Thread by @SteveSchmidtSES

Let’s dissect this. This is what Culture War looks like. We do not have a functioning two party system in America. The Republican Party is the vessel of an autocratic cult of personality, hostile to democracy, civil rights and equality that is teeming with menace, extremism and 1

https://twitter.com/MiamiHerald/status/1403327082374041602

overt racism. Everybody in America who wants to live in a democracy and more importantly want their great-grandchildren to live in a democracy, regardless of how they label themselves; or how progressive or conservative they are, is on the other side of this indecency. (2)

The GOP has shrunk dramatically since the 1/6 attack. Right now, today, they are desperately trying to quiet the ceaseless insanity that is plain for all to see and make the murderous insurrection fade away. The entire campaign is fear based. The core of the message is that Black

people are taking over. They hate you and are going to take your money and job and ruin your life. They hate America and your children. They are trying to indoctrinate them in socialism while bringing more brown and black people from the “third world” to take over.

The 1619 Project is slandered through the maliced delusions of extremist politicians who portray an academic report as an advancing Panzer Division of black fury aimed at razing western civilization, European culture and white lives. There is a reason for (5)

this. @RonDeSantisFL can now proclaim a great victory against black cultural aggression. The Caesar of Tallahassee will deliver a great phyrrhic victory for the racially aggrieved Trump voter. Slavery was foundational to the formation of (6)

our nation and it has defined our history. Anyone who doesn’t understand this falls somewhere on a spectrum between ignorant and delusional. We are a nation that is great enough to face our past. We can both celebrate our glories, triumphs and achievements while learning (7)

about our stories of shame. We fought a war over slavery that killed over 700.000. Adjusted for today’s population, the number would be 7 million dead. The effort to break antebellum racism in the slave states and establish a society rooted in equality, including (8)

for newly freed Black Americans exhausted itself by 1876 with the end of reconstruction. Southern Blacks lived in an unjust, violent apartheid state for the next 80+ years. This is American history. Our story is long and complex. Let’s use our history to perfect our Union. (9)

There was a big budget miniseries in the 1980’s called the North and South. If memory serves, there was one preposterous scene where after the days fighting is done, benign Confederates and their contented slaves meet up for a barn dance with local ladies and northern soldiers.

That isn’t history. It’s an obscenity. Healthy free countries don’t build walls to keep their people from leaving and they don’t attempt to erase reality by building an alternate one. Perhaps there is a lesson from Germany. The Modern German Reichstag in (11)

Berlin, covered by a magnificent glass dome is both an architectural marvel and historic treasure. The purpose of the glass is so that darkness can never again find its way to the floor of German lawmaking. The monuments to memory, evil,hate and catastrophe abound around this (12

remarkable building scarred from the vicious fighting that raged until Nazism was finally crushed. There is a powerful monument that shows the moment German democracy died. Tucked in a corner is a wall fitted with small plaques naming the elected members of the Reichstag during

the life of the Weimar Republic. Each plaque holds the name of an member. The one that caught my eye was Adolf Hitler. Shortly after his name appears the name plaques turn blank. There is a sea of blank spaces that span decades until a return of Democracy. 14

The light is the answer. The truth is the answer. We can face it as a nation because we are strong enough to do it. John Lewis was right when he observed that no matter how we have arrived at this moment together we are in fact all here together now. 15

We can’t change the past but we can learn from it. America’s kids don’t need legislation to protect them from the 1619 project. America’s kids need journalists, pro democracy elected officials and a lot of their parents to wake up, pull their heads out of their asses and realize

the magnitude of the threat to democracy is existential and deeply real. #