ArcaMax

The decline in religiosity in America is oft-noted and well-documented, as survey upon survey demonstrates. Gallup reports that while 44% of Americans said in 2000 they attended services weekly, by 2023 that figure had dropped to 32%. The percentage of Americans who identified with a particular religion likewise fell during that period.

But ...Read more

Hard to believe, but President Donald Trump seemed to be just making it up this past week, selling Americans the line that the bad economic news was, in fact, good economic news. Ever the real estate salesman and historically practiced at the art of con-artistry, he claimed that the collapse of financial markets since his inauguration, negative ...Read more

Addressing Congress in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt warned Americans about being lulled into unconsciousness by those who pooh-poohed the dark clouds over Europe created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. "I hope that we shall have fewer American ostriches in our midst," said FDR. "It is not good for the ultimate health of ostriches ...Read more

Late in the new Broadway show "Operation Mincemeat," the sparklingly inventive musical comedy based on British Intelligence's deception of Adolf Hitler about Allied war plans during World War II, the marvelous slapstick pauses momentarily. "If people like us just blindly follow orders," one of the characters warns, "the fascists won't need to ...Read more

There simply is no balderdash that Donald Trump hasn't elevated to an art form, a point so obvious by now that it's ceased to register. Lately, the Balderdash-O-Meter seems to crash hourly, as the president who claimed with a straight face to be running against a "weaponized" Biden administration devotes himself full throttle to weaponizing ...Read more

With the erasure of 10% of Americans' retirement savings in 48 hours last week, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on April 4, 1968, was entirely eclipsed.

President Donald Trump, the self-professed hero of ordinary Americans, marked the evaporation of ordinary Americans' retirement plans with his customary empathy, ...Read more

Last week's disclosure that the Trump administration officials responsible for keeping us safe from our enemies resemble reckless frat boys may have been shocking, but it wasn't surprising. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was already regarded by most members of Congress as profoundly unsuited for that position. This was because of his obvious ...Read more

When Franklin D. Roosevelt began his first inaugural address 92 years ago this month by asserting his "firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was rallying his countrymen to overcome the paralyzing fear that had settled in after over three years of the Great Depression. That president wanted to ease Americans' fears. ...Read more

Since it's been over 70 years since Sen. Joseph McCarthy used his power as chairman of a Senate investigative committee to bully and crush citizens at his whim, the closest younger Americans can come to visualizing the truly thuggish abuse of power to destroy dissenters may come, of all places, from a popular musical. "Wicked," which opened on...Read more

Say what you will about Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda: the man lied for a living, and he knew one heck of a lot about lying. Before committing suicide in Berlin in 1945, he left a formidable body of commentary about the art of lying and the psychology of it.

"This is the secret of propaganda," Goebbels observed. "...Read more

"My heart has always been truly convinced," Marquis de Lafayette declared 250 years ago, "that in serving the cause of America I am fighting for the interests of France." The French nobleman put his life where his mouth was, volunteering for George Washington's Continental Army as his country provided critical support for our war for ...Read more

What remained of the bodies of 32-year-old Shiri Bibas, her 4-year-old son Ariel and her 9-month-old baby boy Kfir were returned to Israel last week. Autopsies showed that they had been brutally murdered by Hamas and Islamic Jihad after they were kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, and dragged, terrified, into Gaza. Hamas, which held the two Bibas boys ...Read more

For anyone planning a book entitled "Totalitarianism for Dummies," last Saturday was a good day. "He who saves his country does not violate any Law," proclaimed President Donald Trump, convicted of violating 34 of them. It is, of course, a fascist's credo, one that Trump believes, apparently correctly, he can embrace without consequence: I am ...Read more