Postcard from New Haven

I am writing this from New Haven, Connecticut, a place I have some happy memories attached to. I also love a gritty port town, especially one with excellent pizza and used bookstores. This time I am here with a group of students from my high school competing in a model congress competition at Yale. While I have enjoyed walking around the campus, eating at Frank Pepe's and other fine dining establishments, browsing the Grey Matter bookstore, and drinking Common Grounds' coffee, I am feeling pangs of dread and a certain kind of spiritual suffocation. 

Some of this comes from students in the model congress seeing the whole thing as some kind of joke. During the presidential election at the start a student gave a lazy, tossed-off speech threatening to invade Canada. Evidently he thought this was funny. It was telling that the three girls in the running constructed serious speeches full of ideas, while two of the four boys recited MAGA rhetoric without proposing anything concrete. It seemed to encapsulate the rising tide of misogyny in this country that reacts to girls being better at a lot of things because they actually work hard by trying to subjugate them instead of demanding more from young men. 

Other dread comes from the stark contrasts one sees walking around New Haven. Our hotel is near the Green, where one often sees homeless people and poor and working-class residents catching the bus just two blocks from a university with a $41 billion endowment. I have seen starker contrasts of wealth and poverty in Manhattan, but the fact that the contrast comes from a "non-profit" educational institution just seems to make it worse. The whole scene lays this country's failures bare.

Even worse, today is the dreaded "Santa Con," when America's stupidest and loudest suburban frat and sorority types converge on city centers to get drunk and act even more brain dead than they do on an average day. Walking the streets around my hotel feels suffocating, and not just because of the clouds of cheap weed smoke. Perhaps it's fitting that Trump has returned to the White House, since he reflects the trashy, decadent nature of the nation he is about to rule over. 

It probably hasn't helped my mood that my big used book store score was a copy of Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia. I have felt it to be quite bracing, and I maybe am absorbing his deep critique of American life at a particularly bad time. Since the election I have been embracing a fundamental pessimism about certain aspects of American life. At base, I think it's obvious that most people have a completely nihilistic attitude about public life and what they owe to others. Much as Adorno worried, the processes of more modern capitalism have shredded individuality and reduced it into nothing more than consumer desire. Life will go on, there will still be good books, pizza, and coffee in the world, but I don't expect much of anything to get better soon. As the last few days have made clear, the younger generation is most definitely not going to save us. There are plenty of exceptional young people, but they are being eaten up by the ever-growing adherents to nihilism. That's my sad report from New Haven. 

The Temptations of Quietism

I know I have not been as active on this site as usual. I got derailed on my Richard Thompson project (which will be revived) due to the level of work at my new job. That's made it hard to find time and energy to write, which I have mostly been saving for the more involved writing I do on my Substack. There are some things I do need to get off of my chest and out of my head, and now that I am on break I can actually process them. 

Even before the election, I found myself attracted to quietism as a response to the current political situation, what some in Germany referred to as "inner migration" in response to the onset of fascism. I used to think of that as a weak cop-out, but now I have been tempted to think that discretion is the better part of valor. In my dark moments I think that nationalist populism is here to stay as the dominant force in American politics, in no small part because the oligarchs have swung their support to it. That, along with the rise of AI, have made me think that anyone trying to tell the truth in public is on a fool's errand. 

All things must end, and I think that anything resembling what we used to think of as a functioning public sphere in American life is dead. Of course there are still newspapers, news networks, blogs, etc., but they do not in any way allow for a common understanding of reality. The people who own them decided, in their own corporate or ideological interests, to have it this way. Bezos and others killed endorsements for Harris, Musk bought Twitter and turned it into a right wing propaganda outlet, and Zuckerberg has let the wolves run wild on his platforms. TikTok, YouTube, and others are set up in ways that drive people towards fascist and anti-vax material. The old system wasn't optimal, but wouldn't you rather have Walter Cronkite than Joe Rogan?

This is a country in the grips of a crippling disease of the heart. Most people buy into the nihilism of late capitalism and care about nothing more than their own personal desires, which are so whipped into a frenzy by consumerism that they cannot be fully met. This leads to frustration and resentment that can be easily channeled by rightwing populists. Voices that once would have tempered this nihilism have bought into it. Religious leaders decry moral decline but don't dare call out this most fundamental moral decline in their flock, or they just accept it themselves. Just look at the dominance of prosperity gospel preachers. The Left ought to be a powerful voice against the late capitalist Moloch, but it too has been captured by its logic. The people who call themselves "the Left" mostly live online, not in the real world. They spend their days stewing in resentment and contrarianism, harvesting clicks and likes, living their lives according to the same consumerist logic as the rest of society. They accomplish nothing, but at the end of the day, they get to feel good about themselves, which is the only thing that matters in this society. 

At times it seems like the only way to win is to just not play. As a child I had a weird obsession with the monks of the early middle ages. In the aftermath of societal collapse, they maintained learning and literacy, all while removed from the day to day world. I fantasized about being a monk, since at that age the thought of spending most of my days reading and writing in isolation was my idea of heaven. At my darker moments I view our current situation not as a blip, but the harbinger of decades or even centuries of decline. More and more it feels like there is no hope for a better and more just society in my ever-shortening lifetime. Things will change at some point, of course, but it will be too late for me. 

Instead of wallowing in despair or going out in the public sphere I have been tempted to stay in my own version of a monk's cell, preserving the cultural life being snuffed out elsewhere. In an increasingly illiterate society, I will read books and spend as little time on social media as I can. (I do the former well, the latter not so much.) In the midst of the consumer frenzy, I will buy as little as possible. I will save my money for live theater and live music, places where artists directly connect with people without the mediation of screens or the trickery of AI. I will not withdraw from political life, but focus my efforts on the local level to preserve small flames that may one day turn into a cleansing fire. With any luck this kind of thing will be of assistance to the people left to clear up the wreckage far after my own life is done. 

Thoughts on Trump as "Fat Elvis"

[I know I have been derelict when it comes to posting on this site, but I am exhausted from starting a new gig and just haven't had the time.]

Back in August, Peter Wehner at The Atlantic noticed Trump reeling after Harris entered the race, and compared his lowly state to "fat Elvis." I got a chuckle over this characterization, but soon after Trump found a way to right himself and look far too scary to be a figure of derision.

Strangely enough, he has returned to floundering mode just as his campaign is supposed to crescendo. He shows up to events commenting on his disinterest and fatigue when he's not fellating his microphone, talking about Arnold Palmer's wang, or playing his favorite songs for forty minutes at a town hall instead of answering questions. He seems happy doing those things, but glum when telling audiences they need to vote for him or else he will be "in trouble." 

I am aware of the uselessness of pure speculation, but watching him grind his town hall to a halt and force his audience listen to his playlist made me think I was watching a person who was very high on drugs. When Wehner came up with the "Fat Elvis" line he was thinking of something else, but all I could think of was The King on his later tours, zonked out on pills, bloated, and flubbing the lines of hit songs he seemed totally disinterested in revisiting. (The CBS special from his last tour in 1977 tells the tale.)

The big difference is that Elvis still manages to pull out some stunning performances considering the dire state of his health. ("Unchained Melody" is now maybe the most famous.) I have long been obsessed with these performances despite some people finding them sad and depressing. Here is a performer so tremendous in his talent and heart that he wills himself to greatness under the worst circumstances. As a human being I must watch in awe and give my respect. I am wary of using the phrase "fat Elvis" because it dishonors this last, final, accomplishment.

Of course, Elvis was a person driven by something far higher than his own personal power, unlike Donald Trump. Watching Elvis rage against the dying of the light is far different than watching Trump blabbering fatuously for hours on end with no discernible direction. With Trump we are seeing something else, the old story of an autocrat realizing the game might be up and being fearful of what will happen once he no longer has protection. It's less Fat Elvis (who ought to be respected, or at least pitied) and more Richard III. It amazes me that he still has a chance to still win the election. 

Visiting a Diner in Trump Country (Road Trip 2024)

While I returned from my big summer road trip about a month ago, I've been doing my fair share of local rambling. Last weekend I ventured with my kids to Central Pennsylvania to visit a dear friend who normally hangs his hat in Pittsburgh but has a lake house up in the hills. My kids and I cherish these visits, which we make as often as we can. They also provide an opportunity for armchair political science, since the surrounding area is about as Trumpy as it gets.

In an election year the tension I sometimes feel is more intense. On our drive out we stopped for lunch at a McDonald's in Danville, Pennsylvania. It was a clean, efficient, and well-appointed Mickey Ds, a real top of the line franchise. My enthusiasm was tempered by seeing a guy sitting at a table with his arms crossed and anger on his face wearing a Trump cap. He didn't seem like he was there to eat. In fact, he went over to the family at the next table over and engaged them in a political conversation saying that "she" (I knew who that was) was "scary" and a "socialist." This of course was a day after Harris gave a speech noteworthy for its emphasis on law and order and that did not contain any sweeping new progressive goals like universal child care (which this guy surely thinks is socialism.) A woman talking to him replied that Harris was not really leading in the polls, but that "they" were just saying that. 

It was an interesting thing to see. This guy was acting like an evangelist, but he wasn't selling Jesus, he was selling Trump. This struck me because on my trip out to Nebraska this summer I noted how support for Trump seemed to be dimming among the base. Perhaps this was the sign of desperation, or that my earlier observation was just plain wrong. 

Apart from hearing the usual dumb Boomer joke about "global warming" when someone said the lake water was cold, I did not get much sense of the political temperature until we went out for breakfast at a diner in a nearby small town. I knew from our last visit that this diner had a giant "BACK THE BLUE" sign on the outside and lots of Christian nationalist iconography on the inside and fake money with Trump on it pinned to the wall behind the register. Last time we were there I also had to hear a table of old white guy fogies hold forth on their hatred of liberals. The thing is, there is nothing in this world that I can resist less than a breakfast at a really good greasy spoon diner. Living in cities and college towns in my 20s and early 30s these places were my favorite haunts. When I moved to Jersey, the Valhalla of diners, I was elated. I'll be damned if someone else's lousy politics are going to keep me from enjoying a "hungry man" breakfast. I also grew up in a very conservative rural place and was less intimidated than most people from a progressive New Jersey suburb would have been in these environs. 

The diner in question is really small and there was only one waitress working. We remained patient and appreciated how hard she was having to work. This time around there were no Trumpy conversations to listen to, but I did notice something strange in the air. My friend guessed that some of the patrons thought he and I were a couple, since there weren't any adult women with us and proper menfolk in that region did not take their children out to diners by themselves with another man. Maybe that was the case, maybe not. I still had myself a delicious breakfast and my kids left happy. 

Driving down the road back home I started to think, and something did not sit right with me. I may live in New Jersey now and have a PhD and taught at an independent school in New York City for 13 years, but I am still the same person who grew up in rural Nebraska who has always loved diners. The diner I went to had all kinds of stuff hanging up to let me know that I wasn't welcome because of my politics. My background and upbringing, however, were pretty much the same as the other people in there. The political candidate they love, Trump, is a billionaire's son from New York who wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this. 

Instead of making the usual accusations about this discrepancy, I want to think a little deeper. Trump has an electoral advantage in that he could do pretty much anything, including being convicted of 34 felonies and inciting an attack on the Capitol, and still keep well over 40% of the electorate in his pocket. What I have come to realize in my interactions with Trump voters is that they don't really care about anything he does. I know that sounds obvious, but the reason isn't. They don't care not because they are hypocrites (a tired accusation) but because they believe in what he SYMBOLIZES, not who he actually is. 

Trump and his MAGA slogan symbolize the maintenance of all kinds of hierarchies. His name on a sign means support for men in charge, white people in charge, LGBTQ people in the closet, Christianity assumed, and immigrants deported. While not all Trump supporters fit all of these categories, each has at least of one these hierarchies in mind when it comes to their support. Trump could indeed shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose support because what he does is literally meaningless. All of his meaning is symbolic. 

What makes me sad is that so many people prefer this symbolic ecstasy and its attendant hatreds over human relationships. This is why I sometimes never feel lonelier than when I visit the types of rural places that made me and the kinds of humble diners I love more than the fanciest restaurant. 

Iowa Caucus MLK Day Thoughts

There's an irony to the Republican Party holding their first caucus on Martin Luther King Day. On the day we honor a man who demanded that the nation live up to its oft-proclaimed ideals of freedom and justice, we are seeing a wannabe dictator whose slogan is about reversing this country's gains since MLK's times about to trounce his opponents. Nikki Haley, who is supposed to be the "moderate" alternative, is a South Carolina conservative who refused to name slavery as a cause of the Civil War. The "party of Lincoln" has become the inheritor of the Lost Cause and is the political home of the people who fought so hard to stop the civil rights movement. 

This sadly should come as no surprise. King is so universally admired and claimed today that it is hard to know that he was a controversial figure in his lifetime. The FBI had him surveilled and used that information to blackmail him and in 1966 only 27% of white Americans said they had a positive view of MLK. Those people's political children (and hell some of the original bigots are still alive) are Trump's base. 

It's also hard to remember there was a time when King even getting a holiday was controversial. Jesse Helms, the avatar of Southern white racist migration from the Democratic to the Republican Party, tried to filibuster the bill establishing the day. Ronald Reagan, president at the time, implied in his public statements that he was holding his nose and voting for the holiday out of political considerations, rather than his own convictions. Some states like Arizona did not recognize the holiday (as Public Enemy famously denounced) while others used the day to celebrate both King and Confederates. Alabama and Mississippi still celebrate King and Lee's birthday on this day. 

Eric Foner called Reconstruction "America's Unfinished Revolution," and Dr King's efforts were part of a Second Reconstruction that also remains unfinished. The spectacle of Republican candidates clamoring to show their opposition to birthright citizenship and their support of banning Black history in schools is proof of this (if we still needed any.) While it might be depressing to face these facts 56 years after King's death, I want to use this day as a call to action. His death and the deaths of so many others who fought for equality should not be in vain. It's up to us to carry on their legacy and vindicate them. If anything else, the spectacle in Iowa today is a reminder of the stakes. 

Establishing a New News Diet For a New Year

 Over at Substack I wrote a piece that people seem to like about having a better news diet. The new year isn't just a good time to think about what we eat and drink, but also how we engage with the news. 

After I finished writing it I (of course) thought of a lot of things I forgot to mention. For example, it's really important to get a good source of local news (NOT these fly by night Patch sites.) I'm lucky to live in a place where local journalists have established their own site, which I subscribe to. I increasingly believe that people who are frustrated with the lack of change on the national level could profitably channel that emotion into getting involved in their own backyards. 

When I talked about my news diet, I also forgot to mention ProPublica, whose investigative work is invaluable. I also didn't say much about podcasts. I should have mentioned that I used to listen to stuff like the 538 cast and NPR's politics show but then I realized I had to cut out all horse-race coverage. Instead I just listen to analytical stuff like Know Your Enemy and Unclear and Present Danger. So far my news habit has greatly reduced my stress about the state of the world, so I guess I'm not just talking out of my butt in that piece. 

Kissinger is Dead But Realpolitik Lives On

The internet is abuzz with the news of Henry Kissinger's death. Amidst all the jubilation and snark, I have seen little analysis of his actual legacy. I think this might be because those celebrating his demise are well aware that his ideas and approach to foreign affairs are still making their mark on the world.

Back around 2007 I was living in Grand Rapids, and Kissinger came to town to deliver a talk. I showed up out of curiosity and to see what this man was like in the flesh that I had heard so much about. For years I had heard about his charisma and skill with romance, which seemed inexplicable until that night. When he took the stage, the man talked with a striking air of certainty and obvious erudition. While I strongly disagreed with the conclusions of his analysis, I understood in that moment why he had been such a successful diplomat and political operator. 

He was more of a legend to me to that point, a figure I had seen on television since my youth. In college I took some classes on international politics, where I learned that he was more than a diplomat. Kissinger was a thinker, probably the most important modern proponent of "realism." He referred to this viewpoint with his famous statement, "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests." A modern day Bismarck, Kissinger defended the doctrines of Realpolitik in a time when international institutions and connections undermined the old certainties of nation-state politics.

When I took that class in the late 1990s, Kissinger's realism felt very antiquated, the political science equivalent of a leisure suit. The end of the Cold War opened up the possibility of a more global world where peace would be achieved by international cooperation, rather than the machinations of "balance of power." 

9/11 and especially the "war on terror" shook that certainty. The Bush administration's murderously idealistic attempt to remake the Middle East not only discredited neoconservatism, it undermined the belief in globalist, idealist solutions among a lot of people. (Kissinger supported the Iraq invasion, although on different grounds than the neocons.)

As the neocons have faded, a Trumpian "America First" nationalism dominates the Republican Party. That's certainly not Kissinger's methodology, but both America First and Kissinger's more diplomatic global Realpolitik are rooted in a belief that no moral or legal considerations ought to restrain the government in pursuing the perceived interests of America. Many world leaders from MBS to Putin to Xi to Netanyahu practice Realpolitik with gusto. Kissinger may be dead, but his spirit lives on. Amid the grave dancing we ought to be paying attention to that. 

Tuesday's Election Illustrates Why Republicans Gerrymander and Suppress Votes

Over on Substack before Tuesday's election I was remembering the anniversary of Obama winning the 2008 election. I argued that the current anti-democratic, white nationalist Republican Party has its origins in that time. The 2007-2008 economic collapse helped undermine belief in Reaganomics, even among conservative voters. Trump figured this out, and won Republican support while giving out free money during COVID and assailing free trade. Sarah Palin's "Real America" talk in 2008 was a harbinger of the future. 

As the Republican Party has become the party of populist nationalism, it has come to rely on a shrinking demographic of aging white people, many of them living in declining rural and Rust Belt areas losing population. This has made it necessary for Republicans to tilt elections and use the non-democratic institutions in our system to maintain power. It's why they try to suppress votes and aggressively gerrymander. It's why they managed to rig the Supreme Court to overturn reproductive rights despite winning the presidential popular vote only once since 1988. The electoral college allowed them to put in two losers of the popular vote with disastrous consequences this century.

Writing two days after the election, I now see that the Republican agenda is even more unpopular than I first realized. In red Ohio voters decisively approved of voting rights and legal weed. An anti-abortion Republican challenger for the governor's mansion went down in flames in red Kentucky. Virginia Republican governor Glenn Youngkin's attempt to get control of the state legislature ended in embarrassment after he floated a 15 week abortion ban "compromise."  

This is part of a larger and longer trend. In many states with Republican state houses, voters have passed ballot initiatives to overturn laws passed by Republican legislatures. Voters have approved Medicaid expansion, raises in minimum wage, and abortion rights. In my home state of Nebraska, voters have approved an initiative to be put on the next ballot to overturn a law diverting money from public to private schools. In some of these states gerrymandering has all but eliminated free and fair elections. Tuesday night's referendums, which circumvent gerrymandering, show why.

Intriguingly, there also appears to be a significant number of people who vote for Republicans while voting against some of their core priorities when given the chance. If Democrats can solve this riddle, they have the chance to make big gains in places assumed to be hostile territory. For a long time conventional wisdom said that opposition to abortion explained why so many voters in red states could disagree with Republican economic policy yet for politicians who prioritized the interests of the wealthy. The recent abortion referendum votes show this is not the case at all. Perhaps the core issue is actually white resentment, perhaps not. As Andy Beshear illustrates in Kentucky, it is not impossible for Democrats to do well in red states while still governing as Democrats and not Mancin-style Republican Lite. 

Just as Donald Trump changed the older political coalitions with his focus on nationalism, abortion has the chance to reorient things in another direction. Basic assumptions are changing. Opposition to abortion, unions, higher wages, LGBTQ rights, and public educators are not winning issues anymore. The Reagan era was a long time ago. A normal political party would react by moderating their positions, but I expect the maximalist current version of the Republican Party will just double down on diluting the people's voice. After all, the people who vote against them aren't "real Americans."

Missing the Halloween Spirit This Year

One of the things I like about the town I live in is how people go all out for Halloween. We usually get a ton of trick or treaters and it's just a blast overall. I was having fun in the leadup to this week, but suddenly I've lost the spirit.

Part of it has to do with the ridiculous obligations in my life right now, both in terms of work and parenting. I am just tired, all of the time. During the few moments I have to rest my mind is preoccupied with the sad, depressing state of the world. This month has brought war in the Middle East, related murders in this country, a mass shooter, a radical anti-democratic gerrymander in North Carolina, and an election-denying Christian nationalist weirdo being elevated to the Speaker of the House. (I wrote about the latter on Substack.)

This is all being experienced through a media filter that constantly promotes lies and manipulations of all kinds. It's getting hard to tell the truth, and soon people will stop trying. Once that happens, there's no bottom.

I can't escape the feeling that everything is collapsing. On inauguration day in 2021, I cried tears of relief and joy, hoping we were through the Trump years. I had been vaccinated against COVID the day before and the two events together felt like two horrible crises might finally be ending. Looking back I can't believe my naivete. Trumpism and COVID are not past. They were tipping points knocking down a rotten and rickety American and world social order that had been teetering for decades. 

Neoliberalism hollowed everything out, including basic social obligations and connectivity. We've lost the capacity for positive collective action and the privations of COVID have made us even more angry and suspicious. We interact through social media, which only brings out the worst in us. In the face of all of this progressives have retreated into making self-righteous statements ("In this house we believe...") because deep down they know there's nothing that can be done about it in any material sense. Social movements have adopted a "leaderless" model allowing them to take to the streets while accomplishing nothing. 

The scariest thing this Halloween is the world we are living in. I once believed in the capacity for change, but right now my main focus is trying to survive the coming onslaught. Just take the shooting in Lewiston, for example. We know there's absolutely no chance that we will regulate guns, and that our society is awash in so many guns and gun nuts that any attempt to regulate them would be useless. A conservative Supreme Court would strike that down, anyway. We talk about the 2024 election as if it's a referendum on democracy, but democracy already lost. 

I tried posting about this on Facebook and people assumed my feeling that Halloween had no joy this year is curmudgeonly, not the result of existential dread over the state of the world. Don't worry, you'll probably be feeling the same way by next Halloween.

2016 All Over Again?

On my Substack I recently wrote about how many of the large factors influencing the 2024 election are similar to those in 2016. The point is not doom and gloom, but for progressives to act proactively to mitigate them instead of failing to see the issues. (This was the mistake of 2016.) 

I did not talk about the Dobbs decision in my piece, as a friend on Facebook rightly pointed out. It certainly represents a major change from 2016, but I am not sure it is entirely in Democrats' favor. The fact that Dobbs came AFTER Biden's election seemed to underscore the futility of fighting a conservative movement that has decided to use non-democratic means to stay in power. The young people I know seem more fatalistic now, and far less politically committed. One thing that can doom democracy is a feeling that participating in it just doesn't matter. 

Again, I am not saying that Trump will definitely win in 2024, but I consider it a coin flip, which is fearsome enough. 

Cruel Summer

Post-apocalypse entertainment and fears of nuclear war have conditioned us to envision the end of the world coming in a singular, catastrophic moment. Climate change is the real apocalypse, and it does not operate like that. It's a literal slow burn, something that has made it easier to ignore or put off, boiled frog style. 

Things have deteriorated enough this summer, however, that the horror of our future is sinking in with far greater clarity. It started with the choking air from Canadian wildfires, and continued with a deadly heatwave. In my early childhood, we had hot summers, but we also had mild summers, too. Now every summer is worse than the one that came before with no end in sight. Every wretchedly hot summer turns out to be cooler than any others we will experience in our lifetimes. 

For a long time it was easy to think of the consequences of climate change as part of the future, but now it is the present. We used to be able to think there was time to work with, now that time is up. Obviously we can still take action to prevent the very worst from happening, but at this point we know that even if we manage to make major changes, suffering will still come. 

There's also the despair of knowing those major changes won't happen. Communities around the country fight against solar and wind farms, including liberal ones. Conservative politicians and their related media still deny climate change, as do the masses of conservative voters. They will likely continue making light of it as more people die of heat stroke and the coasts flood. Creating legislation to deal with climate change in this environment, where corporate lobbyists also maintain a stranglehold, is impossible. I simply do not see any political solution coming. 

The ultimate cruelty of this summer is that right-thinking people are being forced to watch the world burn with no way of stopping it. Climate change is already drastically altering our physical environments, I think it also has the power to shatter our mental ones, too. 

What the Way July 4th is Celebrated Says About America's Divides

My newest Substack is up, which uses the July 4th holiday to think about America's historical continuities. I use Jefferson Cowie's recent books to talk about how ideologies of extreme individualism and a definition of freedom rooted in white supremacy continue to damage our polity. I see these dysfunctions coming out clearly in the recent Supreme Court cases. 

I also don't just want to write about my Substack this time. A friend and longtime reader put a question to me that I would like to investigate. He splits his time between Pittsburgh and rural Pennsylvania, and noted how much of a big deal the July 4th holiday is in the latter place. He was wondering whether this represents another facet of our country's cultural divide.

I grew up in a rural area and lived in other rural spaces during parts of my adulthood, and I indeed can say that July 4th is a more intense event in those places compared to other, more urban places I have lived. When I was back in my hometown a few years ago for the holiday I was struck by the volume of fireworks people were letting off in their yards. As we drove on the outskirts of town to get to the official fireworks, the low end of the horizon was constantly illuminated. 

Some of this is structural. In small towns it's easier to organize communal events.There's also the boredom factor. If there's not a lot going on, a parade and blowing things up is pretty exciting. That's at least how I felt as a kid. To my friend's point, some of it is more about political culture.

July 4th celebrations in small towns tend to engage in a very uncomplicated version of nationalism (which gets called "patriotism.") It's not necessarily an aggressive or hateful nationalism, but it is certainly one that leaves little room for ambivalence or hybrid identities. Go to one of these places on the 4th, and it will feel like a real throwback to a pre-1960s form of public life. Again, it is not overtly malicious and in fact can be a lot of fun to participate in. When I was back in my hometown six years ago, my kids got to take part in the children's 4th of July parade, and we all had a blast. 

Beneath it all, however, lies the "real Americans" assumption. The overwhelmingly white and native-born crowds in these small towns see themselves as the "real Americans." They see the United States as a place made up of them and FOR them. (Hence the "take our country back" rhetoric.) It's very easy to wave the flag so hard when you are not celebrating an abstract nation but instead are affirming your concrete self.

I can contrast this with what I saw on social media yesterday, when lots of progressive and lefty folks were posting their ambivalence or even outright dislike towards the holiday. I actually found this almost as irritating as the loud jingoism I heard in other quarters. The kvetching certainly comes from real feelings and critiques, but it's intended to get internet street cred by being edgy, like me as a teen poo-pooing any and all popular music. Just as the left needs to articulate a new definition of freedom, it would serve them politically to come up with a new kind of patriotism. Dunking on the USA in public all the time will not help win converts, especially in "real America." 

The Age of Trump Continues

I tend to avoid cable news, but when I got the news that Donald Trump had been indicted again, I fired up MSNBC like it was 2017 all over again. This reprehensible man is continuing his dominance of our public sphere, a position he has been in since 2015. Trump has been fading somewhat in the public eye, but today's events are a reminder that he never went away.

It has been eight years now, a ridiculous amount of time for a country's politics to be dominated by man so wretched and vulgar. This week I was talking to students and they told me the 2016 election was the first presidential election they were old enough to actually follow. I came to the depressing realization that they do not have a political memory of a time before our current insanity.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the Antebellum period the Age of Jackson, and others have spoken of an Age of Lincoln that followed. We have been living in an Age of Trump, one that like the other ages mentioned will outlast the man himself. He has set the tone for a dysfunctional politics rooted in a right-wing Leninism that justifies any rule breaking as long as it advances their ideology and power. Conservatives are not trying to push their movement in another direction, they are all vying to be the Next Trump. Ron DeSantis is only the most prominent example. 

The Age of Trump is also an era where democracy's guardrails have been shredded. Trump himself led a coup to stay in power. Not only is he still walking free, he is the front-runner for his party's nomination next year. We have reached a moment where nothing matters if you don't have any shame. I think here too of Ted Cruz, who stumped for Trump after he insulted his wife and father. Politicians like Lauren Goebert, Paul Gosar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene have become celebrities by being as crass and shameless as possible. They learned at the feet of the master. 

It is hard for me to see a way forward, because in the Age of Trump we do not just disagree about politics, we disagree about reality itself. Trump the liar and fabulist has cultivated a following that lives in an alternate universe. They reject vaccinations and believe the last election was stolen. There is no way to convince them otherwise.

Today's news is welcome evidence that the rule of law may still win the day. This being the age of Trump, however, the prosecution will only raise his esteem in the minds of his followers. To paraphrase James Joyce, this age is a nightmare from which I wish to awake. 

Teacher Action Week

Teacher appreciation week is drawing to a close, which got me thinking about how the people currently attacking education are in the minority. The love teachers get this week from parents and students has the potential to be turned into something more impactful than mere gratitude. Over on Substack I wrote about how next week should be Teacher Action Week. 

2010, the Secret Political Turning Point of the 21st Century

So much of the news that crosses my scanner these days involves state and local governments implementing the most demented right-wing policies. States across America are eliminating restrictions on concealed weapons, banning gender-affirming care, limiting what's taught at universities, and banning abortion without exceptions. 

In the heat of the Twitter moment it's easy to miss the longer historical context. What we are seeing now is the fruit of a longer-term project, one of the most successful political moves in America's history. Back in 2010, Republicans whipped up their resentful base against Obama and fueled the Tea Party movement. They were also able to exploit the Great Recession, which started during the Bush administration but did not reach full impact until the Obama years. While Republicans would lose the 2012 presidential election, they "shellacked" Democrats (in Obama's words) in the 2010 midterm election. By concentrating on the low hanging fruit of state government, they began building a power base that has translated into getting their priorities enacted even as those priorities have been rejected by a majority of the country. 

In many ways 2010 should be seen as this century's true political turning point. In 2008 McCain had been reluctant to attack Obama's identity. His running mate Sarah Palin, however, proved herself to be the John the Baptist of the new right-wing Republican style. She talked about "real Americans" and whipped up resentment against those of us who don't conform to the right-wing vision of the nation. That's what the party ran with 2010. 

As usual, they were abetted by an ineffectual Democratic party and a fatuous media. The Democrats basically just watched all this happen, standing slack-jawed while conservative ideologues like Scott Walker took over formerly liberal states like Wisconsin. The media, perpetually frightened of accurately describing the undemocratic and oppressive slant of conservatism lest they be accused of "bias," frame the nationalist populism of the Tea Party as simply regular citizens concerned by taxes. They missed how "take our country back" was not about the capital gains rate, but walling off immigrants and punishing those they hated. 

One person did understand this: Donald Trump. He used his knowledge of the Republican base's true desires to ride birtherism and nativism to the Republican nomination in 2016. 2010 revealed that this was the true soul of the Republican Party, even if the media and people like Mitt Romney refused to see it. 

What made 2010 doubly impactful was that it came after the census, meaning that these newly conservative statehouses were in charge of redistricting. Using data, they could gerrymander far more effectively than in the past. This led to the current situation where a majority of voters in Wisconsin could turn out for Democrats yet return a legislature with a Republican supermajority. 

Conservatives in several states have effectively established one-party rule, aided and abetted by gerrymandering and voter suppression. Unlike Democrats, they don't worry much about how their decisions will impact the public as a whole. They merely wish to do what helps their own base, and no one else. 

The recent judicial election in Wisconsin gives me hope, but this is going to be a very difficult hole to dig ourselves out of. In large swathes of the country, the will of the majority is simply inoperative. Just look at Florida, which recently set down a harsh abortion ban against the wishes of a supermajority of its citizens. Fighting this will necessitate action by Democrats, who mostly put all their eggs in the basket of the presidency. As we are seeing, even with the presidency states are free to go in a much different direction. 

Thoughts on America After A Weekend in Canada

The Canadians in Guess Who were right all along about America

Sorry to have been away for so long. The last week has been taken up with a trip to Montreal and the accompanying preparations. Now that I have returned, I am in a reflective mood. 

As we crossed the border north of Plattsburgh to return to the US this morning, I felt a new emotion. In the past, when I have returned to America after going abroad I have felt a certain warmness about being back in my home country again. This morning I felt dread. During a trip spent walking Montreal's streets, enjoying its sights, and riding its refreshingly modern subway system, I kept seeing the news from America. I read about progressive state representatives being expelled, about the gun deaths of children lowering our national life expectancy, and of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. For a couple of days, I felt like I had escaped a madhouse.

To be sure, Canada has its own problems. There were panhandlers and mentally disturbed people on the streets, for example. By and large, however, it felt like such an infinitely more FUNCTIONAL and livable place. There also wasn't an ever-present feeling of dread, one that has been dogging me in this country every day since the summer of 2015. For almost a decade, America has been on a precipe, our own Years of Lead with mass shootings, police murders, and capitol stormings with the spectre of right-wing authoritarianism constantly hovering. To the last point, I was in Montreal when I saw the news about a Trump judge banning abortion medication.

I had not been out of the country since 2009, by far the longest stretch in my adult life. I've still been traveling a lot however, and in that time have been to practically every corner of the United States. My travels to everywhere from New Orleans to Los Angeles to Alabama to Boston have deepened my love of this nation and given me perspective on its stunning regional diversity. I cherish getting to walk the Golden Gage Bridge, joining a second line on Bourbon Street, and chowing down on Maine lobster. 

But as my love has deepened, so has my despair. I don't much believe in this country's future anymore, and my deeper investment in it makes its precariousness all that much harder to endure. It's a dynamic I had not been aware of until I spent some time in Canada this weekend. It felt good to get a break from America, I only wish I could believe this nation could find a way out of its current spiral. 

Macron Illustrates Why Neoliberalism Can't Save Democracy

France is currently being torn apart by massive protests after President Macron raised the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a parliamentary vote (which he surely would have lost.) It goes against the wishes of the majority of French people, and probably of their representatives, too. There is a kind of irony to this, since Macron ran and re-ran as a defender of democracy against the forces of populist authoritarianism. His current situation ought to be a warning to centrist and center-left politicians who profess to do the same.

Populist authoritarians get mass support partially because they advocate a Herrenvolk nationalism that assures people in the “in group” that they will be taken care and the social state will not be pared back. Just think about the United States, where Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election by promising to make the public feel the hard hand of capitalism, and Donald Trump won after defending Social Security and Medicare against that type of Republican. While Trump’s policies involved massive giveaways to the wealthy, his rhetorical uses of Herrenvolk nationalism assured the less affluent parts of his base.

Like other neoliberals, Macron thinks the public needs to take their medicine no matter what. Neoliberals see this as a moral imperative, hence Macron’s monomaniacal push to raise the retirement age when the pension system is not in crisis. I am also reminded of the austerity policies in the UK that left its standard of living hobbled without bringing on any economic benefit. The Tories stick to those policies because they are on a moral crusade to save their people from “dependency.”

Neoliberals even take pride in bucking the popular will, to them giving the public less is not a bad thing, but rather a sign of courage. While they play these games, however, the populist authoritarians proclaim that they will take care of the in-group. Macron’s decision about retirement has probably done more to boost the National Front than anything Marine Le Pen has ever done. Similarly, Hilary Clinton’s tendency to defend neoliberal policies in the 2016 election did great damage to her.

The world’s democracies are on a knife’s edge. From India to Hungary to Israel to Florida we are seeing populist authoritarians gain power then use their positions to prevent their opponents from winning elections. Unfortunately, many opponents of these regimes still recite the old neoliberal creed. As long as they flout the wishes of the people so that they can punish them, these neoliberal centrists will be the second biggest threat to democracy because they enable the biggest threat to claim they are protecting “the people” against “the elites.”  

The 20th Anniversary of the American Empire's Self-Immolation

On the evening of March 19, 2003, I went with a friend to the movies to see The Quiet American, adapted from Graham Greene's novel about American idealism's failure to understand Vietnam. Little did I know how appropriate that choice would be.

I came home, and a couple of hours later in the basement room, I watched the start of "shock and awe" with absolute horror. Rumors of war had been circulating for months, with a whole kabuki theater of nuclear inspections and Congressional testimony making the public believe this was about "weapons of mass destruction." I was in the minority of Americans who knew this was all bullshit. I had shown up to anti-war protests, had been yelled at by "patriots" from their pickup trucks and told I was ignoring threats to this country. Sitting there watching Baghdad being blown up on television I felt such profound despair. So many other awful things have happened since then (the 2008 crash, multiple police murders, Trump's election, COVID, January 6th, etc.) that we have failed to account for the consequences of the Iraq invasion. Beyond the human consequences, it represented the end of the United States' post-Cold War predominance. 

The invasion of the anniversary has passed unmarked in this country because so many people pretend they never supported it when it had been very popular in the moment. Its boosters cannot deny that it was a disaster, so they must deny their connection to it. Even ultra-nationalists like Trump have done this, allowing his supporters, the same people yelling at me back in 2003, to wash their hands of the whole affair. 

Even if the majority in this country may not feel the Iraq invasion to be an act of grave immorality as I do, they still understand that it meant the destruction of America's post-Cold War dominance in the world. After 1991 the United States stood as the lone superpower. 9/11 gravely shook the feelings of invincibility, but those same feelings spurred Bush's actions in Iraq. It was a completely elective war. Iraq posed no threat to the United States, nor was it threatening any of our key allies. Bush's crew really thought they could use this invasion to remake the Middle East to America's liking. Many of its own allies cautioned against it and the "weapons of mass destruction" had not been located, but no matter. 

The Quiet Amerian, both the Graham Greene novel and the 2003 film, concerns Alden Pyle, a CIA agent in 1950s Vietnam in the twilight of French colonialism. He naively believes that he can create a "third force" in the country that is both democratic and anticolonialitst that will push both the French and the Vietnamese communists aside. Furthermore, Pyle is willing to fund terror attacks and sacrifice lives for his unrealistic vision. The narrator, a British journalist named Fowler, understands the country's realities far better and is not surprised when Pyle meets a bad end. Greene wrote the book years before American "escalation" in Vietnam, but like many of us on that night in March of 2003, he clearly saw what was coming. 

Like Alden Pyle, Bush and the neo-cons soon discovered that not every group of people in the world are just Americans trying to come out. They hadn't even bothered to consider the most basic issues in the war's aftermath, watching mobs loot priceless artifacts from museums and calling it "the price of freedom." Any moral credibility the United States had managed to amass in its post-Cold War humanitarian interventions was erased in that moment. But it wasn't just America's moral hypocrisy that was exposed by the invasion. The American military's inability to win a decisive victory against Iraqi insurgents or to quickly capture Saddam Hussein revealed the clay feet of a supposed Colossus. 

And so thousands died, including someone I went to college with. We wrecked Iraq, with the ultimate strategic winner being our regional rival, Iran. We destroyed homes, killed civilians, and shredded infrastructure for less than nothing from a strategic standpoint. Hussein is no longer in power, but I get the feeling that's cold comfort for those mourning their dead. 

I want to remember the dead, but also that the vast majority of Americans supported the invasion at the time. It is easy to blame this all on politicians, but if there had been more robust opposition, those politicians would have changed their tune. The media helped too, treating protestors like me as unserious or naive. Practically every media outlet became a cheerleader for the invasion. Country music stations banned The Chicks when they criticized George W Bush. All of this has been forgotten because it is inconvenient for so many to recognize that the self-immolation of the American empire happened with the majority's full faith and support. Right-wingers certainly need to be held to account for their cheerleading of this conflict, but I should hope that this would prompt the Left to rethink their naive ideas about "the masses." 

Like Trump, DeSantis Understands the Right's Love of Humiliation

Recent news and anecdotal evidence points to a rise in Ron DeSantis' stature on the Right, and a drop in Trump's. It would be superficial and wrong to credit this to a change in the Right's fundamental politics or a return to "normal." 

Rather, DeSantis has adopted the most fundamental aspects of Trump's politics while allowing some on the Right to distance themselves from the latter's toxic brand. DeSantis, like Trump, understands that the conservative base does not care a fig for actual policy outcomes. They aren't really interested in legislating, and the behavior of Republicans in the House has been proof of this. They are far more invested in something far more tangible: punishing and humiliating the people they don't like. 

Just as Trump separated children from their parents at the border, DeSantis has been deporting migrants to other states with not even the minimum of arrangements made for their comfort upon arrival. This policy has nothing to do with border security and everything to do with generating a spectacle of humiliation, both for the migrants and for liberal politicians. 

DeSantis' education policies and anti-LGBT legislation performs a similar function. His base hates gay and trans people and they hate teachers and he is giving them the public attacks against their objects of hate that they so crave. This same base boils over with resentment, angry that the culture is changing and that their worldview is no longer unquestioned. When Disney, a company they assumed was on "their side" starts making movies with Black mermaids or that deal with menstruation, they get mad. When that same company publically opposes their political values when it comes to anti-LGBT hate, they lose their minds. DeSantis understands this, which is why he very publicly humiliated Disney by taking away their special status, something that will also force liberal voters in Orlando to pay higher taxes as well. That was a double win for his politics of humiliation.

Like Trump, DeSantis is what I call an instinctual bully. I've been bullied a lot in my life, both as a child and as an adult, so I know the type. Some people are casual bullies or situational bullies. I call Trump and DeSantis instinctual bullies because it is their central defining characteristic. They look at every situation and think about how they can turn it into a way to bully or humiliate someone they don't like. It is the thing that occupies their minds through most of their waking hours. They don't merely want or like to bully others, they MUST do so.

At this point, I have to point the finger a bit more broadly. They would not have such power if it was not for the masses of people who enjoy living vicariously through the bully's actions. So many ordinary "nice people" get a thrill out of seeing university administrators sacked and replaced with conservative ideologues, or smile about trans youth being denied health care. They are the people who stopped to laugh at me during my own childhood humiliations, cowards content to toady to the big boss bully in order to protect themselves. 

I would also point the finger at this country's useless prestige media, eager to hop on the DeSantis Rising train for clout and getting credit for being on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing. They watch public universities being turned into factories for Right wing ideology and then treat it like just another policy decision, shrugging their shoulders and saying "well, who can say who's right or wrong here?" This is another parallel with Trump: boosting ratings and circulation gets prioritized above actual journalism.

Time will tell if DeSantis or Trump or someone else gets the Republican nomination, but that's beside the point. Either way, this is a party animated by the humiliation ethos of Libs of TikTok more than anything else. That's not going away anytime soon.  

Republicans Used to Target Democratic Presidents, Now They Target Their Own Schools and Neighbors

New Substack is out about the changing Republican dynamics in the Biden administration. Under Clinton and Obama they turned the Democratic president into an avatar of all their resentments. This has been harder with Joe Biden, and so Republicans are directly attacking vulnerable groups like trans people and educators to unite their base. It' represents a chilling and alarming shift in our politics and one that needs greater attention.