Thread by @drvolts

A striking quote from William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech in 1896. (via @adam_tooze) adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-44…

In the wake of a period of horrendous crisis & suffering in the US economy, Bryan tried to rally a populist revolt, win the presidency, & end the gold standard, which favored the rich at the expense of the masses. He & his followers believed the revolt necessary & inevitable.

But Bryan, opposed by status quo interests, lost. The suffering continued; the gold standard stayed in place for years to come.

I flag all this because Tooze's post reminded me of something I've been thinking about a lot in the last few years.

In US history class, we tend to learn about the chapters we now view as triumphs -- the end of slavery, women's suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, etc. But what I didn't realize until much later is that those chapters are the exceptions. There are many, many more examples ...

... of Americans trying really hard to be better & more just ... & then reactionary shitheads successfully thwarting them. Aaaaalmost making progress ... and then not. Obviously Reconstruction is the glaring example here, but there are so many more; I learn new ones all the time.

Like Bryan's near-victory. Think of how the US could have been transformed! But no. Reactionary shitheads.

The more I learn about episodes like this, the more it seems to me that the essential story of the US is not the sporadic & inadequate progressive moves forward...

... but the much more frequent & consistent *blocking* of progress by (white) reactionary shitheads. So many near-misses. So much effort & sweat & passion from people of good will, thwarted by a distorted system that empowers liars who shill for the powerful. Again & again.

It's funny, on some level, that as a culture we celebrate & teach our kids about the few times the reactionaries lost & we made some progress. But even as we celebrate those past victories, we allow reactionaries to block progress in the present.

That's what B. Clinton was, and Obama too -- a brief window in which real, substantial progress could have been made ... but was largely thwarted by reactionaries. And now we're watching it play out *again*, in excruciatingly slow motion, in DC.

That's the bulk of US history: chances to be better ... that the establishment successfully blocks or deters. That's the median tale, the most common, & the one most likely at any given moment.

Yes, I'm a barrel of laughs today. ☀️