#leftright-splits

#leftright-splits

The defeat of Viktor Orbán required not just an ordinary election campaign but the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement, changing politics around the world.

The cycle of dread and panic, of being driven to the edge at full speed before someone slams the brakes, harms our nervous systems, and has the potential to break our spirits.

The Walrus Debate asks a timely question: Can Politics Be Civil Again? It brings together former political leaders to model respectful disagreement and explore dialogue's role in rebuilding public trust.

Jefferson's words on equality are often seen as self-evident, yet they fail to encompass enslaved individuals, women, and other marginalized groups, revealing a significant contradiction.

I've been feeling so uninspired and so heartbroken about this country. What I realize, I keep wanting to put my head in the sand and pray that I wake up and it's all over.

Almost a quarter of the world experienced democratic backsliding, or a shift towards autocratization, in 2025, and six of the 10 newly regressive countries identified in the research are located in Europe and North America, including G-7 powers such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Most Americans are patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don't pop off on social media or plot for power. The hidden truth: Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again.

A record high of adults—80 percent—believes that Americans are divided on the most important values. National pride, trust in government, and confidence in institutions are near record lows. The Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz says the United States hasn't been this divided since the Civil War. Nearly half of Americans think another civil war is likely in their lifetime.

Collating data from the World Bank and other sources in innovative ways, he argues that globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was accompanied by then-unprecedented growth of income in both previously poor populations (notably in China) and people at the top of the world's income distribution (especially those in the West). By contrast, relative shares of world income stagnated or were thought to have declined for wealthy nations' middle and working classes, including in the United States.

Populism may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,

Like us, you may feel paralyzed in the face of the relentless images of violence we see every day. Suffering children, military occupations, the devastated neighborhoods, the cries of parents mourning their dead-these scenes haunt us. Whether it is happening in Palestine or Minneapolis, we are witnesses to suffering, and that witnessing takes a heavy toll. Clearly, the devastating situations in the West Bank and Gaza and in Minneapolis differ

The air feels heavier. And the struggles are changing shape. Beyond my office walls, the world is shifting, and my clients sense the tremors. The things they once trusted, global order, democratic norms, and even their own personal safety, no longer feel solid. They feel brittle, as if one strong wind could bring it all down. And what they're sensing isn't imagined.

It turns out: not that many world leaders or global citizens. That's because the Board of Peace, created last year by a UN security council resolution, and intended to have a singular focus on implementing a Gaza peace plan, is increasingly looking like a Donald Trump fiefdom, which could allow the US president to wade into other countries' affairs as he sees fit.

Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said there was a clear case in principle that what we've seen in the past couple of years is a historically unprecedented dual negative shift in sentiment on immigration.

The principle of intellectual charity is fundamental to constructive political conversations. This principle states that, in any discussion, we should accept the best version of an opponent's ideas, not a distorted version or a "straw man." Exaggeration and distortion of opposing opinions (always present, to some degree, in political debates) have become the standard form of political argument in contemporary America.

When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we often mean and blame our phones. It's easy, it's meant to be easy. One flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster, from crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government's attempts to terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.

The most notable, and perhaps most effective, ad of the 2024 presidential campaign featured footage of the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, voicing her support for gender-affirming treatment for inmates in federal prisons. "Kamala is for they/ them. President Trump is for you," the narrator concluded. The spot was a crisp, 30-second encapsulation of one of the key Republican talking points of the cycle: that "wokeness" was sweeping the nation and upending established ways of life, and that Donald Trump would fight against it.

I am using the word pragmatism in a specific sense. I am not speaking about being pragmatic as a political tactic; deciding what issues should be given priority and what battles to choose, or a willingness to compromise, or a recognition that there are limits to what can be accomplished at any time. I am writing now about pragmatism in a meaning closer to its philosophical origin in the writings of William James-that truth is not found in abstract principles or beliefs,

After buying Twitter, Elon Musk rebuilt it to his own specifications and preferences. This resulted in an environment we may gently call friendlier to the discussion and promotion of right-wing politics. The goal motivated his purchase and subsequent management and product decisions, and people who still use the platform will agree, in a narrow sense, that its character has changed. From the left: Elon Musk turned Twitter into 4chan for government officials and tech workers.

the rotting carcass of the MAGA era, its shrieking insecurities, its pathetic resentments, its festering hatreds, and that distinct, metallic tang of panic rising in the back of its throat behind the soft wattle.

Recent exercises in taking stock after one year of Trump 2.0 for many an eternity of terrifying news and political traumas tended to leave something out: the fact that, a mere 12 months ago, plenty of pundits (and politicians, for that matter) were instructing us to accept that a global vibe shift in favor of the right had taken place. And that, in the face of what supposedly felt like a landslide, resistance was pointless and cringe.

As authoritarianism accelerates - as government-sanctioned violence becomes more overt in immigration enforcement, in policing, in the open deployment of federal force against civilians, and in the steady erosion of civil rights - people are scrambling for reference points. But instead of reckoning with the long and violent architecture of U.S. history, much of this searching collapses into racialized tropes and xenophobic reassurance: This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Iran or China. This is America. We have rights. This is a democracy. This isn't who we are.

Sparklers sizzled, boom-badoom-boom bass thumped, and Nicki Minaj emerged onstage at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest last month to deliver the latest plot twist in an exhausting year for politics and pop culture. The rapper-whose straight black hair reached the hem of her sleek minidress-sat down with Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, who sported medieval-princess blond braids and waves. Then Minaj tore into previous presidential administrations for being un-Christian and uncool.

Earlier this week, Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diego's eastern outskirts, announced that he was crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats. Kendrick was the longest-serving Republican official in the region's local government. "I've been a Republican for 50 years," he said, in the statement explaining his action. "I just can't stand what the Republican Party has become. I'm formally renouncing the Republican Party."