Heroism is a matter of choice.
Richard Cohen
Trump lies when confronted with the truth, since any crack in his narcissism might spread like an Ebola of the soul, and he would deflate like one of Macy's balloons on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
If every senator looks into the mirror and sees a future president, then every president looks into that same mirror and sees himself on Mount Rushmore.
Trump is a dust storm of lies and diversions with the bellows of a bully and the greasy ethics of a street-corner hustler.
The concept of cultural appropriation is nothing less than an intellectual fence: Keep out.
Conservatives watch Fox News and read 'Breitbart.' Liberals watch MSNBC and read 'HuffPost.' When we agree, it's the truth; when we differ, it's fake news.
The grieving are surely owed our empathy, but capital punishment can neither right a wrong nor prevent another from happening.
Trump is a menace, both ignorant and chaotic. His saving grace is his incompetence.
Trump's overriding accomplishment is plain: The Republican Party can no longer be shamed.
Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.
We are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.
Myths have a certain staying power because, really, they are aspirational - not always who we are, but always who we want to be. We see ourselves as good and generous. We believe we are a virtuous nation.
It's all right with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States - if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth.
Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism.
Private enterprise cannot rebuild the nation's infrastructure or keep our research institutions vibrant. Government must do what only it can do.
A presidential candidate needs a slogan.
I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry - and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.
You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, 'The Post.'
My heroes are not necessarily people of great ability but ones who did what I think I could not.
Raising money, like sausage-making, ain't pretty to see, and it would be just criminally naive to rely on the big hearts of big donors.
I reveled in political science and history of all kinds, and I felt for a long time that I had discovered all the secrets of life in psychology, although its Freudian variety left me cold. The id never made much sense to me.
Sometimes I think that Rush Limbaugh is the dumbest man in America. This happens whenever I take him at face value and forget that he is basically an entertainer with contempt for his audience. He will tell them anything.
Churchill had a marvelous way with words, and greatness accompanied him like a shadow, but in certain ways, he was a 19th-century man wandering, confounded, in the 20th.
Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar's Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called? Fox News, I think.
The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.
Trump's presidency will fail. Just don't ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained.
I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, he cares. He cares about things I don't, and he has some awful ideas, and he is an amoral man in so many ways. But, in contrast to Obama, his emotions are no mystery.
Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.
Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place.
Trump was always a poster boy of the selfish, egomaniacal, ignorant, bragging, cruel rich kid, whose mirror was the sleazy pages of Rupert Murdoch's 'New York Post.' Trump's oxygen was the leaked item, without which he would die the suffocating death of being shown to a bad table.
I served in the Army. I worked at blue-collar jobs. I washed dishes and bused tables.
It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.
We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old.
We grow up to respect the gray. Black or white, one or the other, is childish. It represents the worldview of someone who does not know the world.
Hillary Clinton may have lied about her emails, but Donald Trump lies about everything.
Polanski is a great film director - although the much-acclaimed 'Chinatown' has a muddled script - but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.
As a kid, I was a paperboy, and the walls of the place where we picked up our papers were plastered with pictures of former paperboys - some sports figures, some presidents, some military officers.
Harvey Weinstein does not personify American liberalism any more than Bill O'Reilly personifies American conservatism.
I don't like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.
Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen, or a conversation not held.
Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in 'Casablanca.' Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman, and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age.
Republicans remain silent because Trump is doing what they want - lowering taxes on the rich, eviscerating regulations, bulldozing the environment, and insisting that a woman's body is not her own.
It is not true that Trump is nobody's fool. He is the GOP's.
How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a 'moron,' was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?
I am not a German bitter-ender. I am, though, a German never-forgetter.
In my several visits to Germany, I have written in admiration of that country's strenuous efforts to face its past and make amends.
Germany's crimes were recent and of such a scale and depravity that, unless constantly faced, they will come to seem fictitious.
Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times.
Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.
