John R. MacArthur

“What’s almost never discussed by the ‘experts’ on television is the political parties’ real raison d’être and their obsession with maintaining their grip on power and with unabashed cronyism.”

“I was immediately struck by the fundamental difference between the ‘seventh art’ and literature.”

"Although McCain participated in a morally unpardonable war in which the United Sates killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, one can’t help sympathizing with him in his reduced state."

"Could I not avoid Trump and his bullshit, not even by crossing the Atlantic Ocean?"

"Loathing for Trump makes people forget that, among other horrors, a coalition of Republicans and Democrats has already wasted around $3.7 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan, sacrificed the lives of nearly 7,000 American soldiers, and wounded more than 52,000."

France needs a patriotic, left-wing nationalism

If Trump is so dishonorable that he cheats at golf, it’s safe to assume he’ll do the same in politics.

The vocational training of American real estate tycoons is strict and pitiless.

"In a certain way, the Democrats lost to Trump not through stupidity but through cupidity."

"Mitterand remains an emblematic figure for President François Hollande, who is trying to attach himself to his predecessor as he tanks in the polls."

A luncheon with the Republican establishment

Harper's Magazine writer David Gargill on General Electric's failed Hudson River cleanup

Above all, NAFTA is an investment agreement, financial and political in nature, and it has always been considered as such by both Republicans and Democrats.

The French left self-destructs

Journalists are doing the Clintons’ dirty work for them and their machine.

"Both Sanders and Trump affirm their determination to rebuild an America weakened by unhealthy relationships with the outside world."

"After only three primaries—almost a tie in Iowa, an emphatic victory for Sanders in New Hampshire, and 52.6 percent for Hillary in Nevada—Mrs. Clinton found herself being guaranteed the nomination by the newspaper of record."

"Hillary Clinton wasn’t really a progressive, or even a liberal Democrat, until Bernie Sanders decided to run for president."

"For the first three years of François Hollande's presidency, he was neither malicious nor dangerous. And yet, since the terrorist attack on the Bataclan, it’s been a whole different story."

"I was confident the French weren’t going to follow the bad example from overseas and start a 'war on terror' à l’américaine. But November 13 changed the equation."

"The pundits overestimate Americans’ supposedly anti-aristocratic tendencies, and underestimate Jeb’s profound determination to win."

“Now is the time that tries the souls of Chicago Cubs fans everywhere.”

"As far as substance, there was none -- just the usual Clinton caution and excruciatingly scripted bromides designed to offend as few people as possible."

"The fix was in from the beginning, despite the revolt. Fast-track authority was never in danger."

“Rep. Kathleen Rice last week reversed her opposition to fast-track the TPP. If history repeats itself she won’t be the only member of Congress to betray her working class and labor-union supporters.”

"Attributing white-on-black violence entirely to racism misses the larger problems that poorer people face in this country. They suffer a thousand cuts that never get talked about, except when the victims bleed to death."

“Emanuel's position in the local party is insecure because he was not raised in the machine, or, for that matter, in a working-class city neighborhood.”

"Houellebecq, who is neither radical nor left-wing, understands perfectly France's political elites and its duped and disempowered electorate."

“I don’t see how you can properly cover a news story without showing the reader or viewer one of the key elements that made the story a story ”

"The massive prose work does possess a certain irony and subtlety, as well as a sickening urgency, which make it worth reading as a book, rather than as an accumulation of outrageous facts."

“Nowhere did the Times define ‘the left’ or what might excite its opposition to Clinton. Our imaginations are allowed to run wild: Is ‘the left’ a terrorist organization? A part of the outfield? Or is it just not worth mentioning?”

“Since World War II, very little that could be called genuinely humanitarian has resulted from American military intervention—not in Korea, certainly not in Vietnam, and not in Panama, Afghanistan, or the two Iraq wars and Libya.”

"To compete with tight-fisted, export-driven Germany, France needs to devalue its currency, but it can’t, since it doesn’t have its own currency."

“It gradually dawned on me that since 1967, I had made very little progress in seeing Arabs or empathizing with their plight.”

The Last Magazine exposes the lies and obfuscations of the march to war in Iraq 

The false virtue of the fund-raiser

The taming of a once-wild state

A straightforward strategy for reversing the rightward trend of both parties

“Pharaonic exclusion is their motto; contempt for human scale and ordinary people their raison d’être.”

Rethinking the best way to introduce Shakespeare to the young

A Times obituary misrepresents the career of a distinguished publisher

Why more attention should have been paid to terminal tapping at Bloomberg News

Why are opponents of Bill de Blasio invoking the David Dinkins era?

When the facts won’t convince the public to march into battle, politicians ramp up the rhetoric

The foolish free-trade sophistry of Thomas Friedman

On the problems with Democratic interventions

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, why did so few people protest the decision to lock down parts of the city?

Where were the voices of conscience on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War?

Vague talk about the middle class, and plenty for big business

On John le Carré and the relaunch of the Folio section

A short documentary about a town whose Autolite spark-plug plant moved most of its jobs to Mexico in the wake of NAFTA.

Uncle Sam? Not much

Talking Obama in Paris