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state of the union

Friday 26th of April 2024

2020 Presidential election It may be beyond the imagination of Americans to accept that their system is in jeopardy.  Countries with radically different histories, such as South Korea, find it much easier. But the facts are staring the US in the face. What happened on January 6 has so far gone unpunished, which means it is likely to be tried again. Edward Luce, Financial Times, December 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
2020 Presidential election The [January 6th] committee did a masterful job of laying out the case [against Trump], but we live in partisan America now, so it's a little like doing standup when half the crowd only speaks Mandarin. No matter how good the material is, it's not going to go over. After all the hearings, the percentage of Americans who thought Trump did nothing wrong went up  three points. That's America now.  Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, November 4, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Activism Thirty years ago, anti-Vietnam War protesters presented themselves to those in Washington as authentic individuals bent on challenging a state gone off the rails. Today, their place has been taken by Donald Trump. Fred Turner, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Asslickers  With millions of lives at stake, he [Trump] takes accusations about the federal government's failure to provide ventila- tors personally, threatening to withhold funding and lifesaving equipment from states whose governors don't pay sufficient homage to him. That doesn't surprise me. The deafening silence in response to such a display of sociopathic disregard for human life or the consequences for one's actions, on the other hand, fills me with despair and reminds me that Donald isn't really the problem at all. Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Books Until recently, to understand America's political system, citizens could read classics like Democracy in America, The American Political Tradition, and Profiles in Courage. Then Donald J. Trump was elected president. Now Americans are reading On Tyranny, How Democarcies Die, and the Mueller report. Daniel W. Drezner, The Toddler in Chief © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say In the United States of America we do not prosecute people based on politics and we don't cut them a break based on politics either. William Barr, Trump's fixer, who interfered in Michael Flynn's case, Roger Stone's case, Rudy Guiliani's case, the Mueller investigation, etc. © 2020 Kwiple.com
By the numbers In 1960, when a survey asked American adults whether it would “disturb” them if their child married a member of the other political party, no more than 5 percent of either party answered “yes.” But in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans answered “yes.” In fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice.  Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land  © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Portion of Americans who would choose to live in the United States if given the option of any country in the world: 4/5 Harper's Index, October 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Rank of the United States in 2014 among countries in which expats most want to live: 5 In 2017: 43  Harper's Index, December 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Christianity What has happened to American Christianity is there is this afterglow of what a candidate is supposed to represent. It is no longer moral character. It is policy positions on things that bother evangelicals. Wayne Flynt, reflecting on the overwhelming support among evangelicals for Trump in 2016  © 2017 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus A superpower — or its reputation at least — had been slain by a virus. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Coronavirus  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public —  had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity - to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category. George Packer, The Atlantic, June 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Woke nativism will prove a more durable pathogen than Covid-19. Edward Luce, Financial Times, August 13, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Democracy Any American watching Israel's turmoil  must recognise the parallels between the two countries — not just today, but stretching back to the founding of both states. Israel and the US are two improbable creations that went on similar journeys. Both may soon end with the dismantling of democracy. …  Both states hit identity crises when the ethnic  majority realised it risked becoming a minority. … It’s often said nowadays that Israel can be a Jewish state or a democracy, but it can't be both. Similarly, the US can be a white-ruled ethnostate or a democracy, but not both. Simon Kuper, Financal Times, August 3, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy The big question of our time, in my opinion, is whether the media in its daily tussle with an impatient, powerful president has the spunk, the stuff, and the public support to stand up and say, Mr. President, this far and no further. If the media, for whatever reason, fails to meet this challenge, then democracy, as we have known it, will slowly die. Marvin Kalb © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracies cannot survive without some  essential counter-majoritarian institutions. But they also cannot survive — at least as democracies — with excess- ively counter-majoritarian institutions. And that is where the United States finds itself today. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy It’s often said nowadays that Israel can be a Jewish state or a democracy, but it can't be both. Similarly, the US can be a white-ruled ethnostate or a democracy, but not both. In both countries, about half the dominant ethnic group is tempted by an ethnostate. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, August 3, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy The two countries that saved liberal democracy in the 20th century have lost their moral compass. Many citizens no longer seem to care whether their leaders are scoundrels. Not long ago, people viewed these nations as models of successful democracy. Now the US is viewed as a bully and the UK as a fool. Messrs Trump and [Boris] Johnson [the expected next prime minister] are seen as contemptible, ludicrous or both. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 27, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Democracy The United States, once a democratic pioneer and a model for other countries, has become a democratic laggard. The endurance of our pre-democratic institutions as other democracies have dismantled theirs makes us a uniquely counter-majoritarian democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century. … … it is the world's only democracy with both a strong, malapportioned Senate and  a legis-  lative minority veto (the filibuster). In no other democracy do legislative minorities routinely  and permanently thwart legislative majorities. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Elections When evaluating the integrity of elections, experts rated America exceptionally poorly. Compared with all 153 countries in the [Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI)] survey, based on the average evaluations of both the 2012 and 2014 US elections, America scored 62 out of the 100-point PEI Index. Compared with the rest of the world, the United States ranks 52nd worldwide. Pippa Norris, Why American Elections Are Flawed (And How to Fix Them) © 2018 Kwiple.com
Farmers say We're going to have to learn the table manners of sitting at a bigger table. That's hard for our psyche.  Illinois farmer commenting on the increased foreign competition and lost market share confronting America's farmers, quoted in Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Fear The shocks of recent years have made generous and effective action more politically difficult in high-income countries. Frightened people become inward-looking. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations c An unchallenged US is a divided US. It follows that America's best hope of retaining some cohesion in the coming decades is a mighty China. What is disastrous for its relative power in the world might turn out to be a godsend for its internal cohesion. Decline has its uses. … The US requires two things of an enemy: vast scale (to induce fear) and a different model of government (for a sense of otherness). The absence of the first is why al-Qaeda turned out to be such a fleeting adhesive after the September 11, 2001 atrocities. … As to the second condition, boom-era Japan, a fellow democracy, lacked it and so never crossed from daunting commercial rival to nation-binding enemy. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 2021/02/16 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Fox News Fox's great insight wasn't necessarily that there was a great desire for a conservative point of view. The genius was seeing that there's an attraction to fear-based, anger-based politics that has to do with class and race. Blair Levin © 2019 Kwiple.com
Government For decades we have attacked it, redirected it, outsourced it, and filled it with incompetents and cronies. Yes, it still works well enough when we need it to blow up some small country, but those branches of it designed to help out Americans of “lower socioeconomic status,” as the scientists would put it, are now bare. Thomas Frank, Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government  If you have contempt for government, you will get contemptible government. Daniel Patrick Moynihan © 2018 Kwiple.com
Impeachment [I]f US President Donald Trump is not brought down for his alleged wrongdoing, it will not be because his inquisitor, Robert Mueller, lacked thoroughness or because his political enemy, the Democratic party, lacked nerve. It is because not quite enough voters minded quite enough. If they did, the pressure would tell on Democrats to seek his impeachment and on Republicans to at least consider voting for it, on pain of electoral rout. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, April 24, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Ignorance I've divided it [the Age of Ignorance] into the Three Stages of Ignorance: Ridicule, Acceptance and Celebration. During the Ridicule stage, ignorance was a magnet for mockery … During the Acceptance stage, ignorance mutated into something more acceptable: a sign that a poltician was authentic, down-to-earth, and a“normal person” … During the Celebration stage … ignorance has become preferable to knowledge, dunces are exalted over experts, and a candidate can win a seat in Congress after blaming wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Andy Borowitz, Profiles in Ignorance  [2022] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Ignorance There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism  has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”. Isaac Asimov © 2023 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Since 1978. the poorest 50 percent of Americans have seen their real incomes shrink, by 1 percent. By contrast, America's most affluent 1 percent, over that same span, have seen their real incomes nearly triple. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Knowledge Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Donald Trump is making anti-Americanism reasonable and respectable  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Imagine what Trump would be like if Obama were only white  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say It's the refugees, stupid! © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Not everyone who voted for Trump is a liar and a racist and a sexist, but everyone who did is someone who wanted one in the White House  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Law Racism and segregation is no longer de jure, but it is still de facto.  Alvin Holmes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lies In all democracies, politicians occasionally lie to cover up scandals or exaggerate their legislative accomplishments. In the United States, the rise of the right-wing news media in recent decades has tempted politicians to play to their own supporters without worrying whether their rhetoric is inflammatory or fair. But the construction of an alternate reality that obviates the very possibility of conducting politics on the basis of truth is a novelty in this country. And it is increasingly becoming obcious that it will serve a clear purpose: to prepare the ground for egregious violations of basic democratic norms. Yascha Mounk, New York Times, December 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lies The Republican Party is no longer just obfuscating the truth or defending the president when he is accused of wrongdoing. Rather, Mr. Trump, Fox News and Republicans in Congress seem to be actively using falsehoods to prepare an assault on the institutions that allow American democracy to function. Yascha Mounk, New York Times, December 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lies When the attorney general lies to Congress, it is a crime. When the president does it, it is the state of the union. Stephen Colbert, Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 5/2/2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Morality What's truly immoral is not what adults choose to do with other consenting adults but what those with great power have chosen to do to the rest of us. America's problems have nothing to do with private morality. The breakdown is in public morality — abuses of public trust that undermine the integrity of our economy and democracy and have led millions of Americans to conclude the game is fixed. Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage © 2021 Kwiple.com
Nationalism To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that America consigned to the ash heap of history. John McCain, 2017 Liberty Medal speech © 2017 Kwiple.com
Native Americans As the efforts to assimilate us largely failed and we remained, mostly, in our homelands, Americans have gradually assimilated to our  cultures, and our  worldview, and our  modes of connecting to nature. The parks enshrine places, but they also emphasize and prioritize a particular way of interacting with the land. In the nation's mythic past, the wilderness may have been a dangerous environment, some- thing to be tamed, plowed under, cut down. But that way of relating to the land is no longer in vogue. For many Americans, our wildplaces are a solace, a refuge — cathedrals, indeed. America has succeeded in becoming more Indian over the past 245 years than the other way around. David Treuer, The Atlantic, May 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Partisanship Apparently no one in Trump's circle reached out, before the news became public, to tell the Biden camp about the president's positive coronavirus test, even though Biden had shared a debate stage with the president for more than 90 minutes. No one directly informed Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. This is also the state of America. And it’s not right. Frank Bruni, New York Times, October 2, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Politics America's political inclination is to distribute power rather than wealth. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 7, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Populism In some countries, populists cherish the grandeur and dignity of the state. In the US, they can hardly bring themselves to fund the Internal Revenue Service adequately. Even Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis — the able Trump, by repute — barred public and commercial premises from demanding proof of Covid-19 vaccination. You need not oppose him to see the differ- ence with the conventional authoritarian impulse. Picture a dystopia extrapolated from US populism in 2021. It is not a super state you see. It is a failed one. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Power The US is going through the most awkward phase in the life cycle of an empire. Its relative power in the world is somewhat down from its all-time peak, but its burdens aren’t. It must prioritise, and at the same time daren't. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, October 17, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In the early 1990s, [Newt] Gingrich [then House Minority Whip] and his team distributed memos to Republican candidates instructing them to use certain negative words to describe Democrats, including pathetic, sick, bizarre, betray, antiflag, antifamily, and traitor . It was the beginning of a seismic shift in American politics. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Racial inequality America was 200 years a slave state; 100 years an apartheid state; and just over 50 years a non-racial democracy. The concept of equality is relatively new. Gary Younge © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republican Party As a party, we need to be willing to take the responsibility for the part we’ve played in getting here. Our country is angry. It’s divided. It’s accomplishing little, and it is  leading our citizens to be exhausted. Chris Christie, Windham, NH, January 10, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Extremism in the defense of Trump is no vice.  Moderation in attacking his opponents is no virtue. © 2018 Kwiple.com
Resisters say We're not his people. He's not our president.  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say  It is our love that defines us today. And always will. Forever. Donald Trump © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say There's a certain story that's dominating and winning now: We're a divided country. I don't know that that's necessarily true. As human beings, we have more in common with Trump voters, even with Nazis in Charlottesville, than what divides us. America Ferrera © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Things here can't really be that bad © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say This is America – things like that don't happen here © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Trumpism will not do lasting damage to the U.S. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel The United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say We cannot fight the Civil War again © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Whoever follows Trump in office will make America great again in the eyes of the world © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot [He] transformed American politics from one in which people presume the good will of their opponents, even as they disagreed, into one in which people treated the people with whom they disagreed as bad and immoral. He was kind of a McCarthyite who succeeded. Newt Gingrich portrayed by Barney Frank © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union c I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. … Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. Lyndon Johnson, March 15, 1965, calling for passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot In the light of a rubber-stamp Senate and a stooge Attorney General, it fell to Robert Mueller alone to right the ship of state. Mueller heard that call from history and let it go to voicemail. Robert Mueller portrayed by Bill Maher © 2019 Kwiple.com
Snapshot His name was Ronald Reagan, and it's in no small part thanks to him that today we can say: It's Moronic in America. Ronald Reagan portrayed by Andy Borowitz in Profiles in Ignorance © 2023 Kwiple.com
Snapshot This is the problem we face: We have a person occupying the presidency who is impetuous, fragile, hostile, irrational, intentionally uniinformed, information-averse and semiliterate.  Donald Trump portrayed by Charles M. Blow, January 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot [S]leeping with a porn star while your wife has a new baby,  then paying the porn star to be quiet? That's what everyone expects of this president. Donald Trump portrayed by Michelle Goldberg © 2018 Kwiple.com
Social media The crusade against these apps is hardly groundless. But it has become a way of dodging the age and depth of civic rot, and not just in the US. Facebook is easier to confront than the prospect that mature democracies must live with a permanent mass of essentially unreachable citizens. To curse social media is to exonerate society. Janan Ganesh,, Financial Times, July 20, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Despite our rhetoric, equal opportunity has never been the American way. For nearly all our history, affirmative action has been the prerogative of white men. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only” © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union The 23-page document, which also features an appearance by Richard Nixon, confirms the old truism that, sooner or later, everything in American life comes back to The Godfather. Financial Times, January 20, 2019, on Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone, which revealed that Stone encouraged a witness to “do a Frank Pentangeli” like the character in The Godfather II who provided a sworn affidavit and then stymied Senate investigators by telling them “I don't know nothing about that!” © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union c 10% pissers, 90% pissed-upons © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union About 78 per cent of US workers live pay cheque to pay cheque, according to a 2017 study by CareerBuilder, a jobs portal. A survey the same year by the Federal Reserve found that nearly half of American families could not cover a $400 emergency expense without borrowing or selling something to do so. Financial Times, January 20, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union According to Gallup polling data,  the last time a majority of U.S. respondents believed that their country was headed in the right direction was January 2004. Daniel W. Drezner, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union c All four of the narratives I've described emerged from America's failure to sustain and enlarge the middle-class democracy of the postwar years. They all respond to real problems. Each offers a value that the others need and lacks ones that the others have. Free America celebrates the energy of the unencumbered individual. Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change. Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits. Just America demands a confrontation with what the others want to avoid. … They all anoint winners and losers. … I don’t much want to live in the republic of any of them. George Packer, The Atlantic, July/August 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union All of this raises a larger question currently being discussed by some investors. When it comes to issues of political risk and volatility terms, is the US starting to more closely resemble an emerging market than a developed economy? Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 21, 2022 [“All this” includes overturnig Roe v. Wade, curbing federal agencies' ability to apply rules nationwide, mass shootings, making it easier to carry concealed weapons, rampant inflation, armed insurrection] © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union All right, we are two nations. John Dos Passos, August 23, 1927, following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian. Pat Paulsen © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union All this — the disillusionment, the braggadocio, and the advertised and cultivated emancipation from the ideas and conventions of the nineteenth century, the half-hearted hankering after strange foreign gods — was an indication that the spokesmen for the people of the United States were losing some of the old instinctive confidence in themselves, were no longer altogether sure of the high significance of the nation's history, of the superiority of its institutions, or  of the essential rightness of what the nation had  done, was doing, or would in the future be doing. Carl Becker, "What We Didn't Know Hurt Us A Lot" © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union America appears to be becoming the Saudi Arabia of the West, with nepotism running rife. Arwa Mahdawi © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c America Foist © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union America has a serious “We” problem – as in “Why should we  pay for them ? Robert Reich, Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2014 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union America is already virtually a binational state,, with  two sharply opposed national communities comparable in size and political strength  that effectively operate as confederations. The Republican Party is mostly white and marginally increasing its Latino membership, the Democratic Party an ethnic and racial mix. Although Democrats occasionally reveal impulses toward reconciliation, Republicans largely do not. Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, New York Review of Books, September 22, 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union America seems to have lost its gag reflex. Armistead Maupin, quoted in Financial Times, October 28/29, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c  America survives its chronic apocalypses. John Updike, Introduction to Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union America's economic and civic prospects could hardly be more divergent. The war against cliché stops me reciting the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities. But Americans really can claim to have “everything before us” and “nothing before us”, to be savouring spring and enduring winter all at once. Their nation has arrived at a sort of affluent dysfunction. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 6, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union America's chronic failure to turn its economic strength into social progress is a huge drag on American influence. Europeans may envy America's corporate dynamism but can comfort themselves that they are doing a much better job on a host of social outcomes, from education to health to the environment. Rivals like China may see the fraying of America's social fabric as a sign of strategic weakness. Emerging economies, whose citizens are starting to enjoy quality of life ever closer to that of Americans, may be less willing to take lectures from the U.S. government. Michael Green, CEO of Social Progress Index © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union An adviser allegedly involved in a plot to force a migrant to return to his home country. An attorney general who seems conveniently forgetful when testifying before Congress. A president's son exchanging messages with an agent of a hostile foreign power. In past administrations any of these things would have caused shock, hand-wringing and, probably, Congressional hearings and sackings. But it's just another week in Donald Trump's America. The Economist, November 18, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Anal sex has come into its own © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Another Pew [Research Center] survey, published in June, showed that the prevalence of favourable views of America has fallen in 30 out of 37 countries since Barack Obama left office. The only country in which views of America have improved markedly is Russia, where 41% now see it favourably, up from 15%. The Economist, November 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union The anti-democrat-in-chief asked, “Where's my Roy Cohn?” Anti-tyrants responded, “Where's our Gavrilo Princip?” © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union The anti-democrat-in-chief asked, “Where's my Roy Cohn?” Republicans responded, “Here, boss!  Right here!”  © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Anti-social It's-funny-you-think-I'm-listening T-shirts abound  © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Arguably, the real problem for the U.S. is not that it can be torn apart by political violence, but that it has learned to live with it. Fintan O'Toole, The Atlantic, January/February 2022 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union At the core of the US binational character is a deep and durable tension between a Christian white-supremacist ideology that evolved to justify slavery and a broad-based multiethnic resistance to it. Reinforcing this tension are cultural divisions between the rural and urban populations, including divergent values on education and immigration. The split between the two halves of the nation — red and blue, right and left — increasingly appear irreconciliable. Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, New York Review of Books, September 22, 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union c  Banana republic is not just a store © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Before economic reform there will have to be political reform. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”  © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union  The bigget political divide in America today  is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between democracy and oligarchy. Hearing and using the same old labels prevents most people from noticing they're being shafted. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Brian Pannebecker, a 58-year-old autoworker with a presidential inauguration coffee mug and T-shirt, says President Trump is “a flawed human being, a narcissist, an egomaniac, he exaggerates, embellishes, but we true Trump supporters don't care, we just don't care, because . . . they are all liars and perverts and sex maniacs, Congress is full of them”. Financial Times, December 30, 2017, reporting on Macomb County, Michigan, voters who helped make Trump president © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union [A] broad sweep of statistics reveals a peculiar weariness spreading through the economy. Belying breathless headlines about the fabulous opporunities that technology is about to bestow on society, it suggests that many rich market democracies have lost much of their dynamism. Their companies are getting old, and their labor markets are getting stuck. Productivity growth has slumped. And many workers in their prime are peeling off from the labor force. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, February 6, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Business practices aimed at boosting shareholder value – like outsourcing, offshoring, automation, union-busting, predatory lending, and a range of anti-competitive abuses – have undermined the security of large swaths of the country. In turn, a flood of business dollars for campaign donations and lobbying over decades has helped thwart effective government responses to rising pain on Main Street. David Callahan © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union But a way forward that tries to make us Equal Americans, all with the same rights and opportunities — the only basis for shared citizenship and self-government — is a road that connects our past and our future. George Packer, “How America Fractured Into Four Parts,” The Atlantic, July/August 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union But anocracy, not autocracy, is our most immediate threat. Anocracy is usually transitional  — a repressive government allows reforms, or a democracy begins to unravel — and it is volatile. When a country moves into the anocracy zone, the risk of political violence reaches its peak; citizens feel uncertain about their government's power and legitimacy. Compared with democracies, anocracies with more democratic than autocratic features are three times more likely to experience political instability or civil war. Barbara F. Walter, Washington Post, January 24, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union By allowing an ecosystem of gargantuan companies to develop, all but dominating the markets they serve, the American economy shut out disruption. And thus shut out change. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, February 6, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Call it the Tribe/Matz Hypothesis: As discussion of US politics continues in the early twenty-first century, the probability that someone references presidential impeachment approaches 1.0. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz, To End a Presidency  © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Central America is our Syria © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union The challenge for the Democratic party is whether it can win back white working class voters faster than Republicans win over non-white voters. At the moment that is an open question. The fate of Mr Biden's presidency – and his party – may rest on the answer. Edward Luce, Financial Times, December 15, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Citizenship for sale! c Green cards for as low as $500,000 No questions about the money No military service required No lining up behind the hoi polloi Unmarried kids under 21 get cards too c Act fast! c Limited to 10,000 buyers per year © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Class-based segregation transcends race-based segregation © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Companies paying billions in fines without acknowledging any guilt; executives staying in place, immune to prosecution © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Companies urging workers to create a “culture of candor” by “front-stabbing” each another  © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union The country is like a man with a badly upset stomach who has not yet vomited enough. Albert Einstein commenting on Germany following a 1919 right-wing putsch in Berlin © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union  [A] country needing constant reassurance that it is a nation and not just a market with a flag on it. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 17, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union  The crisis of the American mind these days is looking at a Chinese future and a British past, and feeling a sort of moral panic. Jed Esty © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union Cut costs, consolidate, do more with less, play to not lose, struggle on © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Death rate of middle-aged whites surging atop drug and alcohol abuse, liver disease, suicide © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Declinism is no longer just a trope of current affairs non-fiction. It is the national mood, and it predates Mr Trump. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, January 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c The “deep state” of c right-wing billionaires with their money, think tanks, institutes and foundations; financial and industrial elites with their money and “revolving door” roles as regulators ensuring regulatory capture; and the military-intelligence bureaucracy with its money and cost-plus contractors c rules from behind the scenes regardless of who's elected © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union The delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. Bill Moyers, 2005 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Democrats and Republicans agree: without the Cold War, there's no reason to promote democracy abroad © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Democrats work to raise the bottom and cap the top Republicans work to push most middlers to the bottom and raise the remnant to the top  © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union “Diplomacy” a dirty word © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union E pluribus ad paucos © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Donald Trump has always benefited from the inability to imagine Donald Trump. It was unimaginable that a man who talked in public about having sex with his daughter would be the Republican nominee for president or that he would win. It was unimaginable to me that Republican Senators and elected officials would not concede an election that wasn't even close. North of 300 electoral votes, eight million more votes, but that's what happened. Stuart Stevens, April 20, 2022, once a Republican campaign adviser © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people –does not even pretend to try. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. James Mattis, The Atlantic, June 3, 2020, 69-year-old former Secretary of Defense commenting on Trump's threat to deploy active-duty military to "dominate" protesters protesting George Floyd's 9-minute suffocation by four policemen in Minneapolis © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union E pluribus duas © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Employers assuming workers have no other responsibilities © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Entry-level jobs now the best job many will have in their lifetime © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Envoys in Washington compare the Trump children to princes and princesses in a royal court. That is a bit unfair to princes: such modern examples as William and Harry in Britain talk of duty, of humility, and of shunning politics precisely because they are unelected. The Economist, July 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union  Everybody knows the game's been rigged © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Everyone is distracted. All of the time. Justin Rosenstein, creator of Facebook's “like” button © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Everyone's entitled to their own facts © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Everything here is great. By “here”, I mean America. By “great”, I mean crackers. “Great” is America's favourite adjective. Her outdoors is not merely the outdoors – it is the Great outdoors. Her depression not merely a depression – it was Great. And so on. Great Lakes. Great Escape. Great Balls of Fire. Not to mention the Great White Hope and his MAGA franchise. Jenny Lee, Financial Times, October 12, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Expecting little, making do © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Family life? You don't need a family life © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union A fish rots from the head down Crux of the Trump era © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union For a Daily Beast  column back in 2011 I compared opposition-party levels of support in Congress for George W. Bush and Barack Obama on four of each president's major initiatives. The average Democratic support for Bush on those four bills was 41.1 percent. The average Republican support for Obama on his four bills was 5.75 percent. The two parties are  just different species.  Michael Tomasky, 2017/11/09  © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union For Europeans, today's America serves a useful function: a model for how not to run your society. The US has already demonstrated how easy it is to lurch into plutocracy, or to split a country into two hostile tribes. Now it is offering another cautionary lesson: how to let Russian interference succeed  by turning it into a partisan issue. Most Republicans are acting as if the problem isn't Russian meddling in the 2016 election but the FBI's handling of it. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, Feb. 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union For the first time in history, we are living through a time period where we're learning about the presidency at the same time as the president. Trevor Noah, 2017 © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Geographic intermingling of America's homegrown hostile tribes guarantees continuation of its domestic Cold War in perpetuity or until death do them part © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Getting a job requires more work and time than ever © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Go voluntarily and we'll say we laid you off © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Grandparents parenting grandchildren  © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Great power joined with great stupidity © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union The greatest threat to the United States today is not the rise of the hard right. It is the general decline in legitimacy of government that underlies the rise of the hard right. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union Greeks have higher high school graduation rates. CHileans live longer. Fifteen-year-olds in Russia, Poland, Latvia and many other countries are better at math than their American counterparts — perhaps a metric for where nations will stand in a generation or two. As for reading, one-fifth of American 15-year-olds can't read at the level expected of a 10-year-old. How are those millions of Americans going to compete in a globalized economy? As I see it, the greatest threat to America's future is less a surging China or a rogue Russia than it is our underperformance at home. Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, 2021/06/23 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Hasta la vista middle class © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Hasta la vista mom & pop Abercrombie & Fitch . Aeropostale . Albertso ns . Amazon . American Eagle Outfitters . Ba rnes & Noble . Bath & Body Works  .  Bed Bat h & Beyond  .  Best Buy . Burger King . Chick- fil-A . Chipotle . Costco . CVS . Dillard's . Doll ar General . Dollar Tree . DSW .  Dunkin' Don uts  . Family Dollar . Foot Locker . Gap . H&M Home Depot . IKEA . J.C. Penney . J. Crew . J os. A. Bank . Kohl's . Kroger . LongHorn Stea khouse .  Lowe's .  Macy's .  Marshalls . McDo nald's  .  Mens Warehouse   .  Michaels Stores Nieman Marcus  .  Nordstrom  .  Olive Garden Payless Shoesource  .  Pink . Publix . Rite Aid Ross Stores  .  Safeway .  Saks . Sears .  Stapl es . Starbucks . Subway . T J Maxx . Taco Bel l . Target . Toys “R” Us . Victoria's Secret . W algreens  . Walmart . Wendy's . Whole Foods © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union He has shown that inspiring revulsion in one half of a split country is a workable strategy. For it seems that my revulsion, and that of those like me, does not merely correspond to enthusiasm on the other side, it adds to enthusiasm on the other side. Robert Armstrong, on Trumpism, Financial Times, November 6, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c A higher education paves the way to prosperity —————– —————– student debt and unpaid internships © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union  How did the salt-of-the-Earth people get hooked up with with the salt-in-the-wound people? Bill Maher © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Human cockfighting attracts billionaire investors glad to profit from hoi lolloi pugilists pounding one another into submission © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union c  I do think our future is in jeopardy. John Brennan, C.I.A. director from 2013 to 2017, commenting on the Trump presidency © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union c The I's have it: Inequality, Injustice, Insecurity, Instability  © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union If America was a summer blockbuster, it would be called “Democracy: Endgame.” Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, May 3, 2019, after Attorney General William Barr lied to Congress and president Trump and the Department of Justice refused to honor subpoenas issued by Congress © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. Abraham Lincoln, “House Divided” speech (1858) © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union If you take into account all these interest groups and affluent individuals, average citizens have no detectable influence at all upon federal policy. Rather amazing. Benjamin Page © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me; they can. Michelle Obama, August 17, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union If you want a picture of the future, imagine Donald Trump, Jr, yelling about America's bright and beautiful future – forever. Edward Luce, Financial Times, August 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c If you were looking for a three-sentence  summary of American politics in recent years, I think you could do worse than this:  The parties are so different that even seismic events don't change many American minds.  The parties are so closely matched that even minuscule shifts in the electoral winds can blow the country onto a wildly different course. And even in a time of profound economic dislocation, American politics has become  less about which party is good for your wallet  and more about whether the cultural changes of the past 50 years delight or dismay you. Ezra Klein, New York Times, November 12, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union  Imagine a Trump nominee dropping out because they didn't pay taxes on their car and driver. A senior advisor to Hillary Clinton referring to Tom Daschle, Obama's nominee as secretary of Health and Human Services, who withdrew from consideration when it was revealed he failed to pay taxes on chauffeur services provided by a former employer © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Imagine two kinds of threat: one where a bear breaks into your cabin, the other where termites eat it from within. Mr Trump is the bear. Edward Luce, Financial Times, November 7, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Imbecilic analogies to Hitler and the Nazis abound © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union In ordinary times, when a public figure is caught in a lie or simply reveals blatant ignorance of the truth, his standing is diminished. But these are not ordinary times. Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union In the system we now have, power and wealth are inseparable. Great wealth flows from great power; great power depends on great wealth. Wealth and power have become one and the same. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union In 2011, only 8 per cent of Americans believed “there are other countries that are better than the US”, according to the Pew Research Center. But that proportion rose to 21 per cent in 2019, says Pew, and it is even higher – 36 per cent – among 18 to 29-year-olds (up from 12 per cent in 2011). For young voters on the left, it rises to 47 per cent. (The two surveys were conducted by different methods so might not be directly comparable.) Katrina Manson, Financial Times, May 7, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we'd be asking. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union The issues that we face today are very different from those of the last century and a half. The difference, I think, might be summed up roughly this way: those who went before inherited a conservatism and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use it. The sanctity of property, the patriarchal  family, hereditary caste, the dogmas of sin, obedience to authority — the rock of ages, in brief, has been blasted for us. Those who are young to-day are born into a world in which the foundations of the older order survive only as habits or by default. Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery  [1914] © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union [I]t's starting to seem like it was an accident that the country worked as long as it did. David H. Mandel, following the Senate Judiciary Committee showdown between Christing Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Just as a herd of elephants leaves behind traces of its passage, so will the Trump team. Madeleine Albright, Financial Times, October 11, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Labor can't strike, but capital goes on investment strikes by threatening to move if its demands for wage cuts, tax cuts, subsidies, union-free workplaces and/or business-friendly judges aren't met © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Left-behinders — America's fastest-growing demographic © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Left-wing and right-wing political correctness running amok © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Let's just admit that this arranged marriage isn't really working anymore, is it? … If we are already living in two political geographies, why not generate a system of government to match? Sasha Issenberg, “Divided We Stand,” New York magazine, November 12-25, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union A lifetime of temporary work becoming the new normal © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union  Like pumpkin pie and the bald eagle, the con game is so utterly American that it probably deserves its own series of postage stamps. But something is different today. The quacks and the mountebanks own the place, and everyone knows it. The con game is our national pastime. Everyone either is in on it or has a plan for getting in on it soon. Thomas Frank, Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Living paycheck to paycheck now the norm © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Longer hours, lower pay © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Making the Great Leap Backward Corporatism Hierarchy Privilege ◀ Liberty Equality Fraternity © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union A man cannot be angry at his own time without suffering some damage. Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 1 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Mass shootings increase gun sales, help investors make a killing © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union [M]en have to substitute purpose for tradition: and that is, I believe he profoundesst change that has ever taken place in human history. We can no longer treat life as something that has trickled down to us. We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, alter its tools, formulate its method, educate and control it. In endless ways we put intention where custom has reigned. We break up routines, make decisions, choose our ends, select our means. Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery  [1914] © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. Daniel 5:25 © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Bill Moyers © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union  More a market, less a democracy  © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union The most dramatic shift away from religion has taken place among the American public. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world's more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. Near the end of the initial period studied, Americans' mean rating of the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a ten-point scale. In the most recent U.S. survey, from 2017, the figure had dropped to 4.6, an astonishingly sharp decline. … the United States now ranks as the 11th least religious country [of 49] for which we have data. Ronald Inglehart, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union The nation is moving toward two societies, one white, one black – separate and unequal. The Kerner Report: The 1968 Report of the NationalAdvisory Commisson on Civil Disorders © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union No longer the land of opportunity © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union No longer a middle-class nation © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union No other democracy is heading towards a majority-minority future. The world has yet to see what happens to a society when its majority ceases to be one. Edward Luce, Financial Times, January 25, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Oligarchy in government, monopoly in business, inequality in society  © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Once again wealthy Americans and business interests have a great deal of political power. Once again the Senate is filled with multimillionaires; the Supreme Court is overturning popular legislation; and both major parties appear to be swayed by the wishes of the business and financial communities. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union Our current trauma is the culmination of our history, the logical outcome of the stories we tell ourselves, the myths we embrace, and the lies we perpetuate. Mary Trump, The Reckoning  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Our democracy is in serious danger. President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, February 18, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal. Kerner Commission report [1968] © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Our thoughts and prayers blah blah blah © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Peeping-tom, gotcha journalists and telephoto-toting sidekicks are the people's choice, by far © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union The “people” Congress represents AbbVie Allergan Altria Amazon Amgen Annheuser-Busch Apple Bank of America Berkshire Hathaway BP CEMEX Chevron China Mobile Cisco Citigroup Coca Cola Comcast CVS Caremark Exxon Mobil Facebook General Electric Gilead Sciences Home Depot IBM Intel Johnson & Johnson JPMorganChase Medtronic Merck Microsoft Novartis Oracle Pepsico PetroChina Pfizer Philip Morris Proctor & Gamble Royal Dutch Shell Taiwan Semiconductor Total Unilever UnitedHealth Group Verizon Visa Wal-Mart Walt Disney Wells Fargo Thanks, Citizens United © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Police cars being festooned with “In God We Trust” bumper stickers © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Police, militarized, viewed by many as an occupying army © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c “Politics” is a dirty word © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union The poor state of so many Americans is in part a product of plutocratic politics: a relentless and systematic devotion to the interests of the very rich. … a politics of low taxes, low social spending and high inequality is sustainable in a universal suffrage democracy only with a mixture of propaganda in favour of “trickle down” economics, splitting the less well off on cultural and racial lines, ruthless gerry- mandering and outright voter suppression. All this has indeed happened. These are the politics of “pluto-populism” or of “greed and grievance”. They have been stunningly successful in making Republicans attractive to many in the white working class. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 2018/07/17 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Present tense © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Prime-aged workers being displaced by younger and older ones © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union The problem is not just that with politics no longer stopping at the water's edge, U.S. foreign policy could veer unpredictably from administration to administration. It is that the United States is taking on water itself. The country has entered what can only be characterized as an age of unreason, with large swaths of its population embracing wild conspiracy theories. The United States today looks like Athens in the final years of the Pelopponnesian War or  France in the 1930s: a once strong democracy that has become ragged and vulnerable. Jonathan Kirshner, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Rising stocks and rock-bottom interest rates have delivered a big perk to rich Americans: cheap loans that they can use to fund their lifestyles while minimizing their tax bills. Banks say their wealthy clients are borrowing more than ever before, often using loans backed by their portfolios of stocks and bonds. …  The loans have special benefits beyond the flexible repayment terms and low interest rates on offer. They allow borrowers who need cash to avoid selling in a hot market. Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Rome wasn't deconstructed in a day. Edward St Aubyn, Lost for Words  © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union The Russsians did not create the things that divide us – we did. Alex Younger, retiring head of MI6, the UK's Secret Intelligence Service © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union  Sadly, doing things that disqualify you from being taken seriously doesn't really seem to be much of a thing anymore.  John Oliver © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Separate ethnic identies are emerging: America as a white settler republic; America as a multicultural democracy. You can have one or the other. Both cannot survive except as distinct countries Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union The simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved. We are engaged in a fight over whether to work together to build such a world. Danielle Allen, Washington Post, August 13, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim I'm making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility. Barack Obama, 2013 © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union Some men just want to watch the world burn.  Alfred in The Dark Knight, writtn by Jonathan Nolan et. al., directed by Christopher Nolan © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union Stagnant wages © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Starting wage becoming ending wage as incremental wage raises are replaced by occasional cash or non-cash “bonuses” © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Sudden, widespread alarm at Russian attempts to sow doubt about America's leaders, institutions and electoral integrity, coming after decades of well-funded, comparable, widely-applauded Republican efforts led by groups like Breitbart News, Fox News and Judicial Watch, and by party leaders like Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Superstars and superheroes, a dime a dozen © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union The Supreme Court has weakened the conflict- of-interest laws we have on the books. Trump and his Republican wrecking crew are ripping out the floorboards under the government ethics porgram. His administration has taught us the difference between theory and application and shown us what immunity to accountability looks like. What good are laws if no one in power will enforce them? Before Trump, our nation was admired for its anticorruption mechanisms, and its ethics program was considered the gold standard. No more. Once a model for other nations, we are now an object lesson for them. Walter M. Schaub. Jr. New York Review of Books, Juky 2, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union There are popular laws, beloved laws and President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan … [which] entails $1.9tn of public spending amid a growing economy, under a president of wrongly but widely impugned legitimacy, after two lavish bills to the same end in 12 months. The debate over the wisdom of such largesse  is everywhere except in the general public. … The pandemic has crystallised a thought for which there was once only scattered evidence. But at some point in this century, the US became a mildly social democratic country, in its attitudes if not the reality of its welfare state. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 2021/03/02 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union There are two words for those who think the US republic is teetering: Donald Trump. There is also a two-word riposte: Robert Mueller. While Mueller stays in his job, the US system is working as it should. Edward Luce, Financial Times, November 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union There is a clear and present danger that American democracy will not withstand the destructive forces that are now converging on it. Our two-party system has only one party left that is willing to lose an election. The other is willing to win at the cost of breaking things that a democracy cannot live without. Barton Gellman, The Atlantic, January/February 2022 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union  There is cheering and distressing news here.  Even if a tyrant could seize power in a coup, no country so fractious and ornery would remain under his or her thumb for long. The far more plausible future is an ungovernable America. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, June 21, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union There's mourning in America © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Thomas Paine, The American Crisis   © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union They’ve kind of had it with wars and forever wars. Mark Milley, on Americans, quoted in Financial Times, March 1, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
State of the union This country is in quite a pickle. Conservatives govern without shame and liberals shame without governing. Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, June 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, February 18, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union To have a professional politician beat up on a reporter — this is the kind of thing you would see in a totalitarian state. This is not America. Lucy Dalglish, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Today, we may be witnessing a collision between the power of a remedy meant to curb presidential misconduct and the power of faction determined to defend against the use of that remedy on a president of the same party. But perhaps even more corrosive to our democratic system of governance, the President and his allies are making a comprehensive attack on the very idea of fact and truth. How can a democracy survive without acceptance of a common set of experiences? Adam Schiff, preface to Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union Too little living-wage work, too much overwork © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union Toodaloo security from harm and want © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Trump is busy clearing the way for a new American oligarchy. Sean Wilentz, Rolling Stone, December 14-28, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union The Trump movement was always authoritarian and illiberal. It indulged periodically in the rhetoric of violence. Trump himself chafed against the restraints of law. But what the United States did not have  before 2020 was a large national movement willing to justify mob violence to claim political power. Now it does. David Frum, The Atlantic, July 13, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Trump's lawyers  don't want him to testify under oath  before special council Robert Mueller because, they say, he's incapable of not lying and not committing perjury  Gist of “In Russia Inquiry, Lawyers Tell  Trump to Refuse Mueller Interview,” New York Times, February 5, 2018  © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Trust is a problem © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union The truth of the first decades of the 21st century, a truth that helped give us the Trump presidency, but will still be an important truth when he is gone, is that we aren't entering a 1930-style crisis for Western liberalism or hurtling forward toward transhumanism or extinction. Instead, we are aging, comfortable and stuck, cut off from the past and no longer optimistic about the future, spurning both memory and ambition while we await some saving innovation or revelation, growing old unhappily together in the light of tiny screens. Ross Douthat © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”  © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c US politics is just getting worse  at a slower rate than those of its adversaries. This makes it the world’s tallest dwarf rather than a giant among nations. Edward Luce, Financial Times, October 14, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union Under Donald Trump, America looks like a dangerous nation. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, August 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union The “United” States © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union The United States is an anocracy for the first time in more than two hundred years. Let that sink in. We are no longer the world's oldest continuous democracy. That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica, and Japan, which are all rated +10 on the polity index. Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start [The Polity Score rates countries from -10 (most autocratic) to +10 (most democratic). Countries with scores between -6 and -10 are considered to be autocracies. Countries with  scores between +6 and +10 are considered to be democracies. Anocracies have scores between -5 and +5 (the U.S.'s 2020 score). Citizens have some democratic rights; leaders have lots of authoritarian powers. Civil strife is likely.] © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union  The United States is coming to an end. The question is how. … Trump is far less meaningful than either side understands. The smartest thing he himelf ever said about his political career was in a 2017 press conference: “I didn't come along and divide the country. The county was already divided before I got here.” Trump is, at most, a sympton. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. Robert Kagan, Washington Post, September 23, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union United we stood © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Wall Street is not primarily  a helpmeet to Main Street, as it once was. It’s the tail that wags the dog. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union c War — our biggest jobs program © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union We are barely two months into the republic’s year from hell. In 2024, US politics is hitting a perfect storm of partisan loathing in a society where algorithms become ever more skilled at generating outrage among the exhausted majority. Conditions are as good as they get for an outrage entrepreneur like Trump. The rest of this year promises to be nastier than anything we have seen. Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 29, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
State of the union We are entering Nixonian territory. … Not even Nixon fired the head of the FBI.  Edward Luce, Financial Times, May 9, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union We are now in a country in which major presidential candidates can gibe about the menstrual cycles of their interviewers and the penis size of their opponents. We are now in a society in which the childish desires of a reality-TV narcissist can insult the inheritance that Washington and Hamilton risked their lives to bequeath. We are now in a society in which serial insults to basic decency aren't automatically disqualifying. David Brooks, New York Times, October 21, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union [W]e do seem to be in a period of particular turmoil in which a resurgent populism in certain sectors is on a long- term collision course with many decades, if not centuries, of efforts to shore up policy-making based on technical knowledge designed by and for elites, with division rather than compromise the goal among their respective partisans. (This may also be one way that long- standing class-based and racial conflict get expressed in the twenty-first century.) Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union We're aging at home, alone © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union We're No. 1 in thinking we're No. 1. Bill Maher  © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union We're stuck in a negative feedback loop © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union c We're the world's leader in active shooter drills, by far and by necessity  © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union c We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. Barack Obama, inaugural speech, January 20, 2008 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union We sell Mexicans guns, they sell us drugs © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union We've got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar. David Brooks, New York Times, May 15, 2017 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Wearing a suit standing in line applying for a low-wage job © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries, it is our internal divisiveness. James Mattis, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union What now rules is an individualistic liberal vision that celebrates consumer society and the freedom that the markets offer. Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union What shared values? The Super Bowl? Discounts? Star Wars?   © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union What we've done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots. And so, I don’t look at it through the lens of, is this what I should do or what I shouldn't do. I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can't be partisan. ex-congresswoman Liz Cheney © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union What we have now could be called creeping authoritarianism. Marvin Kalb © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union When the federal system works democratically, it delivers median results. There are winners and losers, but the broad middle is satisfied.  Under such federalism, if Congress were to take up abortion rights, for example, some states would want to ban the procedure entirely and others to allow it far into the term of pregnancy. A bill that ultimately reaches the president's desk for signature might ban it after twelve weeks or twenty-four. In the current political environment, such a broad national acceptance of compromise is improbable. Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, New York Review of Books, September 22, 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union While US political risk in global comparisons is still relatively low (it ranks 85 out of the 127 countries tracked by [Mark] Rosenberg) [who has been tracking political risk on a daily basis since 2013], it is now by far the highest of any developed market. Only countries such as Turkey, Colombia, Mexico and Israel look anything like the US within the OECD nations. Even more worrisome is the fact that the change and volatility of key metrics, including the risks of social and government instability, political violence and even the risk to democracy, make the US look much more like a developing nation than a developed one — let alone the supposed leader of the free world. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 10, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union White-collar crime pays big time © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c White parents don't have to have “the talk” © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union With the unions went the wages © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Within the particular domain of independent political advocacy the principle of free speech now trumps the principle that previously inspired congressional regulation of campaign finance, namely that there is a public interest in preventing the appearance of corruption in electoral politics. Richard M. Valelly, American Politics © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union The world is moving on from American hegemony. It is not moving on from the American spectacle. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union Xenophobic right-wing nationalism – in Germany of all places? The very fact that observers express surprise indicates how much Germany has changed since 1945. These days, we expect more of Germany than of ourselves. Timohty Garten Ash, New York Review of Books, December 12, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest America is a welcoming country. And under my leadership it's a welcoming country. Donald Trump --> © 2018 Kwiple.com
Tribalism Hasta la vista, e pluribus unum © 2018 Kwiple.com
Tribalism In a nation of tribes, only the warriors command respect. What happens if they lose it? Edward Luce, Financial Times, January 25, 2018, referring to the armed forces, the only American institution more than 50% of Americans have confidence in © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpism I think what we discoverd in the Trump years is that the oligarchic pathway Republicans had carved before he came along was adjacent to authoritarianism . . . and with Trump they have made that leap. Biden gets this, interestingly enough. We now recognise in this moment what has actually been there for a long time. Now people see what’s been happening. Thank God. Heather Cox Richardson, quoted in Financial Times, July 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpism For as much as it seems that Donald Trump has changed something about the character of this country, the truth is he hasn't. Everything we've seen in the last four years – the nativism, the racism, the corruption, the wanton exploitation of the weak and unconcealed contempt for the vulnerable – is as much a part of the American story as our highest ideals and aspirations. Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, October 29, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.  Richard Spencer © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Every single thing you can think of is worse under Joe Biden. Sean Hannity © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Experts project that  homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic. Mike Johnson on same-sex marriage  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.  Marjorie Taylor Greene, 12:13 PM – Apr 5, 2024  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Lets not fuck around. We've descended into civil war. Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  May we all  have guns and concealed carry to handle what’s coming! Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say To be honest, it's been a complete shit show since [Trump] left the White House. Nancy Mace © 2024 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The central issue is we're developing into a plutocracy. We've got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they're rich because they're smart and constructive. And they don't like government, and they don't like to pay taxes.  Paul Volcker © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Matthew 13:12 © 2016 Kwiple.com
 
Work Companies now use gamelike techniques to cut labor costs by motivating workers to become lower-cost Heroes of Late-Capitalist Labor  © 2018 Kwiple.com