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1. Back in 2016, I had the chance to ask GOP primary voters about the subject of my scholarly work—voluntary associations. And it turned out that civic disengagement was tightly correlated with support for Donald Trump: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
2. A new research paper took a closer look at the same subject: “Preferences for Donald Trump are inversely related to the density of civic, religious and sports associations, as well as to a commonly used measure of generalized trust."
(h/t @TPCarney)
papers.nber.org/tmp/59388-w276…
3. The paper doesn’t offer a causal account. Alienation likely plays a role. But as I’ve also elsewhere, democracy is an acquired habit, often inculcated through voluntary associations, and increasing numbers of Americans are no longer acquiring it: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
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Yoni Appelbaum
@YAppelbaum
1. For Trump, if Gettysburg holds special meaning, it is characteristically personal—it’s where he delivered a speech on Oct. 22, 2016 conceived as his closing case, in a then-faltering bid. And what a speech it was: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
2. As I wrote at the time, there’s a long history of presidential addresses at Gettysburg. They stress the fragility of democracy, and the potential for the people working together to lift themselves up.

Trump’s speech was mostly about his own resentments.
3. FDR came to Gettysburg to warn against "those who seek to stir up political animosity or to build political advantage by the distortion of facts; those who, by declining to follow the rules of the game, seek to gain an unfair advantage."
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Yoni Appelbaum
@YAppelbaum
1. A short thread on the executive actions the president signed while I was offline today. I think they’re a very big deal, for reasons that extend beyond their specifics—they expose a weakness in our constitutional system.
2. in the runup to the Revolution, many blamed Parliament for its tyranny, but also the king for his inaction. That diagnosis spurred the convention to give its new executive powers no King of England had even dreamed of exercising in more than a hundred years.
3. When we talk about “checks and balances,” this is what we mean. But presidential systems have a flaw, too—they account for the danger of legislative overreach, but not for the threat of legislative gridlock. And when they collapse, they tend to follow a common pattern.
Read 6 tweets
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Yoni Appelbaum
@YAppelbaum
1. A century ago, an architect at McKim, Mead & White had a problem. He was working on New York’s General Post Office , and needed an inscription long enough to stretch the length of building, which fronted on Eighth Avenue.
2. He reached back to Herodotus, on the couriers of Persia. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” It became the postal creed, a commitment to always getting the job done.
3. The new postmaster general has struck a blow at that creed. “The service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks the overtime necessary to ensure that deliveries can be completed each day,” the NYT recently reported.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/…
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