The lawmakers from the House of Representatives sent a brief to the Senate about the single count of impeachment they’re about to try. For the most part, it’s clear and straightforward. But an analysis of the 115 instances of passive voice in it reveals a lot about what lawmakers — and former president Trump —…
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the wacko Georgia Congresswoman who supports QAnon, has also posted about a novel conspiracy theory on her Facebook page: that a Jewish cabal caused lasers from space to start the California wildfires of 2018. Yeah. I’m not making this up. Her Facebook post on the topic has been deleted, and she says…
I want you to imagine that you’ve been invited to a casual party at my house. Here’s who will be in the room: A guy near retirement who has cofounded some of the most disruptive entertainment companies of the 21st century. A young Black woman with a cache of stories about unusual and accomplished people…
The purpose of police Twitter accounts is to inform people about public safety. The purpose of passive voice is (often) to avoid responsibility. These don’t go together well. Today we examine how the Los Angeles Police used passives that twist the truth into bizarre shapes in describing police shootings. A correspondent brought to my attention…
Joe Biden mentioned unity nine times in his inauguration speech yesterday. Then he signed 17 executive orders undoing actions of President Trump. Is this unity? Representative Liz Cheney doesn’t think so. “We face significant challenges that require bipartisan responses,” she wrote in a statement. “Today’s Executive Orders reverse important policies and impose significant economic cost…
I was optimistic when President Trump won the election in 2016. I was hopeful that, as a nontraditional politician, he could accomplish things that conventional presidents never could. That was a mistake. There is nothing I’ve posted here in six years of blogging that I regret more than that post. It was naive and mostly…
Riots on the National Mall. National Guard troops shooting protestors. Broken windows at the White House. An assassination attempt. Violence at state capitals around the country. Attacks on an American embassy in a foreign country, or an American airbase, or an oil tanker, that require some sort of presidential response. Attacks on health workers at…
Last week, Donald Trump’s Twitter feed disappeared. After seeing the violence in the Capitol, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey decided that Trump’s feed was inciting violence and removed it. But Dorsey’s tweets explaining the ban were meandering and confusing. Let’s take a look at what Dorsey tweeted . . . and what he could have said…
I’m struck by how one psychological tendency — confirmation bias — is at the root of all the trends undermining our society. There is a solution: it’s called “farming for dissent.” Confirmation bias is “a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.” And as humans, we are all…