John Peeler: Why support Bernie? The right wing will say, of course, he’s a socialist which is the same as a communist. That’s complete nonsense.
John Peeler
John Peeler is a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, specializing in Latin American and international affairs. After growing up in Florida and Georgia, he moved north as a teenager, and began a lifelong leftward migration. He’s been writing primarily for LA Progressive since 2008. He continues to live in central Pennsylvania.
The Transgressor: Transcending Trump
John Peeler What compels our obsession with him: he deliberately, defiantly debunks our normal expectations of common decency and constitutional probity?
Trump’s Middle East Plan: Confirming Apartheid
John Peeler: Today a generation of right-wing Israeli governments have left Zionist idealism behind, and seem entirely comfortable with a perpetual occupation of Palestinian land without according the Palestinians the rights of Israeli citizens.
Worst President—Or Best? Trump the Polarizer
John Peeler: His very hyper-urban, superrich persona, reaching out to them, saying what they’ve been saying among themselves, this reaffirms that they are important, that they matter.
Iran: Trump’s Incoherence Again
John Peeler: The fundamental problem, as with so much of Trump’s foreign policy, is incoherence: the pieces not only don’t fit together, they work against each other.
Health Care: Common Decency, Common Sense
John Peeler: No matter how elegantly simple the initial proposal, the final result will be complex, ugly, and maybe worse than what we have now.
The Shackled Leviathan and the Fate of Liberty
John Peeler: The Shackled Leviathan (they ought to be giving John Locke some credit here) occupies what they call “the Narrow Corridor” between the Absent Leviathan and the Despotic Leviathan.
Why Trump Should Be Removed
John Peeler: He should be impeached because he’s violated the law to protect himself and taken actions that endanger the security and integrity of our democratic system.
The Afghanistan Papers: Lessons Learned
John Peeler: We usually have lacked the necessary deep understanding of the countries we’re invading, and we have usually lacked the staying power to really transform the country whose behavior we find deplorable.
Trump’s Trap: How to Get Out
John Peeler: If they don’t impeach, he will have cemented the precedents for further unchecked abuses of power. By doing their constitutional duty as they see it, House Democrats have fallen into Trump’s trap.
Universal Solvent: Trump the Anti-Conservative
John Peeler: Whatever structure obstructs him, he will undermine it. Whoever has independent authority, he will destroy. If he stays in power, there will be no power but his.
Political Addiction and Creative Destruction: Dilemmas of Radical Reform
John Peeler: Any serious reform plan, whether for health care or green energy, must think through how these workers are to be helped. I think Warren and Bernie Sanders do fairly well in thinking through this challenge.
Exhuming Aristotle
John Peeler: Foweraker seeks to exhume Aristotle’s concept to make sense of some stubborn realities of democracy in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.
