Of the many ways in which Donald J. Trump is disrupting American politics, one of the most compelling is his disregard for the established rules of communicating with voters.
Mr. Trump is an entertainer, bringing a rawness and wildness to the presidential race that no other candidate can come close to matching.
The burden of citizenship is accepting that what is neither your fault nor your responsibility may be your problem.
Wealth plays out in the political sphere in all kinds of ways, often personally. Can Hillary Clinton represent the interests of working people when she and her husband have taken so much money from Wall Street? Was Mitt Romney's private-equity business too ruthless with workers?
My hairstyle is not common in India, where my parents come from.
Our globalized, automated economy is full of magic - Everyday Low Prices and next-day delivery on that single Gatorade you one-clicked. But it is also full of loss - of jobs, of the dignity of steady work, of chances to rise.
Though it is perhaps expected for the bishop of Rome to warn against the idolatry of money, what is striking is how Francis suggests that not only God but also secular politics must outrank economic imperatives.
The American television punditocracy - the pollsters, political consultants and other talking heads who become as ubiquitous as air every election cycle - can be incestuous and herdlike.
America, thankfully, is not an easy nation to commandeer.
I have always found it jarring to encounter people born and raised in, say, Switzerland, who are denied its citizenship and still considered Algerians or Turks.
There is always a gap between what candidates say in the heat of the campaign, when they are not constrained by the realities of governance, and how they act after being sworn into office.
In America, where no one judged or supervised her, where my father was too busy eating her cooking to notice whether she was eating it, too, my mother found herself newly enchanted by the taste of food.
I worry when each of us is seduced by visions of the future that have no place for the other.
When it comes to granting unconditional birthright citizenship, the United States and Canada are alone in the industrialized world: North American exceptionalism, you can call it.
In Europe, more than in the United States, worldly people, faced with my Indian skin, reflexively laud my 'ancient,' 'beautiful' origins, which is heartier praise than Cleveland usually gets from Europeans.
To those portions of the electorate fed up with politics as usual, Mr. Trump's willingness to say just about anything and to improvise as he goes seems more refreshing and trustworthy than disqualifying.
There is an unwritten social rule now that you can harangue the wealthy to give money away, but you mustn't ask how the money was made. There are no galas celebrating the money people knew better than to seek. Charity begins after profit.
Foundations are the new Birkin bags. Everyone who is anyone has one. Giving is now chic.
We know that enlightened capital didn't get rid of the slave trade.
More than any other candidate, Mr. Trump embodies the evolving norms of communication that are being enabled and encouraged by technology and the matrix of connectivity that defines modern life: authenticity over authority, surprise over consistency, celebrity over experience.
