JON ZAL

Your front-row seat to my nervous breakdown

The long-overdue “Avengers: Endgame” review that literally no one has been waiting for. You’re welcome.

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Hi! Remember me? Been a while. So, yeah, the first post I’ve published since January really is going to be about a comic-book movie that was released back in April — not only because I’m sick of writing solely about politics (as evidenced by the fact that I haven’t published anything new here in months), but also because it apparently is the only thing about which I’ve been motivated enough to actually, you know, write something … and if this is what it takes to prime the pump and restore me to being a guy who actually writes things instead of a guy who just claims he’s a writer, then this is what I’m gonna go with.

Kamala Harris is running for president, and I am here for it

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When I was much younger and didn’t follow politics closely enough to understand what really was going on, I believed that, regardless of who held the office, the president of the United States was mostly a figurehead — more of a symbol than an actual policymaker with the power to steer the country in one direction or another. Having lived through and followed rather closely the Clinton, Bush, Obama, and, unfortunately, Trump presidencies, and having compared the policy positions of those men with those of the opponents against whom they ran, I know now that I, of course, was wrong — mostly.

Game Theory: Stupid Watergate, Part 2

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Agnew/Trump

Time for a thought exercise. (Don’t worry; it’s an easy one.) Imagine, if you will, that there is a criminal in the White House. Investigators know it. Prosecutors know it. The people closest to him know it. And, of course, the criminal himself knows it.

Game Theory: Stupid Watergate, Part 1

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It is human nature to try to make sense of the crazy thing happening before your very eyes by looking at it through the lens of the most similar thing to which it compares, so holding Trump’s aberrant presidency up against that of Richard Nixon is a natural response. The ways in which those two men, their presidencies, and their respective scandals differ, however, are at least as effective at predicting Trump’s fate as are the ways in which they are similar — the most notable difference, of course, being that Nixon was a smart and savvy politician who committed a crime, while Trump is an arrogant fool and dimwitted criminal who accidentally stumbled into the presidency while executing what he thought would be his greatest con.

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” -The Blue Wave

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Well, nice try everybody. I thought we had a pretty good night, but I guess that whole “Blue Wave” thing was just wishful thinking. Turns out there are fine voters on both sides, and the American electorate is evenly split. Half of us are angry, aggrieved, gullible lunatics who believe Hillary Clinton is using George Soros’ ATM card to fund an invading force of leprosy-ridden brown babies from South America, and the other half of us — you know, the ones who know how to breathe with our mouths closed — apparently did little more than sort-of cancel out a potential Red Wave. At least, that’s what it seemed like based on much of the Election Night coverage I saw.

Hell hath no fury like white-male privilege threatened

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For a brief moment last Thursday, as Brett Kavanaugh began his opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I mistakenly thought he sounded contrite, and the sound that I mistook for contrition led me to believe for just a split second that he might actually take responsibility for his actions, apologize to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and withdraw his own nomination.

I think we can all agree it is truly adorable that, nearly two years into Donald Trump’s presidency and long after having had the concomitant realization that everyone with whom Trump surrounds himself is profoundly broken and unfailingly awful, I still somehow was capable of such unrealistic optimism.

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