Thread by @PeteDDavis

One powerful theme that no 2020 candidate has fully tapped into yet is the idea of what might be called "intimate disrespect"—the disrespect you might receive at work, at home, in your neighborhood from the people who see themselves as your superiors. Here's what I mean:

Reactionaries, @CoreyRobin has argued, are defined by & organized around the project of defending against subordinates asserting their power—men against women asserting their power, whites against blacks asserting their power, bosses against workers asserting their power.

These evoke so much passion, Robin argues, because they're so intimate: your daughter talking back to you, your maid taking a day off, your waiter not finding your joke funny, your intern being creeped out by how you treat her, your worker not being grateful for their job.

But here's the thing: all of these intimate, unequal relationships are also experienced by the other side — by the so-deemed subordinates. They're the ones who are actually experiencing real disrespect from their so-deemed superiors all the time!

They're the ones not listened to; the ones treated as faceless, nameless; the ones whose needs & dreams are ignored; the ones who are, in very intimate ways—not by famous people on screens, but in person—disrespected (which, as @ebruenig once shared, is Latin for "not seen.")

Given this, I think there is a real opportunity to reach people in politics if you talk about how your vision for the future of our country connects not just to material outcomes, but also to how those material outcomes help address these intimate moments of disrespect.

Here's what I mean — imagine a candidate asking a crowd:
+ "Have you ever needed to go to the bathroom and your boss said no?"
+ "Has your boss disrespected your needs when you were pregnant? When you had to go to a funeral? When you had a sick friend or parent or kid?"

+ "Have you ever shared a good idea in a meeting and no one listened because of who you were?"
+ "Have you ever had your landlord not believe you when you said that the heat wasn't working?"
+ "Have people treated you as stupid just because English is your second language?"

+ "Have you ever been put on hold for hours by a big corporation because they know that they can get away with it?"
+ "Have you ever been bullied out of business by a monopolistic predator?"
+ "Has a developer had their way with your street, without asking for your input?"

+ "Have you been put in a box by a government figure—assumed to be something you're not?"
+ "Have you ever raised concerns about something and nobody listened?"
+ "Have you ever been viewed as part of an undifferentiated group instead of as the unique individual that you are?"

And then, as people share their stories about this, you can start talking about how we can come together around a different vision for the future of the country — a different moral vision and a different institutional vision — that could address this disrespect.

Because that's what democracy's about: When more people have more power in more ways—through unions (labor, tenant, consumer), through social infrastructure (educational & economic security programs), through participatory government—disrespect is harder to get away with.

It's like what Walt Whitman said about America — it should be "the centre of equal daughters, equal sons"; it should be a place where you don't have to "take off your hat" to "any man or number of men."

It should be — and can be — the land of mutual respect.