Sanford Schram, Author at Public Seminar

Uncategorized

Does the Russian Hack Matter?

When the Facts Get Sacrificed to Politics

January 5, 2017 • by Sanford Schram

From the left, I was accused of “left McCarthyism” for thoughtlessly invoking the old, tired stigma of Russian communism; and from the right, I was sent hate mail about how I was resisting Donald Trump as a credible candidate. I got whip-sawed. It remains contested whether Putin, Russia, Russians from outside ...

Dominating Donald Trump

“No Puppet, No Puppet, You’re the Puppet”

December 17, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

“No puppet, no puppet; you’re the puppet,” decried the disturbingly thinned-skinned Donald Trump. It was a typically revengeful response to Hillary Clinton during the last of the 2016 presidential debates. When Trump noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin liked him and not Clinton, she retorted Putin preferred a puppet. Clinton ...

Willful Ignorance, Faustian Bargains, White Privilege and the End of Liberal Democracy

What Trump Voters Did

December 4, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

Since Donald J. Trump declared victory in the early morning hours of November 9th, commentators have been incessantly bemoaning the calamity that has befallen the U.S. And with good reason. As many people had warned for months, Trump was unfit to be President and posed a real threat to the ...

Willful Ignorance, Faustian Bargains, White Privilege and the End of Liberal Democracy

The King of Campaign Kettle Logic: Trump on the Stump and in the Gutter

October 5, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

With the New York Times reporting on Donald Trump’s leaked 1995 joint tax return with his then-wife Marla Maples Trump, we get to see how Trump persistently uses “kettle logic” on the campaign trail to avoid ever having to say he is wrong, sorry, or in the least bit ashamed ...

The King of Campaign Kettle Logic: Trump on the Stump and in the Gutter

Feature

Willful Ignorance: Why Facts No Longer Matter

September 13, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

During this seemingly endless presidential campaign, I have felt obligated to join what seems to be a particular “truth squad.” This squad is dedicated to pointing out how Donald Trump is a congenital liar who will say anything to get what he has wanted for decades: the acclamation of enough ...

Willful Ignorance: Why Facts No Longer Matter

Feature

Trumpism: The Banality of Evil Personalized

September 1, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

With Donald Trump, we have lived to witness a fundamental transformation in election campaigning. Some of the elements of his unprecedented campaign for the White House are reflective of trends that have been developing for some time. Candidates who have used their experience as television performers or even film actors ...

Trumpism: The Banality of Evil Personalized

Feature

What Goes Around Comes Around: Questioning Hillary’s Health Raises Questions About Trump’s Sanity

August 18, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

Perhaps out of growing desperation over Donald Trump’s precipitous decline in the polls, his supporters and his campaign have engaged in sustained and wild speculation that old photographs and more recent film clips can be used to insinuate that Hillary Clinton has never recovered from her 2012 concussion, that she ...

What Goes Around Comes Around: Questioning Hillary’s Health Raises Questions About Trump’s Sanity

Uncategorized

It’s Racism, Stupid: The Populist Challenge Going Forward

August 16, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

With the rise (and now fall) of Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, social scientists have moved quickly to understand the surprising levels of support for a person so widely recognized to be unfit for public office. Initial speculation suggested his support grew from multiple sources among the American populace, particularly ...

It’s Racism, Stupid: The Populist Challenge Going Forward

Feature

You Tell Me: Trump and the Politics of Denial

August 4, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

“You tell me,” said Donald Trump recently implying that there was some nefarious reason why Ghazala Khan, the mother of a fallen Iraq war hero Army Captain Humayun Khan, stood by silently while her husband Khizr explained at the DNC in July why Trump’s lack of character and knowledge makes ...

You Tell Me: Trump and the Politics of Denial

Feature

The Trump Conspiracy Story and the Left

July 27, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

President Obama has confirmed that the FBI thinks agents of the Russian government were behind the Wikileaks that brought down Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The FBI is now actively investigating if any laws were broken. The widely discussed theory is that President Vladimir Putin does not like Hillary ...

Feature

Since When Did Voting for Hillary to Stop Trump Make Somebody a Liberal?

July 23, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

Donald J. Trump is now officially the Republican Party nominee for President. Many, many people predicted he would never get there (myself included, in print and over the airwaves). But the unthinkable has happened. Something else strange is happening as well. The closer Trump gets to the White House the more ...

Since When Did Voting for Hillary to Stop Trump Make Somebody a Liberal?

Feature

The Melania/Michelle Mashup: A Critique

July 21, 2016 • by Sanford Schram

Some folks on social media are passing around a link to an article by Oren Nimni that says, contrary to many other commentators, that the plagiarism scandal distracts from the larger problem that most political speeches are just hot air and that Michelle Obama’s original speech was itself a bunch ...