Новости за 04.10.2018

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sept. 27, 2018. AP/pool image, Michael Reynolds

Far from being unusual, the hurried and partisan Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh mirrors several notable examples of similarly politicized confirmations in U.S. history.

George Washington "may have had a bad past... didn't he have a couple of things in his past?" - Donald Trump questions record of America's first president and says Democrats would not vote for founding fatherhttps://t.co/Ho7fsxxD6i pic.twitter.com/U2eWmXahVN

You know the poem:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe

and gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

she gave her father forty-one.”

The story of history’s most famous (alleged) axe murderer has been turned into a movie, Lizzie, starring Chloe Sevigny, that just opened, and it attempts to show exactly how Lizzie pulled off the ax murders of her wealthy father and step mother on August 4, 1892.

The astonishment at the horror of the slayings was matched... Читать дальше...

On Thursday I was honored to speak to 23 new American citizens, at a naturalization ceremony aboard "Old Ironsides" in Boston Harbor, as they swore allegiance to the United States of America.  As the son and grandson of immigrants, you would have appreciated the drive, determination and ambition of these new Americans.  Like you and your family, they will be an engine of growth and prosperity and within a generation their families will be indistinguishable from those that have been here for 300 years. Читать дальше...

Related Link What historians are saying about the Kavanaugh nomination 

Buried Child by Sam Shepard. The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2018. Directed by Paul Mullins. Pictured (left to right): Roger Clark as Bradley and Sherman Howard as Dodge. Photo credit: Jerry Dalia.

The Army of the Potomac suffered devastating and demoralizing losses during the Overland Campaign in 1864. From the crossing of the Rapidan River in Virginia on May 4 until the closing days at Cold Harbor in June, the army experienced roughly 55,000 casualties. In just one hour on the morning of June 3, the Union lost 3,500 men. Shortly after that debacle, the Fifth Corps commander, Major General Gouverneur Warren, wrote to his wife, “If there were no limit to the number of men we could continually waste in battle I might be more hopeful. Читать дальше...

When the subject of history arises in a conversation, rarely does one think of the present. Rather, what may come to mind is a boring textbook or some funny dressed individual, whose style would remind our contemporaries of a Halloween costume. Contrary to misconceptions that suggest history is irrelevant, it truly is a part of our everyday experience. One could even dare to say that we experience a part of history while browsing social media sites on our phones, as one of the most significant influences throughout history has been words. Читать дальше...

As a young man, William James studied a range of fields, from chemistry to literature. He focused especially on physiology, psychology, and philosophy. In the 1860s and 1870s, the future psychologist and philosopher was sorting out his own philosophy of life and sampling career paths. Each offered plausible insights, but none was decisive or beyond some criticism, especially as amplified by his temperamental indecisiveness. The swirl of choices, and the dramatically different ways of understanding the world... Читать дальше...

In their book How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write that “the norms sustaining our political system [have] rested, to a considerable degree, on racial exclusion,” pointing to the Compromise of 1877 that led the North to end Reconstruction and leave the South. In the aftermath, the South implemented a whole series of Jim Crow laws that stripped African-Americans of their rights. The political rapprochement Levitsky and Ziblatt describe between Democrats... Читать дальше...

The release of Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “Death of a Nation” is the latest iteration of an alt.right mission to reinforce its recent rise to power by popularizing particular and deeply politicized visions of the American past. The most obvious evidence of political bias is D’Souza’s counter-factual insistence that the Democratic Party hasn’t changed since its proslavery antebellum days, and, in a contradiction that only the most contorted imaginings can conjure, that Donald Trump will save... Читать дальше...

National security. The term has become integral to a constant refrain from the Trump White House over the past six months in justifying a number of political, military and economic decisions. The United States is being threatened on multiple fronts, we are told, and only aggressive responses can maintain our safety.

Football season has arrived again. And returning too are the protestsby players which have caused such debate since Colin Kaepernickfirst chose to kneel rather than stand for the national anthem in 2016. Despite the threats and criticism that have been thrown their way, players continue to protest injustice by remaining in the tunnel, sitting, kneeling, or raising a fist during the playing of the national anthem. And as the protests continue, no doubt too will the criticism. So it might be worth... Читать дальше...

Related Link Nixon, Trump and the Strange Career of the Madman Theory By Jeff Kimball

Presently, we have the oldest first term inaugurated President of the United States, Donald Trump, who was inaugurated at 70 years and a bit more than seven months old in January 2017.

Of the various revelations to emerge from Bob Woodward’s bestseller, Fear: Trump in the White House, the veteran journalist’s new book about the chaotic current administration, the president’s reported dismissal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a “dumb Southerner” and “mentally retarded” in a conversation with then-White House staff secretary Rob Porter is one of the least surprising. More than suggesting the staying power of tired put-downs about the region, by equating southernness with stupidity... Читать дальше...

The Color Purple at Paper Mill Playhouse, Photo by Matthew Murphy, Adrianna Hicks (Celie) and The Company of The Color Purple

Counterfactuals endure as the odd man of historiography. Audiences are fascinated by the Amazon adaptation of the Philip K. Dick science fiction classic The Man in the High Castle and readers ponder alternate history as imagined by Philip Roth in The Plot Against America, but academic historians are circumspect about the question of “What if?” The rest of us, however, can’t resist contemplating alternate history – what if Napoleon had been victorious at Waterloo? If Hitler had only been accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna? Читать дальше...

British prime minister Neville Chamberlain declared that the Munich agreement meant "peace for our time."

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