Great column and no argument with the truths. That said. Is there a weekly Zoom where writers, such as yourself to Hubbell to HCR to Rudinsky can engage directly instead of competing for attention, overloading readers, and triggering constant “emergency” alerts? The piece underscores real structural concerns about democracy’s fragility and polarization, which scholars also flag as core threats. But engagement matters as much as diagnosis. Democrats need progressive energy without blind obedience, and progressives need to offer it constructively—less repetition, more coordination, and a shared focus on persuasion rather than exhaustion.
When people lose economic security and status, they do not reliably move toward solidarity across difference. They move toward the identities that cannot be taken from them. In my experience, anyway.
Sounds true: the “existential” threat of a Majority Minority clarifies the deportation of nonwhites as well as the tribal Trump cohesion in the service of “preserving” the non-negotiable privileges of race, culture, religion, etc.
The Trump cult is based on the fear of losing “status” - and being willing to sacrifice the fulfillment of basic quotidian needs in order to ensure a false sense of supremacy. 😱oh the horror!
Brilliant! Sharing. Thank you!
Very best explanation of US political system history I’ve ever read before and why it’s so hard to explain to people - bravo 👏
This is very well said, but how do you reconcile Trump’s increase in ethnic minority support?
Being a man is a more important identity marker than being a Black man, maybe, or a Latino man? But it doesn't seem to work that way for women.
Excellent writing. I want to shove it in legacy medias face and force them to read it again and again.
Great column and no argument with the truths. That said. Is there a weekly Zoom where writers, such as yourself to Hubbell to HCR to Rudinsky can engage directly instead of competing for attention, overloading readers, and triggering constant “emergency” alerts? The piece underscores real structural concerns about democracy’s fragility and polarization, which scholars also flag as core threats. But engagement matters as much as diagnosis. Democrats need progressive energy without blind obedience, and progressives need to offer it constructively—less repetition, more coordination, and a shared focus on persuasion rather than exhaustion.
When people lose economic security and status, they do not reliably move toward solidarity across difference. They move toward the identities that cannot be taken from them. In my experience, anyway.
The ethnic minority support?
Aspirational.
Sounds true: the “existential” threat of a Majority Minority clarifies the deportation of nonwhites as well as the tribal Trump cohesion in the service of “preserving” the non-negotiable privileges of race, culture, religion, etc.
The Trump cult is based on the fear of losing “status” - and being willing to sacrifice the fulfillment of basic quotidian needs in order to ensure a false sense of supremacy. 😱oh the horror!