Michael is an attorney in New York, and the creator of Syncopated Politics, a blog focusing on the intersection of history and politics (with occasional side-trips to Supreme Court rulings, economic conferences, films, and opera). He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (Political Science) and Fordham University Law School. He is fortunate enough to have married brilliantly and has two endlessly fascinating children, about whom he talks far too much. Email: mlissnyc [at] gmail.com
by Michael Liss Economics. The dismal science. All those numbers and graphs, formulas and derivations, tombstone-sized copies of Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus’s Macroeconomics (now apparently in its 19th edition), and memories of the detritus that came with them: half-filled coffee cups and overfilled ashtrays, mechanical pencils and HP-45s. As you might imagine, with that…
by Michael Liss The Iceberg has broken off from the ice sheet, and it’s a whopper. It groaned and teetered and shook, hanging on maybe longer than science said it should have, and, then, with a mighty roar, it slid into the ocean. It’s been floating about ever since, banging into things. Last week, I…
by Michael Liss I’ve been thinking a lot about Joe Biden recently. Joe Biden and nostalgia, Joe Biden and memory. Joe Biden and Mad Men. There is a wonderful scene to close the first season as Don Draper pitches an ad campaign to two exceptionally nerdy guys from Kodak. The boys from the lab want…
by Michael Liss I don’t know a lot about guns. I live in New York, which has comparatively restrictive gun laws, I don’t own any, I don’t hunt (and didn’t grow up hunting), and I wasn’t in the service. I don’t have the emotional bonds that others who grew up around them might. The entire…
by Michael Liss The Supreme Court doesn’t play politics. In what was destined to be an inevitable ruling, by an inevitable 5-4 vote, inevitably written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided, in Rucho v. Common Cause, that it couldn’t decide how much “partisan” gerrymandering was too much partisan gerrymandering. So it wouldn’t.…
by Michael Liss It is a big cross. A really big cross. Forty feet in height, made of granite and concrete, The Bladensburg Peace Cross stands tall and straight for all to see. The Peace Cross, sponsored by the American Legion, was built in 1925 in the aftermath of World War I to memorialize the…
by Michael Liss “I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.” —Jefferson Davis, July 1864 By the time Sherman’s armies had scorched and bow-tied their way to the sea, by the…
by Michael Liss “Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.” —Henry David Thoreau It has been a little over a week since the redacted Mueller Report was released, and so many words have been spilled that there could be a drought by summer if the umbrage reservoirs are not…
by Michael Liss How do you raise kids in an increasingly harsh and atonal world? We all have our templates for seeking harmony. Mine were my own parents. They were not performing artists or even musicians; neither played an instrument (I think the kazoo doesn’t qualify), and neither could sing. But, as listeners, they were…
by Michael Liss The man for whom the word “Emergency” must have been invented (“serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action”) pulled the pin out of yet another hand grenade. Our President, Donald J. Trump, bollixed, frustrated, stymied, and parboiled (twice) by the evil Nancy Pelosi, went off and did just what he…
by Michael Liss “He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.” —Frederick Douglass, Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1876 In October of 1859, Abraham Lincoln received an invitation to come to New York to deliver a lecture at the Abolitionist minster Henry Ward Beecher’s…
by Michael Liss What is it about immigration that causes us to lose our minds? I’m not even referring to the absurd spectacle of toilets overflowing at national monuments and hundreds of thousands of federal workers going without pay. In theory, at least, there’s a reason for that: The President promised his supporters a magnificent…
by Michael Liss The day before Thanksgiving I got this wonderfully understated text from a close friend: A ???? ate our ???? last night. (I forgot it on the patio while it was brining.) There is a lot that’s packed in there. He followed it up with a picture of the now-overturned and empty brining…
by Michael Liss This past Sunday, November 11, marked the Centennial of Armistice Day, the European commemoration of the agreement to end World War I. Representatives from more than 60 countries attended carefully choreographed ceremonies to honor the sacrifice of those who fought. The Europeans take the Great War seriously. Americans really don’t. It just…
by Michael Liss My dad was a pharmacist. He had an old-fashioned store (including an actual soda fountain and stools) and some of the old-fashioned tools of the trade: scales and eye-droppers, spatulas and ointment bases, graded flasks and beakers, amphorae, and his mortar and pestle. Pharmacy was a bit more of an art in…
by Michael Liss He flew so fast and so close to the sun that it took an entire lifetime to fall back to Earth. William Jennings Bryan was just 36 years old when, on July 9, 1896, he seized the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination on the back of a single, electrifying speech, “Cross of Gold.”…
by Michael Liss Will you know what to do when the atomic bomb drops? This question, and others like it, are vividly on display in the 4K restoration of Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty’s 1982 documentary, The Atomic Café. Having seen the movie when it was first released (my kids’ reaction to this information was…
by Michael Liss The other shoe dropped. Anthony Kennedy’s idiosyncratic role as a Justice of the United State Supreme Court will come to an end a mere week from now. A lot of things are going to change. Let’s start with the politics. Kennedy’s leaving cinches the conservative revolution (or counter-revolution) for at least a…
by Michael Liss Let’s talk about bullets and ballots. First, a thought experiment. Your son is about to become a father for the first time, and you want to get him something special. You have great memories of taking him hunting when he was a boy. So you go to a local gun show,…
by Michael Liss Celebrate with me. May is graduation month, and my children are among the graduates. My son marched two weeks ago for his Masters, and, if you are reading this on Memorial Day, it might be at the very same time I watch my daughter receive her Bachelor of Music. Go get ‘em,…