Ultimately, Americans may be mired in a “post-truth” political world because in order to discredit the liberals and the liberalism that discredited America’s imagined moral consensus, conservatives have sought to discredit intellectual consensus in America. Liberals ignore the authority of faith, so conservatives have come to deny the authority of reason. If clerics no longer have moral authority in America, then neither should scientists and scholars have intellectual authority. If liberals can relegate moral truths to the status of mere “value judgments,” then conservatives can do the same with facts, reason-based claims, and science. Liberals have to either tolerate the subjectivity of facts or confess that “they started it” and that their use of moral relativism as a political cudgel was equally irrational, destructive, and uncivil.

Since Senators have been directly elected in 1913, most reelection attempts are successful in Massachusetts.  That's true around the country as well.  A full 90% of Senators seeking reelection were successful this past November.

Here at home, only one Democrat, Senator David I. Walsh has been defeated in a reelection attempt, though on two separate occasions. I’ve been thinking of Walsh while ruminating over a data point in the recent poll that finds only 44 % of voters think Senator Elizabeth Warren “deserves reelection.”

Recent poll numbers suggest Massachusetts may not be that wild about returning Elizabeth Warren to the U.S. Senate. Should she be worried?

What kind of president then can be expected? I think we know the answer. Donald Trump has no concern for tradition, previous history, institutionalized decision-making (he depends on himself), international agreements and commitments, or much of anything else that has come to define the sphere of concerns an American president must deal with. He will act as President much as he has in the campaign. He will do things his way. He will depend on what he thinks important or what interests him at the moment, will continue to be unpredictable in how he approaches given situations, will see international relations in terms of trade opportunities, will conduct negotiations on a one-on-one basis and will nurture his financial empire.

Clearly there are problems in all of this.

You'll be thanked many times over for a present that helps explain our turbulent political world - a book.

One of the ballot committees supporting the charter school initiative was named Advancing Obama's Legacy on Charter Schools, a peculiar name for a committee funded by Republican billionaires. But that's the world of dark money, where things are never quite what they seem.

Credit: Pexels

Want to get away? Israel in December is nice - if you have the right connections.

Twenty million dollars in dark money poured into Massachusetts from New York on Question 2, and all the New Yorkers came away with was a familiar chant.

Cubans honor Fidel Castro as the founder and spirit of their Revolution. From these shores, the view is mixed at best. The fact that the U.S. and Soviets could have engaged in a nuclear World War III over the Cuban missiles is still alarming.  Overall an effort to resolve our differences and work together is long overdue. Fidel Castro’s day is past but Obama’s initiatives could not have advanced if Castro did not accept and support them.

If you are standing with a person holding a sign that reads “America Love It or Leave It,” YOU ARE NOT STANDING UP FOR THE IDEALS REPRESENTED BY THE AMERICAN FLAG!!!