Bizarre and unreflective essay from a person who used to be subtle and nuanced. Hammering in the cliche one final time, Christopher Caldwell says Trump 'spoke to a downwardly mobile, mostly white working class that had been forgotten by the elites.' thetimes.co.uk/article/donald…
um...no. Biden voters were poorer, overall, than Trump voters. Also many Trump voters were middle and upper class (look at who came to the Capitol). Also, Trump's policies were all 100% geared to help Trump and his cronies, not the white working class or anyone else.
also, this sentence is incredible: 'Incomes rose modestly for the lowest-paid workers, although this may have been due to minimum-wage laws passed in several states.' Who passed the minimum wage laws? It wasn't Republicans.
Now Trump is finally gone, it might actually be possible to do some things that will help the working class, like better health care, which he blocked, or acceleration of the covid vaccine, or real covid relief. Though of course Republicans in Congress will work against it.
Even the rise of leftish censoriousness, which I don't like either, has been worsened by Trump. Of course the presence of a sinister buffoon in the White House, who winks at racists and white supremacists, has inflamed the far-left. Why would it not?
And no - the main problem with Trump is not that he was incompetent. The problem was that he was malevolent. He sought to do harm and damage. He and his team are still trying to wreck things with only 3 days left to go.
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"The plan to surround the Capitol includes assassinating Democrats as well as Republicans who didn’t support Trump’s effort to overturn the election ― and allowing other Republicans to enter the building and control government." huffpost.com/entry/democrat… via @HuffPostPol
also, some members of Congress want metal detectors at the Inauguration, in case one of their colleagues tries to assassinate the new president
If the voters don't eventually punish the Republicans who are calling for a de facto coup, then we have to conclude that a substantial number of Americans no longer believe in our democracy either.
Also, the work of Karen Stenner, which is cited in my book, Twilight of Democracy, suggests that in any population there is a large percentage of people who are uncomfortable with democracy; she suggests that we ought to find ways to reach out to them
Introducing Steven Yates, just named head of Radio Free Asia, the most important public diplomacy tool that the US has in China. He seems none too keen on our next president
Time for Christmas shopping 2020! So many good books were published this year, despite everything. Everyone should read Putin's People by @CatherineBelton, on the deep roots of Russia's current ruling class. I reviewed it for @TheAtlantic here: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
I also loved The Fifth Sun, by Camilla Townsend, which won the Cundill Prize. You think you know who the Aztecs are... but you don't. You think you know about the Conquest of Mexico...but you don't. mcgill.ca/newsroom/chann…
Really unexpected pleasure for me was Roderick Beaton's Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, the history of the contemporary *idea* of Greece. There are lots of parallels to the modern history of other countries, you will be surprised amazon.co.uk/Greece-Biograp…
On a different subject: we just watched Russia With Love, and as the credits rolled, I realized that the great Lotte Lenya played one of the bad guys. Weimar seems multiple eras away from James Bond/the 1960s, and yet one lifetime encompassed both.
Here she is singing Mack the Knife, the song Kurt Weill wrote for her
And here is Louis Armstrong singing Mack the Knife, with a shout-out to Lotte Lenya