Powerful piece. I've been reading your work for several weeks now, in part because it resonates with so much I've come to believe and, in part, because it's provides a perspective that I've found missing among a lot of the mostly white, mostly liberal pundits I usually read. I've long thought that trump represents not an aberration in American politics, but the culmination of a decades-long project to turn back the gains of the Civil Rights, women's rights, and other movements of the 20th century--a project given expression in the Southern Strategy, the anti-abortion movement, racial and political gerrymandering, and other voter suppression strategies. Too many liberal politicians--who depended on corporate donations to finance their campaigns--underestimated the strength of the reactionary right and the emotional appeal of it's politics of racial resentment to a population that felt it was losing ground.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I've gained a lot by reading your essays and I appreciate your work.
Thank you for that encouragement. I listened to a lot of the aforementioned outlets and grew disillusioned and frustrated by how many basic throughlines I believed were being missed, sometimes intentionally. But that could be from several factors, from personal worldview to audience capture. I appreciate your support and am glad to read that I can provide a substantive product that challenges the discourse!
Race is simply a tool by which to keep the populace divided among themselves. It has no play or place among the elite, the same for homophobia, and misogyny.
There are black elites, queer elites, female elites, Hispanic elites, Asian elites they and their place is accepted and they are expected to maintain the power, place and prestige of the elites.
Remember when there was a Jihad against homosexuals, but not our Secretary of the Treasury is married to a man, Peter Thiel also, and J D Vance, at least questioning if not bi.
If there was a transsexual billionaire among the techfascists crowd, you would not be hearing anything about men in women's sports,nor would H.R. 3492 been brought to the floor, much less passed.
This is very much a well thought out and deeply heartfelt post and backed up with critical analysis and not just vibes. You have very succinctly documented how the pendulum has swung from the time you were in college to now and I would urge any readers to go back and reread those sections but for those to lazy here is one:
“As someone who entered politics through communications and later earned a master’s degree in it, Trump’s return to power feels like the final nail in the coffin for everything I was taught.”
You’re not completely wrong here but there is a lack of historical context. We’ve been here before and you know where I’m going with this, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Double V for victory and etc…You have accurately captured a snapshot of a pendulum paused right before gravity brings it back to center. This MAGA movement and its leader is not anymore immune from the laws of physics than that swinging pendulum. They’ve presented this image of an unsinkable ship and a lot of us on the left have bought into that. MAGA and its leader will meet the same inevitable fate as the pendulum. MAGA and its leader will meet the same inevitable fate as that last “unsinkable” ship, the Titanic.
Very good point on missing the historical context and the grander pendulum swing of American political energy. I hope that the ship is sinking and that we aren't on the precipice of a broader escalation of this backlash moment. I'm not sure Americans today, who are invested in a pluralistic society with democratic instincts, can navigate the dangers and authoritarian spectacles that defined America generations ago; it's just not in the lived memory for many today. But to hope is also to be brave.
The pendulum swing is a myth, born of hope. The social utility of hope is that enables us to arise in the morning and go about our business but that is all. Hope, hopium, is a drug, an anesthetic, it is why the Jew climbed into the cattle car, why the man digs his own grave, why the girl crawls into the 55 gal drum.
I am a cynic, I admit, but also a student of human nature, being one is how I have survived and prospered,despite my beginnings and childhood in the project with a single mother who supported herself and three kids on $1.00 an hr, but first as a waitress living on tips.
The hopeful believe that we have marched up to the precipice. That the pendulum will swing back the other way.
We have gone over the precipice and there is not and never was a pendulum.
Our only chance lies in an organized resistance. The institutions will not save us, because the institutions were created and developed to protect the ruling class.
Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Republican party.
A Republic is rule by wise men, wise men are the landowners, the elite, the wealthy, and leadership was elected from among them.
In Rome the demos, the people, elected their leadership, but it was only a choice from among those that the upper class had chosen and vetted.
It wasn't until 1792, that New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Delaware removed the property ownership requirement. However Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey restricted voting only to men of property,(which means that they weren't enslaved) but eventually proscribed black men from voting., the right to vote was rescinded in Kentucky in 1799 New Jersey (1807)and Pennsylvania (1838). New York State's Constitution of 1821 imposed a heavy property ownership requirement on Black voters (only)
Women did have the vote in New Jersey until 1807, and not enfranchised until the 19th Amendment.
America at the outset, despite Lincoln's Gettysburg, address, was not designed to be a government by the people or for the people, but a government of the people, by the elite, and for the elite.
Under the Trump regime that vision is finally being realized. and in that respect it is color blind and gender blind.
Did I day history is hope? I did not, the turn of phrase makes no sense at all.
The pendulum never swings, for. for if it swings,it comes back to point of origin, back and forth, back and forth forever, nothing remains the same, everything changes, except human behavior, that which actually is predictable.
Again, I love your work, always looking for your posts. For me and my shifts in allegiance go back 70 or so years. I remember (sort of) the McCarthy hearings and seeing what looked to me like a monster. Near him was Roy Cohen, whispering in the monster’s ear — a foul demon working his magic. I didn’t appreciate politics.
When I was a kid, there were signs everywhere telling Black people, Jews and Italians to stay away or come in the back door. Even children don’t have to be told that’s wrong.
In my early teens Southern Democrats, in a region where I lived and still do, were the enemy. Republicans (moderates?) held the light. John Kennedy in 1960 was an enormous influence. The election of 1968 — Bobby, Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene McCarthy, Vietnam, civil rights demonstrations and deaths — put me on a road I never left.
Back then I was young and dopey enough to believe that, one day, we would wring the rot of racism out of our souls. I’m still waiting for that day. Racism, the belief that the color of our souls may be seen in the color of our skin, is at the core of the horrors we’re still battling. My optimism that we will shed that snake’s skin one day is fading. Which doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Defiance till death.
Powerful piece. I've been reading your work for several weeks now, in part because it resonates with so much I've come to believe and, in part, because it's provides a perspective that I've found missing among a lot of the mostly white, mostly liberal pundits I usually read. I've long thought that trump represents not an aberration in American politics, but the culmination of a decades-long project to turn back the gains of the Civil Rights, women's rights, and other movements of the 20th century--a project given expression in the Southern Strategy, the anti-abortion movement, racial and political gerrymandering, and other voter suppression strategies. Too many liberal politicians--who depended on corporate donations to finance their campaigns--underestimated the strength of the reactionary right and the emotional appeal of it's politics of racial resentment to a population that felt it was losing ground.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I've gained a lot by reading your essays and I appreciate your work.
Thank you for that encouragement. I listened to a lot of the aforementioned outlets and grew disillusioned and frustrated by how many basic throughlines I believed were being missed, sometimes intentionally. But that could be from several factors, from personal worldview to audience capture. I appreciate your support and am glad to read that I can provide a substantive product that challenges the discourse!
Race is simply a tool by which to keep the populace divided among themselves. It has no play or place among the elite, the same for homophobia, and misogyny.
There are black elites, queer elites, female elites, Hispanic elites, Asian elites they and their place is accepted and they are expected to maintain the power, place and prestige of the elites.
Remember when there was a Jihad against homosexuals, but not our Secretary of the Treasury is married to a man, Peter Thiel also, and J D Vance, at least questioning if not bi.
If there was a transsexual billionaire among the techfascists crowd, you would not be hearing anything about men in women's sports,nor would H.R. 3492 been brought to the floor, much less passed.
This is very much a well thought out and deeply heartfelt post and backed up with critical analysis and not just vibes. You have very succinctly documented how the pendulum has swung from the time you were in college to now and I would urge any readers to go back and reread those sections but for those to lazy here is one:
“As someone who entered politics through communications and later earned a master’s degree in it, Trump’s return to power feels like the final nail in the coffin for everything I was taught.”
You’re not completely wrong here but there is a lack of historical context. We’ve been here before and you know where I’m going with this, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Double V for victory and etc…You have accurately captured a snapshot of a pendulum paused right before gravity brings it back to center. This MAGA movement and its leader is not anymore immune from the laws of physics than that swinging pendulum. They’ve presented this image of an unsinkable ship and a lot of us on the left have bought into that. MAGA and its leader will meet the same inevitable fate as the pendulum. MAGA and its leader will meet the same inevitable fate as that last “unsinkable” ship, the Titanic.
Very good point on missing the historical context and the grander pendulum swing of American political energy. I hope that the ship is sinking and that we aren't on the precipice of a broader escalation of this backlash moment. I'm not sure Americans today, who are invested in a pluralistic society with democratic instincts, can navigate the dangers and authoritarian spectacles that defined America generations ago; it's just not in the lived memory for many today. But to hope is also to be brave.
The pendulum swing is a myth, born of hope. The social utility of hope is that enables us to arise in the morning and go about our business but that is all. Hope, hopium, is a drug, an anesthetic, it is why the Jew climbed into the cattle car, why the man digs his own grave, why the girl crawls into the 55 gal drum.
I am a cynic, I admit, but also a student of human nature, being one is how I have survived and prospered,despite my beginnings and childhood in the project with a single mother who supported herself and three kids on $1.00 an hr, but first as a waitress living on tips.
The hopeful believe that we have marched up to the precipice. That the pendulum will swing back the other way.
We have gone over the precipice and there is not and never was a pendulum.
Our only chance lies in an organized resistance. The institutions will not save us, because the institutions were created and developed to protect the ruling class.
Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Republican party.
A Republic is rule by wise men, wise men are the landowners, the elite, the wealthy, and leadership was elected from among them.
In Rome the demos, the people, elected their leadership, but it was only a choice from among those that the upper class had chosen and vetted.
It wasn't until 1792, that New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Delaware removed the property ownership requirement. However Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey restricted voting only to men of property,(which means that they weren't enslaved) but eventually proscribed black men from voting., the right to vote was rescinded in Kentucky in 1799 New Jersey (1807)and Pennsylvania (1838). New York State's Constitution of 1821 imposed a heavy property ownership requirement on Black voters (only)
Women did have the vote in New Jersey until 1807, and not enfranchised until the 19th Amendment.
America at the outset, despite Lincoln's Gettysburg, address, was not designed to be a government by the people or for the people, but a government of the people, by the elite, and for the elite.
Under the Trump regime that vision is finally being realized. and in that respect it is color blind and gender blind.
History is hope? I don’t get your point unless your asking us to ignore history. You can simply look at history and see the pendulum swings.
Did I day history is hope? I did not, the turn of phrase makes no sense at all.
The pendulum never swings, for. for if it swings,it comes back to point of origin, back and forth, back and forth forever, nothing remains the same, everything changes, except human behavior, that which actually is predictable.
Again, I love your work, always looking for your posts. For me and my shifts in allegiance go back 70 or so years. I remember (sort of) the McCarthy hearings and seeing what looked to me like a monster. Near him was Roy Cohen, whispering in the monster’s ear — a foul demon working his magic. I didn’t appreciate politics.
When I was a kid, there were signs everywhere telling Black people, Jews and Italians to stay away or come in the back door. Even children don’t have to be told that’s wrong.
In my early teens Southern Democrats, in a region where I lived and still do, were the enemy. Republicans (moderates?) held the light. John Kennedy in 1960 was an enormous influence. The election of 1968 — Bobby, Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene McCarthy, Vietnam, civil rights demonstrations and deaths — put me on a road I never left.
Back then I was young and dopey enough to believe that, one day, we would wring the rot of racism out of our souls. I’m still waiting for that day. Racism, the belief that the color of our souls may be seen in the color of our skin, is at the core of the horrors we’re still battling. My optimism that we will shed that snake’s skin one day is fading. Which doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Defiance till death.