I think some of you are overstating the political brilliance of Trump putting his name on too-small stimulus checks that are gonna arrive late, or be direct deposited and possibly clawed back by banks, and be insufficient to sustain people through worsening economic conditions.
If the economy recovers in time, Trump may get a lot of credit. If it doesn’t, whatever measures he pursued are likely to seem insufficient. Idk what will happen in November but people know who the incumbent is and crude branding isn’t gonna make much of a difference.
Not saying this will be Trump's fate, but Hoover spent the latter days of 1932 fuming that Americans weren't more grateful for all he had done and lamenting that they didn't understand economics and freedom as well as he did
Either things will be looking up in Nov and Trump will benefit, or they won't and it'll hurt his chances. He may win or lose despite either condition, but the state of the economy will most likely determine whether he's "done enough," not putting his name on things.
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Good morning. Today the paperback of THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT hits shelves. When I wrote the piece that shares its name with the book, I hoped that the phrase would become obsolete. But unfortunately it remains a relevant descriptor in our politics. randomhousebooks.com/books/665171/
The CRUELTY IS THE POINT is an essay collection about the historical and ideological roots of the Trump era. The softcover contains new material on the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and the future of Trump-style politics.
For ambitious Republicans, the best way to win the affection of primary voters and positive coverage from right wing media is to prove your loyalty is by using state power to target the people they hate and fear. Which is why both the book and the phrase remain sadly relevant.
There’s really no difference between Trump tweeting executive orders at his television while watching fox news and this.
By the way all of the justices who signed onto Gorsuch’s concurrence citing a Ron Klain *retweet* also signed onto Roberts’ opinion in the travel ban case that Trump’s public statements about muslims were meaningless because the lawyers cleaned it up.
Today, the statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, after years of protest. It was the inspiration for 2017's white supremacist rally, where activist Heather Heyer was killed. This is long overdue. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/r…
The true Lee has long been hidden behind a fog of nostalgia. Months prior to the rally, I wrote about Lee's canonization as a reluctant, anti-slavery Confederate—part of the postwar propaganda push to whitewash secession and justify the Jim Crow system. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
I revisit this essay in THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT, because the Lee mythology was the reason the white supremacists believed they could use him to mainstream their cause—and they were delighted with Trump's defense of the rally. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
I write about this in THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT but once black men could no longer vote it drastically changed the character of the party and if this disenfranchisement project succeeds the Dems will change substantially as well.
The point of this project is not simply to insulate their power from the public, it is to engineer the electorate to be narrow enough that even when they lose the rival party is restrained by the character of the populations who retain meaningful political influence.
*drastically changed the character of the republican party. You get the idea.
Starting to think that maybe these guys aren’t as big on free speech and rigorous factual inquiry as they said
Anyway the *founders* knew the founding was flawed and we know that because they left us their conflicted thoughts on slavery for posterity. An ostensibly patriotic person would know this, a nationalist in the Orwellian sense would deny it or refuse to even learn.
A few years ago I wrote an essay titled "The Cruelty Is The Point" on Trump's approach to politics and policy. On Tuesday, my book sharing that title is being published. Today in the @nytimes, I explain why Trumpist politics didn't end with his defeat. nytimes.com/2021/06/26/opi…
Cruelty is a part of human nature; we're all capable of it. But in American history, its elevation to a virtue in politics is strongly associated with attempts to deny people their fundamental rights, from the Founding, to Reconstruction, to the Civil Rights Movement to now.
The greatest threat to American democracy has always been the drive by some of its leaders to deny human beings the basic rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence, because people want to be free.