But there were actually two great depressions that preceded it: The Panic of 1837 (which lasted well into the 1840s), and the Panic of 1893 (which lasted for most of the remainder of the decade.). In those earlier depressions, the federal government response was limited and ineffective, largely because the feds were controlled by a narrative that conceived of direct assistance to the unemployed and poor as anti-American. 

The situation became so desperate in the 1890s that Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey led the first ever march on Washington, demanding federal intervention in the economy including direct assistance to the unemployed. "Coxey's Army" was the best known of many popular uprisings designed to push the federal government to DO SOMETHING to alleviate the suffering across the land. In 1894 after Coxey's Army had marched 400 miles and reached Washington, Jacob Coxey was arrested for walking on Capitol grass and thus could not deliver his speech.  Fifty years later Coxey delivered that speech on the steps of the US Congress. It challenged the federal government to help the oppressed: 

In 1894 Coxey's Army marched 400 miles to Washington, D.C. to petition the government for unemployment relief. Such a demand was radical at the time, in part because the dominant narrative of the federal government was that it could not be "limited" if it actually intervened in the economy to help suffering people. Coxey's activism was vital in challenging the dominant narrative around government action, and helped create an environment that would make the New Deal possible decades later. 

We are here to petition for legislation which will furnish employment for every man willing and able to work; for legislation which will bring universal prosperity and emancipate our beloved country from from financial bondage to the descendants of King George . . . We have come here through toil and weary marches, through storms and tempests, over mountains, and amid the trials of poverty and distress, to lay our grievances at the doors of our National legislature and ask them in the name of Him whose banners we bear, in the name of Him who plead for the poor and the oppressed, that they should heed the voice of despair and distress that is now coming up from every section of our country, that they should consider the conditions of the starving unemployed of our land, and enact such laws as will given them employment, bring happier conditions to the people, and the smile of contentment to our citizens. 

The narrative of a federal government "for the people" favored by Coxey, labor activists, and other social justice advocates finally took partial hold of the federal government in the 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal not only ushered in new social welfare policies (Social Security, unemployment insurance, the right to unionize, child labor restrictions, etc.), but just as important, a new story about government.  On October 13, 1932 in a campaign address delivered less than a month before his election to the presidency, FDR laid out a vision of federal government responsibility that represented a break from the past: 

In broad terms, I assert that modern society, acting through its government, owes the definite obligation to prevent the starvation or the dire want of any of its fellowmen and women who try to maintain themselves but cannot. To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by the government, not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty . . . In the words of our Democratic national platform, the federal government has 'a continuous responsibility for human welfare, especially for the protection of children.' That duty and responsibility the federal government should carry out promptly, fearlessly, and generously." 

Democrats wondering how to counter the reactionary policies of Presidents Musk and Trump would do well to remember FDR's warning: "We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests."

It's hard to exaggerate how radical it was for a mainstream politician to express that vision of a federal government. When FDR took office, he acted on his campaign platform with mixed success as the federal courts--still wedded to a narrative that saw direct participation of the federal government in the economy as unconstitutional--struck down a number of initiatives. Ultimately the courts relented, and we entered a sixty-year period which featured many policy disagreements about the federal role in our lives (especially during the Reagan years of the 1980s), but general acceptance of the narrative that says the federal government does have some responsibility to help meet the needs of all citizens. That narrative begins to break down, in my view, when President Bill Clinton in his January of 1996 State of the Union speech--clearly concerned about his reelection chances later that year--declared "the era of big government is over." 

Clinton won reelection, but since the mid-1990s we have seen the narrative of a federal government that exists to protect and uplift all citizens reduced to a talking point in Democratic Party fundraising pitches. The Republican Party, never enamored with the expansive federal government narrative to begin with, now openly embraces a return to a pre-New Deal vision of federal power. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are in many ways the inevitable result of years of anti-government propaganda that naturally appeals to the millions of people who struggle to make ends meet, and Trump/Musk also benefit from the failure of social justice advocates to make an effective case FOR government.  In the New York Times, M. Gessen expresses the situation clearly: 

It is not enough to say that Trump and his crony Elon Musk are staging a coup, though they are. Many of the people who voted for Trump want to see him smash what he has successfully framed as a useless, wasteful government. It is not enough to say that Trump is destroying American democracy. Many of the people who voted for him did so because they have long felt that the system as it is constituted doesn’t represent their interests — and both Trump and Musk have argued that they are wresting democracy back from unelected bureaucrats. It is not enough to say that Trump’s actions have caused a constitutional crisis or that his executive orders may violate laws passed by Congress. Many of the people who voted for Trump longed to see their frustrations addressed by decisive, spectacular action, which he is delivering.

Not that defending institutions, norms and laws is wrong. It is essential. Contrary to popular opinion, it is institutions, norms and laws — not elections — that constitute a functioning democracy. The mechanisms Trump is destroying are certainly imperfect, but they are also inspired, sometimes brilliantly devised and almost always beautiful in concept, for they are the mechanisms of self-government, the products of deliberation and collective action, the embodiment of our obligations to one another.

It is hard to imagine an American politician saying something like that today. If one did, he would sound like a lunatic, or a pious academic whom Trump would Marx-bait. The idea that government is fundamentally suspect has been around for so long, has become so widely held — and has had such a dumbing-down effect on public conversation — that a full-throated defense of the ideals and institutions of American government seems cringe-worthy.

In short, Presidents Trump and Musk have won the narrative war--at least for now. Our federal government has been taken over, quite literally, by forces that have contempt for the idea that government exists to empower the people at-large while reigning in the oligarchs. It's not surprising that Trump expresses admiration for the William McKinley era, an era that saw Robber Barons plunder the federal treasury while preaching "self-reliance" to the unruly masses. An era in which government mocked and marginalized Jacob Coxey instead of meeting its duty to respond to the cries of the masses that he represented. The opponents of Trump and Musk can hope that the courts find a way to constrain them, or that public pressure on the Congress might push the Republicans to restore some checks and balances to our federal system. Those and other measures to counter Trumpism and Muskism are surely necessary. 

But what's equally necessary is a revival of a People First narrative that makes the rhetoric of building up democratic institutions more attractive than the rhetoric of tearing them down. What Franklin Roosevelt said on January 6, 1941 still holds today: "We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests."  

The good news is that we do have some evidence that the Trump/Musk narrative is beginning to crack. Note these recent poll results from Reuters/Ipsos: 

Americans, including some of Trump's most ardent supporters, are nervous about the influence wealthy Americans are having on the White House after Trump stocked his cabinet and circle of advisers with corporate executives and billionaires.

Among poll respondents, 71% agreed with a statement that the very wealthy have too much influence on the White House, and 69% said they think the wealthy are making money off their White House connections.

Even among Americans who said they strongly identify with the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement - the president's most ardent supporters who make up about a third of his party - some 44% thought the richest Americans were profiting from White House connections.

Those poll results are encouraging because they suggest that we MIGHT be able to take back our government from the oligarchs who've coopted if for their own benefit. Taking it back will require that we reject stories that justify oligarchic takeover, and accept stories that articulate government as being of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

On Bishop Budde, Carole Feraci, and Standing Up To Cult Leaders

Of the sixty-plus inaugural addresses delivered by forty USA presidents, almost all refrained from demonizing domestic political opponents. Even Abe Lincoln in March of 1861, after receiving literally zero votes in ten southern states and with the nation on the brink of civil war, made one last attempt to unite the divided masses: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." 

The two major exceptions to the tradition of trying to bring the nation together on inauguration day were Donald Trump in 2017 and Donald Trump in 2025. In the more recent one, Trump called himself a "peacemaker and unifier" while at the same time not hesitating to alienate half the country, accusing the Biden Administration of a "horrible betrayal." Not much hope for unity there. 

In January of 1972 at a White House event, singer Carole Feraci unveiled a "Stop The Killing" banner and directly pleaded with President Nixon to stop the Vietnam war. In January of 2025 Bishop Mariann BuddeI similarly challenged President Trump to act with mercy in relation to those who fear his return to power. 

With the new president not willing or not able even to pretend to care about political friendship, it was left to the Bishop of Washington, the Reverend Mariann Budde, on the next day to offer up a homily on "A Service of Prayer for the Nation." I'll get to the part that made national headlines shortly, but my hope is that Bishop Budde's speech gets remembered for more than pissing off a bitter, vengeful, thin-skinned, curmudgeonly president. The speech was an eloquent statement, rooted in the gospel wisdom of Matthew 7:24-29, of the need for people of goodwill to recapture "unity" from the grasp of partisans: 

Joined by many across the country, we have gathered this morning to pray for unity as a nation—not for agreement, political or otherwise, but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good.

Unity, in this sense, is the threshold requirement for people to live together in a free society, it is the solid rock, as Jesus said, in this case upon which to build a nation. It is not conformity. It is not a victory of one over another. It is not weary politeness nor passivity born of exhaustion. Unity is not partisan.

Rather, unity is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect; that enables us, in our communities and in the halls of power, to genuinely care for one another even when we disagree. Those across our country who dedicate their lives, or who volunteer, to help others in times of natural disaster, often at great risk to themselves, never ask those they are helping for whom they voted in the past election or what positions they hold on a particular issue. We are at our best when we follow their example.

Unity, at times, is sacrificial, in the way that love is sacrificial, a giving of ourselves for the sake of another. Jesus of Nazareth, in his Sermon on the Mount, exhorts us to love not only our neighbors, but to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us; to be merciful, as our God is merciful, and to forgive others, as God forgives us. Jesus went out of his way to welcome those whom his society deemed as outcasts.

What a powerful contrast to the pettiness of the president's inaugural message. With a Martin Luther King, Jr. style of moral conviction, she said: 

Unity is relatively easy to pray for on occasions of solemnity. It’s a lot harder to realize when we’re dealing with real differences in the public arena. But without unity, we are building our nation’s house on sand . . . With a commitment to unity that incorporates diversity and transcends disagreement, and the solid foundations of dignity, honesty, and humility that such unity requires, we can do our part, in our time, to help realize the ideals and the dream of America.

And then the conclusion, which sent President Trump and his toadies in Congress into a tizzy: 

Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are transgender children in both Republican and Democrat families who fear for their lives.

President Trump demanded that Bishop Budde apologize for her remarks, which were delivered gently and without malice. She has said, "I am not going to apologize for asking for mercy for others."  

And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals—they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.

Have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.

May God grant us all the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.

When I first saw the news coverage of Bishop Budde's appeal to Trump, it brought back one of my earliest childhood memories from over fifty years ago. At an event celebrating the anniversary of Reader's Digest magazine in January of 1972, a young female member of the Ray Conniff singers named Carole Feraci interrupted the festivities by holding up a "Stop The Killing" banner and saying this directly to Nixon: 

"President Nixon, stop bombing human beings, animals and vegetation. You go to church on Sundays and pray to Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ were here tonight, you would not dare drop another bomb. Bless the Berrigans and bless Daniel Ellsberg."

Nixon sat there stunned, with his trademark forced smile on display. Feraci was allowed to stay on stage to join the group in the first number, but then Conniff asked her to leave. From the Nixon tapes we learned that the next day the president whined about Feraci to Treasury Secretary John Connolly. 

In 1968 Nixon came to power in a very close election. Even though by early 1972 he had not made good on his promise to end the war, millions of Americans (whom he cleverly labeled the "silent majority") saw him as a moderate force standing up against the alleged excesses of LBJ's Great Society and the militant youth movement. In November of 1972 Nixon would win reelection in one of the biggest landslides in the history of the nation. Less than two years later, he would resign in disgrace as a result of the Watergate scandal.  

Trump does not share many policy positions with Nixon, but what he does share with the late president is a powerful personality cult following. We know from the Watergate hearings that Nixon's closest associates were willing to lie and break laws for him, with the same emotional fervor that we saw Trump's MAGA minions exert on January 6, 2021. Individuals lost in the maze of a personality cult will place allegiance to the head honcho above any other value, and will defend dear leader unconditionally even if it means harm to their own safety or reputation. 

Standing up to cult leaders is not easy. Feraci's singing career virtually came to an end after her run-in with Nixon, and Bishop Budde finds herself on the receiving end of vile threats of violence. As horrifying as the response to them was/is, we do need average citizens, faith leaders, and others with the courage to stand up to cult leaders. In 1972 Nixon's cult following no doubt hated Feraci and wanted her banished from the public sphere. But after Watergate put the president's true character on display, my guess is that many of them came to see Nixon as not worthy of adulation, and maybe even began to see people like Carole Feraci as more authentic role models of the (small d) democratic spirit that is supposed to live in all of us who call ourselves Americans. 

David Cohen's wonderful cartoon, "Bishop Takes King," 

is a perfect visual metaphor for how Bishop Budde represented what ought to be the approach of people of faith to wannabe kings. 

Similarly, the Donald Trump cult will not be here forever. It is true that modern social media places cult followers in echo chambers that were not as controlling in the early 1970s, but still I  am confident that the MAGA multitudes--so many of whom find in the movement the connection to something bigger than self--will someday find kinship with Bishop Budde's message. Why? Because barely a month into the new administration, it is becoming harder and harder to escape the stark reality that President Trump's main concern is satisfying the needs of self-interested oligarchs. At some point, the MAGA faithful will come to the realization that their interests are not at all aligned with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, but ARE aligned with the groups for whom Bishop Budde is pleading for mercy from our leaders. 

If you have family and/or friends trapped in a cult mindset--political, religious, or anything else--check out Dr. Steven Hassan's helpful suggestions for connection. When your family and/or friends seem trapped in a cult in an extreme way that makes you feel helpless, remember Dr. Hassan's advice: "Be patient. This is a journey and will not happen overnight. Do not get discouraged. People do leave." In the political realm, don't forget to thank people like Carole Feraci and Mariann Budde for having the courage to stand up to cult leaders. Be like them. 

Ten Essential Bob Dylan Albums

James Mangold's "A Complete Unknown," starring Timothee Chalomet as the 1961-1965 Bob Dylan, has been getting rave reviews. Chalomet captures Dylan's brooding and iconoclastic postures of that era to a tee. Other great performances include Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. Anyone old enough to have lived in the 1960s will find something in the movie to appreciate. 

For me the high point of the film was Chalomet's rendition of Dylan singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Mangold's direction of that scene captures what Dylan really meant to the civil rights and youth movements of the time; the audience connected with Dylan in a way that labor movement activists had connected with Seeger and Woody Guthrie decades earlier. It was a connection that Dylan himself ultimately could not or would not sustain, much to the disappointment of various activists and movement leaders. 

I ultimately found the movie disappointing, for two main reasons. First, even though Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo (who is actually Dylan's then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo; Dylan asked Mangold not to use her real name) are portrayed as strong, independent women who ultimately (in not so many words) tell him to fuck off, one is left feeling that both of them would have sacrificed their political identities and activism FOR Dylan if he had only been more willing or able to commit to a relationship. As such, the film seems to imply that Baez and Russo would sell out their ideals for a traditional American romance--which reduces them to a tired Hollywood trope IMHO. 

Second, the film reinforces the myth that Pete Seeger was somehow opposed to Dylan "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the performance at which Dylan was allegedly booed by the majority of the audience (ostensibly for betraying the sound of pure folk music.). Seeger addressed this matter a number of times before he died, always emphasizing the same two points: (1) there was no opposition to electric instruments. Indeed, blues great Howlin' Wolf had played an electric set at the festival the day before Dylan. (2) The problem with Dylan's set was that the sound mixing was so terrible that Dylan's lyrics could not be heard, at least not without an auditory struggle. Especially for the Dylan of that era, a performance with indecipherable words defeated the point. 

The film did get me back to listening to Dylan's music. Below are what I consider to be ten of his most essential albums. Note that not one of them was recorded in the 21st century, even though Dylan has recorded a number of albums since 2001. It's not that his 21st century output has been bad as much as the fact that his 20th century output included so many iconic classics. Here they are: 

10. Time Out Of Mind (1997): Includes the classics "Love Sick" (which somehow ended up in a 2004 Victoria's Secret ad), and "Make You Feel My Love" (which has been covered by more than 450 different artists, most notably Adele). 

9. Oh Mercy (1989): An album that will always have great meaning for me, in large part because it came out the same year I moved to Oshkosh from Rochester, New York. Moving to the Midwest was not something I did easily or without trepidation, but I remember that this album somehow inspired me to venture into new territory. "Political World, "Everything is Broken," "Ring Them Bells," and "Disease of Conceit" remain as four of my all time favorite songs--the last two strike a chord with my Catholic upbringing. 

8. Slow Train Coming (1979): This was the first of three albums that represent Dylan's Born Again Christian phase. There are a number of great songs on it, but "Gotta Serve Somebody" is about as perfect a Dylan song as you can get. It's preachy without being too overbearing or hypocritical. 

7. Blonde on Blonde (1966): Dylan does not usually get credit for being one of the pioneering figures in the "progressive rock" movement of the 1960s and 1970s, yet Blonde on Blonde most certainly inspired that movement. In vinyl terms, it was one of the first double albums to include great tunes on each of the four sides. It also featured a mix of genres--certainly grounded in folk rock--but sending out word to other artists of the time that it was okay to push the musical envelope. My favorite song on the album is probably "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," a 7-minute epic that stayed in heavy rotation on FM radio for many years. 

6. Nashville Skyline (1969):  Dylan's foray into full-blown country music. As I watched the movie "A Complete Unknown," I wondered if "I Threw It All Away" was meant for Suze Rotolo or Joan Baez. 

5. Blood On The Tracks (1975). I listened to this album in high school, and it moved me greatly even though I did not have the emotional sophistication at the time to grasp the turmoil reflected in so many of the songs. "Simple Twist Of Fate" is a wonderful example of Dylan's ability to narrate a story in third and first person in a seamless way. Not sure how he does that. 

4. Highway 61 Revisited (1965): Probably the greatest folk-rock album ever recorded, groundbreaking in the best sense. Every song on it became iconic. The best known is "Like A Rolling Stone," which forever changed the sound of 1960s popular music. The lyrics open themselves up for numerous interpretations, and Al Kooper's intro organ never gets old to this day. 

3. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963): The album that led everyone to believe Dylan was the new Woody Guthrie. Epic songs that inspired a generation of topical folk-singers. "Blowing In The Wind" remains as the best known, but "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rains-A-Gonna Fall" (which imagines the world post-nuclear holocaust), both of which seethe with baby boom generation anger and fear, remain as my personal favorites. 

2.  The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964): The title track remains inspiring after all these years, but "When the Ship Comes In" (which was the first song Dylan performed at the 1963 March on Washington) is for me his most hopeful and optimistic song. In fact I still listen to it whenever I allow myself to get too depressed about our collective future--it helps to get me back on track. 

1. Bringing It All Back Home (1965): When I teach "The Rhetoric of Rock and Roll," occasionally a student will ask me what I think is the greatest album of all time. My answer changes from year to year, but "Bringing It All Back Home" has got to be near the top of the list. In vinyl terms, it includes an electric side with bluesy tunes--all with provocative lyrics and social commentary--and an acoustic side that is Woody Guthrie 2.0. I don't think any other song has impacted me as much as "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," which I am pretty sure I heard for the first time in the early 1970s on some college radio station broadcasting from a New Jersey campus (I was living in New York City at the time). 

Go see the movie! 

The 2024 Tony Awards: Celebrating Paul Krugman

Every year since 2003, I have given out Tony (Palmeri) Awards for the year's outstanding media. This is the first time since 2010, when I recognized the remarkable video documentarian (and Oshkosh native) Colin Crowley, that I am awarding only one Tony. In 2024 the award goes to the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economist who announced in December that he would no longer be a regular contributor to the New York Times opinion page, contributions that he's made since January of 2000. Though I've disagreed with Krugman many times, I've always admired his ability to communicate his thoughts about complex [and often divisive] topics in a language that most everyone can understand. That is, Krugman has played the public intellectual role in a way few academics can pull off. 

Before diving into my reasons for celebrating Krugman, I'd like to explain why I am not handing out any other awards this year. Quite simply and depressingly, 2024 was the worst year for American journalism and punditry since 2003--the year the mainstream corporate media enabled the duplicity and depravity that gave us Operation Iraqi "Freedom." (More than 20 years after deposing the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, the US government today remains silent as the current Iraqi government carries out unlawful executions at a staggering rate.). 

In 2024, mainstream media in its coverage of the presidential election proved once again that when it comes to anything Trump related, the freedom of the press as the great "bulwark of liberty" will be sacrificed in the name of what is good for the news as a BUSINESS. New York University journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen provided a framework for how the 2024 election should be covered that mainstream media ultimately failed to incorporate in any meaningful way. Rosen tweeted: 

Not the odds, but the stakes. That's my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need in journalists covering the 2024 campaign. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

Instead what mainstream media provided us was essentially a repeat of 2016: obsession with polling data, treating bad faith actors known to flood the media space with "alternative facts" as credible sources, allowing blatantly false claims in political advertisements to go unchallenged, and framing Mr. Trump's anti-democratic tendencies as accusations made by his political opponents rather than as empirically verifiable facts. And while it is true that the so-called liberal spaces of mainstream media assisted establishment Democrats in covering up President Biden's decline until the June debate made it no longer possible to do so, that paled in comparison to the persistent "sanewashing" of Trump.

I think when future generations look back on the American continent of 2024, they will be hard pressed to explain the results of the Mexican presidential election compared to what transpired in the USA. In June of 2024, in a country still struggling to reign in a culture of toxic male machismo, Mexico elected its first female president--who also happened to be a climate scientist by trade. Meanwhile the United States elected a climate change denialist who also happened to be twice impeached, convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and led an insurrection after he lost in 2020. No doubt future generations will somehow have to conclude that mainstream media had something to do with these topsy turvy results.

Maybe the worst mainstream media offender of 2024 was, sadly, the New York Times. Media critic Dan Froomkin's excellent analysis and critique of NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger's speech at Oxford University demonstrated convincingly that the paper was not willing to go to bat for its OWN definition of independent journalism. For Froomkin, Sulzberger communicated two messages to media critics very clearly in his speech:

1. You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged insurrectionist.

2. You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.

As someone who has been a NYT reader and subscriber for many years, it's hard for me to disagree with Froomkin's analysis. Paul Krugman has not commented on the changing (sinking?) journalistic and editorial standards at the Times, but one has to wonder if his decision to leave was motivated at least in part by not wanting to be associated with a news organization that trolls its own core readers. 

Regardless, allow me to spend the remainder of this post celebrating Paul Krugman's writing. Over the years he has come up with dozens of concepts and arguments that have provoked me to think more critically about topics, reconsider my own thoughts, and/or write about certain topics myself. Let me just provide five examples: 

1. Kakistocracy: I'm sure he was not the first to use the term, but when Krugman described the Trump cabinet as a "kakistocracy" it struck me as the most perfect descriptor possible. A kakistocracy is "a form of government in which the worst persons are in power." (In his most recent substack piece, Krugman comments on Trump's sudden betrayal of his MAGA base to align his views more closely with his wealthy donors, and reaches this spot-on conclusion: "What all three of these reversals suggest to me is that the 2024 election wasn’t a victory for populism or actually any kind of 'ism.' What it did, instead, was deliver the levers of power into the hands of people who can be bought.")

A kakistocracy indeed.

2.  The Confidence Fairy. I happen to work at a University recently decimated by austerity budgets manufactured by highly paid external consultants. In justifying austerity, UW System administrators assert the same tired rhetoric politicians use when slashing programs that benefit workers: these tough decisions will result in short-term pain, but ultimately build confidence in the System and inspire great taxpayer and private stakeholder support. That is, somehow an institution can build confidence by destroying it. It's kind of like a pathetic variation of the Vietnam era admonition that we had to "destroy the town to save it." Look for Krugman's "confidence fairy" to make a grand return in Republican discourse later this month as they try to rationalize why we need massive cuts to the federal budget while giving more tax breaks to the richest one-percent. 

3. Zombie Ideas. This might be my all-time favorite Krugmanism, discussed extensively in his 2020 book Arguing With Zombies and summarized in a column entitled How Zombies Ate The GOP's Soul: 

"A zombie idea is a belief or doctrine that has repeatedly been proved false, but refuses to die; instead, it just keeps shambling along, eating people’s brains. The ultimate zombie in American politics is the assertion that tax cuts pay for themselves — a claim that has been proved wrong again and again over the past 40 years. But there are other zombies, like climate change denial, that play an almost equally large role in our political discourse."

Krugman shows how the Republican party has been overrun by zombie ideas. If the party is ever to rescue itself from Trumpism at the national level and its Trump-lite derivatives in the states, it will have to come to grips with what Krugman says here: 

Think about what is now required for a Republican politician to be considered a party member in good standing. He or she must pledge allegiance to policy doctrines that are demonstrably false; he or she must, in effect, reject the very idea of paying attention to evidence.

It takes a certain kind of person to play that kind of game — namely, a cynical careerist. There used to be Republican politicians who were more than that, but they were mainly holdovers from an earlier era, and at this point have all left the scene, one way or another. John McCain may well have been the last of his kind.

What’s left now is a party that, as far as I can tell, contains no politicians of principle; anyone who does have principles has been driven out.

The Republican Party is right now held way too tightly in the grips of MAGA for those words to even be heard. But heard they must be if we are ever going to be able to return to a "normal" two party system. To be clear: the Democrats have their own variety of dysfunctions, most notably the establishment's fierce opposition to the progressive wing of the party. But factional disputes and fear of progressive upstarts is not the same as requiring delusion as the price of admission to the party ball. Not even close. 

4. The Years Of Shame: On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Krugman wrote a short piece that literally provoked former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to cancel his New York Times subscription. The piece said in part:

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

Krugman's piece stuck with me for a long time, and on the 20th anniversary of September 11th I wrote a Krugman-inspired piece on 2001-2021 as our nation's "third score of shame." 

5.  The Public Intellectual Style: What I've most admired about Paul Krugman is his ability to write for a general audience. This is not an easy thing for academics to do, and most fail at it. In 2011 he wrote another short piece explaining his efforts to write in a conversational tone. I was impressed, though not surprised, that his "bible" for commandments on how to write clearly is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," a work that--when I first read it in graduate school back in the 1980s--transformed my entire outlook on what I should be doing as a budding academic. Few public intellectuals demonstrate Orwell's commitment to clarity as well as Paul Krugman. 

Dr. Krugman has left the New York Times, but he most certainly has not stopped writing. His excellent substack, "Krugman Wonks Out," is well worth your time. And it's free!  

Congratulations to Dr. Paul Krugman for being the sole recipient of the 2024 Tony Award.