this is funny because it’s true that the republican party has been a threat to democracy since 1968 or so, unless you downplay black voter suppression to the point where (white) people agree it doesn’t really count
That’s been the thing about the whole debate to me. It kind of comes down to semantics and whether people should be alarmed about the expansion of racist discriminatory policy that’s been aimed at Black people forever. There aren’t any stakes in it imo except to properly categorize oppression.
And I totally get being annoyed with people who act as if Trump is the spring from which all harms have flown but I don’t understand how acting like those things are just fine and good and acceptable as regular business helps anyone.
(The one that makes me say “alright, man” is the Black Male Studies folks who really seem to be repeating critiques of feminism made by Black feminists and other feminists from the Global South and recasting them as a conspiracy against Black male scholars.)
what I would say is that Trump is rooted in traditional conservative authoritarianism, racism, and lunacy going back to the 30s (which used to be quite bipartisan), but also a major break with tradition. Dixiecrats never attempted a coup against the national government
Not against the *national* government no but they did against state governments, and part of the reason why is, they didn’t need to because they were firmly in charge. Trump is a break inasmuch white people don’t feel firmly in charge anymore so definitely an escalation.
The TNC thesis that Trump is an expression of white backlash to the Obama presidency feels right, and I don’t know why people need to link it to foreign traditions of fascism, which there are plenty of, to feel an urgency about opposing it.
well that's the thing, we have our own domestic fascist or proto-fascist institutions in history, namely the KKK and redeemers. the Paxton book is good on this
Honestly, I feel like the need to link it to foreign fascist movements is as a salve to the national ego. "This is like those other countries (who got a lot of their inspiration from us but we don't talk about that)! This can't happen here (except for all the times it has)!"
I think Obama's election caused a lot of right wing bigots to look across the sea at Putin and realize they felt more kinship and loyalty to him and Russia's racist kleptocracy than with modern America.
Obama's election was the trigger but Putin's ethno-empire was already their destination.
Well, that's essentially what 1877 was about: Dixiecrats tacitly agreed not to try to take national power in exchange for the GOP and Northern Dems tacitly agreeing not to try to take power away from the Dixiecrats in the South.
AS an academic, I think academia and the public square both suffer when people privilege absolutely unique contributions over communicating information people still need to hear. It's not without value but that value doesn't include making change and can certainly inhibit it
You'll see it a lot when an academic is trying to market a book so it sounds like someone at all normal would want to read it - that usually means making overbold claims and someone will always say "is that really new?" No man, but only you and 10 other ppl have heard of it, let's spread the news
I am an academic working on this stuff, and this is how I distinguish the two problems: inclusion and machinery.
Who gets to vote? - that’s an inclusion question. Can one group control the government so that no one gets to vote again? That’s a machinery question.
The fights in American democracy since the war have been inclusion fights. The machinery hasn’t been an issue. But now, machinery is THE problem, and all the public discourse around democracy is still set up for inclusion fights.
I read your thread.
Good takes.
Trump is a symptom of a problem that has been festering, often in public, for a pretty long time with the GOP...They are a fundamental threat to the way this country works.
