Since the 2016 election, media outlets have been reporting on the problem of conflict of interest, and there’s no surprise why: this president is riddled with them. However, almost without fail, the media misinterprets their nature. Worse yet, it’s as if they’re intentionally misinterpreting them in order to diminish their significance.
One prominent example is the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C.
Read MoreOne of the questions that's always interested me is the question of complicity. For the past few hundred years, ever since the rise of democracy gave individuals a stake in political life, our social and political reality has in some ways depended on us. For example, in an obviously extreme case, phenomena like Nazism don't merely involve a leader imposing their rule on others, as might have been the case for feudal Kings. Instead, these regimes require that a significant part of the population buys into it, thereby becoming complicit. And this is a fundamental dynamic of democracy—we are, at some level, responsible for our reality.
I was reminded of all of this when reading a New York Times article about the low voter turnout in this country. For many Americans, voting for either candidate seems worse than not voting at all. And I think the explanation for this lies in the question of complicity.
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