The 10th Justice

As a doctor I am prescribing a new therapeutic tool to counteract the mental havoc caused by Trump: the book These Truths by Jill Lepore. Dr. Lepore is a chaired professor of American history at Harvard and a staff writer for The New Yorker. These Truths is a narrative history of the United States written like one of those tremendously engaging New Yorker articles about a subject you never even thought about but the writing is so powerful it pulls you so deeply into the world of orchids or artisanal iron work construction that you want to change careers. Except These Truths is nine hundred pages long. There are a hundred pages of notes, however, as support and amplification of any subject that comes up. That in itself is such a pleasant change from Trump who, not only lies about whatever suits him, offer no supporting evidence for anything he says, lies or not. These Truths calmed me down. To begin with, the Trump/populism thing has happened many times in this country and our dem...

A year ago, a good friend of mine, an observant Jew, bought a house in Scotland. This was right after the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, anti-rally and death a year ago. By blaming both sides for this confrontation President Trump implied that racism is okay. He doesn't understand this. Nor does his spokeswoman. But my friend did. He grew up in Pennsylvania. His dad was a Jewish physician and had several friends who had left Nazi Germany to come to America rather than being killed. They told my friend that in prewar Germany, Jews were even better integrated into society than they are in America today. Until the rise of Nazi Fascism and anti-semitism, that is. When my friend heard Trump's response to the Charlottesville violence, he felt that Jews might be next, and liking Scotland, he bought a condominium there, in case he needed to escape from America, like his father's friends needed to escape from Germany. Now the Pittsburgh shooting of Jews in the Synagogue......