I do indeed, and appreciate this thoughtful critique and engagement. I also don’t think we disagree...
.@crooksandliars I like your term, “cold civil war” to describe what we’re engaged in right now. There is a minority, much as there has always been, that wants America to be one way, and a majority that embraces the fact that it is becoming another.
The fight, whether during slavery or women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, immigrants rights etc, has always come down to the embrace or rejection of change and modernity.
When I said Trumpism - which to your point is just an amplification of what base-lived Republicanism and conservatism has been morphing into for decades, combined with the plutocratic impulses of elite-practiced Republicanism/conservatism - is a dark part of “us,” I meant America
itself. Because let’s face it, it has always been there. We can no more deny it than to deny this country’s birth as a slave republic. But that doesn’t mean you don’t face it and fight it, because that ethos currently has close to absolute power.
And that’s bad news for vulnerable people, for religious minorities, secular people, people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, working people, women and especially the poor.
Obamaism was basically the opposite. It was the majority (remember, Obama won election by 10 million votes and re-election by 5 million) embracing modernity and hoping that *that* was America. Well it was most of America. But the other part never quit fighting it.
The big question now is whether the majority - the urban, connected, multicultural America, has it in them to fight as hard as the other side consistently has to regain power.
