I am very excited to share the cover for my forthcoming book: The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump's America, which is coming out on June 29. You can preorder here: bit.ly/3psRSrr
I hope you'll buy a copy and encourage others to the same!
TCITP contains some of my Atlantic essays, but is mostly new material, including new pieces on the politics of police unions and the myth that European immigrants at the turn of the century came to America "the right way," among others.
A strange kind of denial greeted Trump's ascension, and a similar one is setting in after his defeat, both about what he did and represented, as though he were just an aberration, rather than a manifestation of beliefs that have plagued American democracy since the founding.
Yet the historical and ideological forces that brought Trump to the fore remain with us and will shape American politics for some time to come—you can already see this in GOP efforts to restrict the vote so that they need not be accountable to the public.
I hope this book acts as a small bulwark against the capriciousness of American public memory, which is so often distorted by those who consciously seek to warp history in order to defend injustice in the present, as we are seeing in the aftermath of Trump's loss.
Obviously pre-ordering makes a huge difference with these things, so I would truly appreciate you doing so. Also, please consider ordering from your local indies, which could really use the help. bit.ly/3psRSrr
Thank you and I can't wait to share the book with you!
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Baldwin’s remark that “Urban renewal is negro removal” is 60 years old, but when mocking actual history as “wokism” gone mad, it helps for both the mocker and their audience to be completely ignorant of that history. Relies on it.
Yes I get it, it really sounds crazy that white planners would destroy entire black neighborhoods to build a road. It still happened. theatlantic.com/business/archi…
OMFG WHO IS THIS YOUNG WOKE SAYING BUILDING ROADS IS RACIST?!!?!?! (It's Clarence Thomas).
Before cell phone cameras, de jure and de facto segregation made it hard for non-black Americans to pierce the veil and see the disparate treatment black people experience at the hands of the police. Their own experiences may have made black complaints seem impossible.
In recent years that veil has been pierced by technology, and it has opened many people’s views to a reality they were previously unable to see. At the same time, it has sparked a movement in favor of impunity for armed agents of the state who abuse their powers.
This new movement is fully aware that these abuses exist. The veil has been pierced for them too. But they see brutality as a virtue, and they believe as first class citizens, they will never be subject to the same treatment, and can safely support cruelty towards others.
They’re not mad that Obama said there are religiously conservative Latinos who vote Republican (though that’s not why Trump improved his vote share among Latinos.) They’re mad because Obama called Trump racist, a description that logically extends to the people who voted for him.
In other words the thing they’re actually mad about is white people being called racist, which they find outrageous and offensive, especially from the black former president who should shut up and be grateful. Trump’s racism though, is fine.
*not *necessarily* why Trump improved his Latino vote share, I think it’s not fully clear why yet, but we’ll find out.
So there are LOTS of differences between the U.S. after the Civil War and right now, as Adam says (and my argument is not that this is a 1:1 comparison, but that we are potentially at a similar crossroads in terms of potential for progress)
But I actually want to respond by focusing on something that is maybe underappreciated about how little things had changed in the immediate aftermath, politically. In 1868, the Dems run Horatio Seymour on their classic themes of white supremacy and economic populism.
Most people focus on Francis Blair, his virulently racist running mate, but Seymour's convention speech is interesting to me because of its combining of certain...familiar themes. (Note he considers enfranchisement of black men racist...against white people!)
A couple of tells of a bad faith argument: one is you don’t name the person you’re arguing with, another is that you falsely paraphrase the argument because quoting it accurately would refute the point being made.
The piece actually argues that Farrakhan is a fringe figure who retains a certain amount of support despite his bigotry because of NOI’s work among particularly impoverished communities, and because his white critics lack the standing to discredit him.
I could not be clearer about my enmity for Farrakhan; that’s not the same as not understanding the sources of his continuing relevance. If you don’t want to understand it that’s fine but don’t pretend I something I didn’t say.