b-boy bouiebaisse: you could even look at everything coming out of the right since 2016 as an effort to prevent an obama from ever happening again

can't believe he is still doubling down on this after January 6 and the Project 2025 regime consolidation plan

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.

(but I’m also not an academic and many such arguments strike me this way.)

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.

you could even look at everything coming out of the right since 2016 as an effort to prevent an obama from ever happening again

Yep the next time they want to make a Black person the editor of the Harvard Law Review they’re going to have a *long* conversation about optics and politics etc. and they’ll probably have to spend some resources if they follow through. They’re raising the cost of accepting Black people in spaces.

Next time they want a Black person to do anything (looking at college president, high school quarterback, small-town mayor, even chief diversity officer...) there is a new (renewed?) cost for well-meaning white folk to back it, like it's 1965 all over again. We are each of us a "DEI" now.

Agree. It feels like this is the entire point - to make it much harder to appoint anyone other than a hetero white male to any position of influence. HWM: automatic pass. Anything else: long, argumentative confrontation.

I've heard people say "DEI is basically the Nword now," though a more apt comparison might be its the Jesse Helms "White Hands" advert writ large.

And the costs for Black people, too. If, as I've been told, Danielle Allen turned down the Harvard presidency, it's easy to understand why. Which would be too bad--she's an amazing scholar and thinker.

Sorry to jump in--of course you know all this. I was just reading her book on the Declaration and thinking how remarkable it would be if she was to have a platform like the presidency.

Our Declarationwwnorton.com “A tour de force.... No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, <em>New York Review of Books</em><p> Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize<br /> Winner of the Soci...

idk about that specifically but your broader point about the effort to have that effect seems right

Sophia M. Hunt ’25 elected president of the Harvard Law Review - Harvard Law Schoolhls.harvard.edu The Harvard Law Review has elected Sophia M. Hunt ’25 as its 138th president.

Which fully includes Jan. 6. Biden is one thing (and really bad bc he was VP), but they've now thoroughly normalized the veto power over elections in case we ever try that shit again.

And people in power always fall for this. And they don’t even think they’re racist while doing it.

Intolerance

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I tend to think of american politics post 1968 has been a generation born before we became a multiracial democracy arguing with itself about whether they wanted to stay that way

Trump literally still thinks he is running against Obama. He mentions it all the time.

I'm remembering how Trump seized on "not a natural born citizen!!!" and positioned himself as the leader of it, never backed down on it no matter how bullshit it became, and then a whooole lotta people gave him a pass for being an obviously racist schmuck.

I get a little frustrated when it’s suggested Trump ‘came out of nowhere,’ as he was the right’s Birther-in-Chief. Haberman has a politico piece covering him at CPAC back in like, 2010?

Oh yeah, he had been TRYING to get into politics since 2000. He just got his ass kicked every time until 2016.

He just never realized the evangelical contingency was his winning ticket since he’s the exact opposite of what they claim to value. Then it was like “oh, wait, if i double down on the racism, they’ll overlook the other stuff.” 😒

Let it be a lesson ! Coup d’états offer requires multiple pushes to finally be successful. Plow to the end of the row.

Man, I didn't even LIKE Obama very much, but he's so far above any Republican candidate of the past sixtyish years that it's not even funny. But scary black man, so GOP gonna GOP

That’s the rub, Obama wasn’t pursuing some radical agenda that would remake the country. He just wasn’t white, and that was unacceptable.

Absolutely! He was a fairly middle of the road moderate! He even kept up the drone strikes that Republicans love so much! But his skin tone makes him a horrible existential threat to them.

He: truly was the centristest centrist that ever centristed! So imagine my surprise when, at my son's eye dr appt in early 09, we had this chat with the nurse training him to use his first contacts: N: where are you guys from We: Russia N: doesn't it make you guys just mad that, after you came here

2/ to escape communism, there's now a communist in the White House? (no witty retort, I was speechless. I think I managed to squeak out "we wanted him" and she then changed the subject.)

Wowww. ...When did the USSR fall, again? Was this nurse cryogenically frozen or something?

Nurses.

And Obama wanted sooo much to be a Centrist hero. He would’ve accepted virtually anything just to pass a bipartisan bill. The Republicans could have worked him for all sorts of policy concessions in his first term but just couldn’t tamp down their hatred

Literally could’ve cut social security funding if they took yes for an answer, very similar dynamic with Biden and the border

I have a suspicion that Biden’s just calling their bluff on immigration. Doing so caused the Republicans to torpedo their most salient talking point ahead of the election, and he’s not forcing the issue like he is with student loan forgiveness

honestly, everything since 2009 mitch mcconnell declared his goal above everything else was to limit obama to one term trump, king of the birthers, "sent investigators to hawaii" in 2011 and started talking about running for president himself

I (as a Canadian) remember watching some post election results in 2012 and it contained Bill O'Reilly literally saying some nonsense about how it is the end of white hegemony in the United States which I'm sure got many in a tizzy.

Cracks me up that he was saying it like it's a bad thing.

Was legit my reaction. I bet I could find the google chat with my best friend where we are just "so what?" lol

☝🏼

Sadly, the collective memory has faded of commentators of all types, veins bulging, trying their best to avoid screaming, "Can't you see he's *black*?", at least not on-air.

A friend of my ex's had a real fit about it, screaming this exact sentence but substitute another word for black, at a birthday party that we all went to the weekend after the 08 election. I guarantee you he has no memory of it now, bit I never forgot.

If he was running today, they'd call him Barack "DEI" Obama.

It’s still very wild “go out of your way to say Hussein” came and went without too much serious contemplation

I don't think it went, it is still common, and people invent reasons to insert Obama into the discussion simply so they can say Hussein.

The best 8 years, ever.

I would have voted for him a third time if I could.

I do agree that Trump basically a backlash to Obama but one quibble here is that I am 99 percent sure he would have wrecked Trump in 2016 if he could have run again, like a 10 point blowout

Yes, because white men liked Obama way more than the liked Clinton. Obama them (us) feel cool, Clinton made them feel scolded

Also, because the media was not willing to go to scorched earth war against Obama they way they did against Clinton.

I agree. Part of the reason Get Out is such a brilliant movie is that when Bradley Whitford’s character *is telling the truth*.

Biden would have, too. I respect the reasons he didn’t run, but, I wish he had.

i wonder about this sometimes. i think there is a good chance that the media would have done more with hunter’s ukraine job etc in 2016 than they did with hilary’s emails and i just wonder how that would all play out

Amen

Get Out - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

The collapse of the "post-racial society" narrative at the hands of conspiracy theorists who were convinced payback for slavery was coming. It was really telling about how fickle this whole tolerance thing is when privileged, sheltered people get dragged down by the fears of fascists.

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