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Tom Nichols Profile picture
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31 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
One of the things that's also amazing, and this response gets nearer to it, is that "economic grievance" arguments fail to make any class or *race* distinctions. /1
The people chanting in front of state capitols are not the poor and dispossessed. If economic grievance and inequality were the issue, black people would have overrun the Congress, not bored white realtors addicted to Instagramming their adventures. /2
If income inequality drove insane political behavior, black people - and black women, in particular, would not have saved the country and made Joe Biden the Democratic nominee. "All this political instability is about how I can't buy a house" is a very white argument. /3
And for me, a white, male, old, former GOPer to be reminding you that "income inequality drives political instability is a very *white* argument" is a weird place to be, but here we are. /4x

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Tom Nichols Profile picture
24 Jan
In the case of an authoritarian state like Russia, the way protest brings change is: the elites around Putin worry that public anger will sway the institutions of the state - the cops, the military - to refuse further repression. They start cutting deals internally. /1
People like @Kasparov63 and @IlvesToomas and others can speak about this with more authority, but regimes collapse when other institutions in the state decide the risk and anger from their fellow citizens is no longer worth what they gain from participating in repression. /2
This is what Putin fears most of all: Another Ukraine or Georgia type "color revolution," where popular anger makes basic administration of the state impossible and key players (like the power ministers) start defecting from the ruling coalition. /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
23 Jan
Just to amplify David's excellent analogy, let me explain a few other things about Russia.

- There will be no Joe Biden elected six months after the protests.
- The entire Russian police state will remain in place even if Putin drops dead tomorrow.

/1
- The size of the Russian police apparatus is immense and centralized and is not just a bunch of local police departments

- In Russia, the media is not on the side of the protesters and will do everything it can to minimize them and stay out of Putin's way

/2
- Many of you have tweeted George Floyd's name, as well as Breonna Taylor and others. The fact that you know their names is a huge difference. People will be killed and tortured in Russia and you will never know who they are.

- Yes, Russia *does* target specific groups.

/3
Read 8 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
20 Jan
Everyone's reaching out and thanking each other for getting through this. I am not kidding that I will not fully relax until the nuclear codes are away from him. But thank you all for the support and enduring my TDS, which I also call "sanity." /1
People have thanked me for using a voice and a platform, but you folks gave that to me by reading me and putting up with me. (A half million of you!) Sometimes I wrote to buck up my own spirits, sometimes to buck up yours, and sometimes just to vent the anger we all felt. /2
You're not rid of me, of course. I and many others will stay on Trump's enablers pretty much forever. And I promise I will keep writing the really important stuff like shoes on airplanes and why Boston is better than the suckage of a certain overrated UK blues ripoff band. /3
Read 5 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
18 Jan
Reading this piece from last summer by @normative, I realize that there is a parallel here between Qanon's "Storm" and the Cold War cults that sprang up at various times, but especially in the 70s and the 80s. Bear with me. /1

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…
@normative "The Storm" is a moment, like nuclear war, after which everything is different, even if there's bloodshed. It's purgative, restorative, resets all the social relationships, ends all traditional and normal social structures. It's shaking society like a huge Etch-A-Sketch.
/2
Why is this so attractive to so many broken people? Precisely because it *is* a reset. It's awful, but it's an awfulness that sets everything - including all social differences - back to zero. The high and mighty are smited, and the Common Folk live by their superior wits. /3
Read 10 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
14 Jan
Watching footage of the Loser Sturm overrunning the Capitol during the Beer Belly Putsch, I am struck again by how much of what plagues us is an addiction to the narcissistic idea that everyone is the most important person ever, that everyone should be the boss of everything. /1
The raging narcissism, particularly of the cosplaying men who now deny that they wanted no part of any of the seditious stuff, is striking. Men who have a huge reserve of self regard that does not extend to shaving or wearing a clean shirt or other basic signs of adulthood. /2
These are people - again, especially the men - trapped in the eternal drama of adolescence. They are creatures of a leisure society, bored by the ordinariness of life, angry that the world is not more interesting and that others refuse to pay them their heroic due. /3
Read 16 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
14 Jan
So, with all the talk of Orwell, I want to point out that this is not "1984" level un-personing, but it's Soviet style denunciation. It's not even ambitious or interesting enough to be Stalinism; it's more like moldy Brezhnevism. This is the "Sovietizing" of the GOP. /1
In the post-Stalin, post-Khrushchev USSR, the Party had lost all ideological conviction and was completely exhausted and bereft of any dynamism. (Sound familiar?) The only thing left was Party solidarity and loyalty to the leader. (Sound familiar?) /2
This was a party that relied on stale formulations and buzzwords and formulations, enforced by "leading comrades" in the Party journals and outlets. (Sound familiar?) Falls from grace could come fast for suspected disloyalty or any kind of creative thinking. /3
Read 7 tweets

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