The “Cruel” GOP vs. The “Unimaginative” Democrats: Current American Politics

Trump or DeSantis or Haley vs. the Biden/Harris ticket: Is this the best we can do?

In this seminar we’ll discuss as many domestic and foreign issues in today’s American politics as we have time for. As of this March 2023 writing, top stories would include a toxic train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio and Covid-19 likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Long-term issues keep trudging onward, like annual deficits and the national debt, climate change, gargantuan spending on elections, seemingly weekly mass shootings, and of course Ukraine.

Daily news will be our main sources, as posted by Google News online. Optional readings include Adam Serwer’s book of September 2022, The Cruelty is the Point, and Thomas Frank’s “Deadly Lack of Imagination” op-ed in the December 19, 2022 online New York Times. For those so inclined, Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter and the National Review’s “Morning Jolt” column by conservative columnist Jim Geraghty have proven provocative. Likewise, the podcasts popular with our children by Sam Harris and by Joe Rogan.

Join us for a lively discussion.

Group Leader: ED QUATTLEBAUM
Venue: King's Chapel Parish House
Meets on: Wednesdays 1:00 to 3:00 pm
Starting: 10/11/2023
Sessions: 4
Class Size: 16
Teaching Style: Seminar
Weekly Preparation: 1 - 1.5 hours
Group Leader Biography:

Edwin G. Quattlebaum worked in the History and Social Science Department at Phillips Academy, Andover, for nearly forty years. Previous courses for Beacon Hill Seminars included “Nuclear Power & Weapons: Proliferation & Responses,” “The Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution,” “Beacon Hill Neighbor: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,” and recently “A Second Civil War in the USA? Alarming Polarization 2020/1860”.