This blog has been a tough read over the last few weeks. No, let me amend that. It’s been a tough read since calendar flipped over to 2017. Let’s review:
- Jan. 5 — I tried to grapple with the challenge of teaching international relations in an era when the US is poised to upend the norms and institutions that have given us relative global peace and stability for the last 70 years.
- Jan. 9 — Donald Trump as the foreign policy opposite of the Obama Doctrine: “Don’t do stupid shit.”
- Jan. 11 — I tried to explain why I’m not loyal to the president. Any president. (Amazingly, of all the stuff I’ve written since I started the blog, this post was one of most widely shared on social media.)
- Jan. 13 — The only thing we have to fear is Donald Trump’s control over foreign policy.
- Jan. 16 — A little lesson in presidential personality types, in which I reference one of the classic works in the field of political psychology and foreign policy analysis and I refer to the president-elect as Caligula.
- Jan. 20 — The White House is destroyed. And Trump is inaugurated.
- Jan. 25 — As Trump begins fulfilling his campaign promises on immigration I call up a reminder of America’s shameful abandonment of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
- Jan. 27 — Depressing musical interlude.
- Jan. 29 — I try to convince myself that Trump will fail because at some point the fundamental decency of Americans will rescue us from this downward spiral before it’s too late. (Another surprisingly popular post. I guess we’re all looking for a straw to grasp.)
- Jan. 30 — Another angry white man commits a brutal act of terrorism, gunning down six Muslim worshipers at a mosque in Quebec. The only really surprising thing is that this time it happened in Canada.
- Feb.1 — The travel ban kicks in, chaos ensues, and Trump stokes the fires of fear of the other. Muslims are victimized again, this time by conscious policy decision.
- Feb. 2 — Trump picks a fight with the prime minister of Australia and I get to post a “Road Warrior” clip.
- Feb. 5 — I review the president’s foreign policy record to date against what he said he’d do during the campaign. So far he’s been a man of his word. That’s not really praise.
- Feb. 6 — A reminder that angry white men have committed some really bad acts of terrorism in the United States. Like Oklahoma City.
- Feb. 9 — A smug Wisconsin congressman tries to argue that the angry white men who commit terrorism are way less worrisome than the Muslims who haven’t committed terrorism that Trump wants barred from entering the United States anyway. Evidence would suggest otherwise.
I’m exhausted. Let’s do this instead: