Writer's Block.

A thread for @alixabeth and others. This is not about writing problems in general: procrastination, frustration, stress eating, pain, and so on. It's for when you cannot remember how to write- like there is a gap in your brain- and the whole world goes gray. 1/ You might well be a prolific writer, but it starts to dry up. It's honestly like you can't remember how to do it. Upset, you tell friends, who joke about it, because OF COURSE you can write. But you can't, and you can't convince anyone you have a big problem. So you wither. /2

Re: Barr's now apparently criminal inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation. FWIW, Trump's GOP has made disinformation surrounding investigations a key part of their political strategy. /1 There was Clinton's emails, of course, which last week's report showed was completely fabricated. There was not a crime. The investigation was, itself, the story that would change votes. It seems that Giuliani was vital to the strategy of keeping investigation leaks coming. /2

Although it has been a lifetime since this morning when Trump threatened civil war, he was onto something. Not a war now- which Russian trolls have been pushing and right wingers have echoed for over a year- but how the present looks like the years before the real Civil War. /1 In the 1830s, wealthy slaveowners began to defend slavery as good for white men. But when Indian Removal in 1830s pushed native people off rich cotton lands, land prices skyrocketed and forced many whites into poverty (see @rothmanistan's Flush Times and Fever Dreams). /2

But majority of US- a "liberal consensus"- liked active gov't. The GI Bill gave educations to 7.8 million soldiers, letting them climb to middle class, and from 1945-1960, GNP jumped 250%, from $200 bn to $500 bn, baby boom meant families and consumers. Why go back? /40 In 1951, young Taft believer William F. Buckley Jr. wrote God and Man at Yale, saying that Enlightenment idea of making fact-based arguments must be wrong because voters kept choosing active gov't, which was bad by definition. /41

Cherry-picked versions of GOP history argue that the party has been unchanging in its support for black rights and ordinary Americans, but that's just not right. The long history of the GOP has been both glorious- as they argue- and sordid.

Let's have a look, shall we? /1

https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1152220958041812992

The GOP organized in the 1850s. White northern man had long worried that rich southern slaveholders were taking over the government. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act opening the West, which had been free under the Missouri Compromise, to slavery. /2

@Cernovich @MaraGay Douglass was indeed a Republican, a member of the party that organized to stand against a cabal of wealthy men who controlled the US government and used it to establish an oligarchy. Their wealth came from enslaved labor, so Republicans sought to stop the spread of slavery. /1 @Cernovich @MaraGay It was a proud party, one that believed the economy grew from the bottom up, and so the government should protect equality of opportunity for all individuals (men, but that was expected in that era). /2

There seems to be some surprise that Republicans in 1860 enslaved people. Of course they did. The GOP was not initially an anti-slavery party. It was an anti-SLAVE OWNER party. Anti-slavery came after 1863.

Let's take a look at the origins of the Republican Party, shall we? /1 The spark that ignited a new party was the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. Until then, (white men) folks had an uneasy truce over slavery. Under the 1820 Missouri Compromise, slavery couldn't go to western land acquired under the 1803 Louisiana Purchase above 36" 30' (MO excepted). /2

After the Civil War, heroic individuals rebuild their lives and rededicated the nation. At the same time, angry and desperate men warped our politics in ways that still echo.

Let's take a look at Reconstruction, shall we? /1 During the Civil War, the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln invented national taxation (including the income tax and the IRS), and ended racial slavery to enable black men to work hard and rise. The conjunction of these two things was crucial. /2

The problem is not necessarily the Electoral College; the problem is that in the early 19th C the EC changed from a deliberative system to a winner-take-all
system. Both add a mechanism between the popular vote and the president, but one is a brake, the other an accelerator. /1 To understand how we got here, you have to remember that the Framers did not foresee the rise of political parties. Or rather, they hoped it would never happen. so they created a system divided horizontally, if you will, rather than vertically. "Best men" choose leaders. /2

The recent disinformation campaign against New York's new abortion law reflects the takeover of the GOP by radical Movement Conservatives in the 1970s. It's a story not about principle, but about power.

Let's take a look at the modern political history of abortion, shall we? /1 States began to criminalize abortion in the 1870s (a process itself about politics that I will tell someday). By 1960, an observer estimated between 200K and 1.2 million illegal US abortions a year, endangering women, primarily poor ones who could not afford a workaround. /2

Our first government shutdown happened in 1879, when former Confederates tried to achieve in Congress what they had failed to win on the battlefields of the Civil War. That moment is instructive for today.

Let's take a look at the 1879 shutdown, shall we? /1 In 1878, economic issues gave Democrats both houses of Congress. To make sure Ds would win the presidency in 1880, they set out to get rid of black voters (who tended to vote Republican) by getting rid of the federal soldiers in the South who were protecting black rights. /2

Remember the "caravan?" Trump is not the first to try to save the midterms by deploying troops against a pretend threat. On November 13, 1890, Republican Benjamin Harrison sent troops into South Dakota to put down a Lakota "uprising."

Let's see how that turned out, shall we? /1 By 1890, Republicans were on the ropes. No longer the party of farmers and workers, they propped up big business with tariffs that enabled industrialists to collude to raise prices. In 1884, voters elected Democrat Grover Cleveland, who promised to protect workers. /2

Apparently some folks are just now learning Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Lincoln helped to organize the GOP in the 1850s. He and his colleagues articulated a vital American ideology, and then put it into practice.

Let's take a look at Lincoln and his GOP, shall we? /1 In the 1850s, rich slave owners-- less than 1% of the population-- controlled the federal government and ran it for their own benefit, refusing to pay taxes or submit to regulation, but demanding federal power to hunt down their slaves and protect slavery. /2

Let's talk about today's fears of "voter fraud," why the modern GOP pushes them, and how they have warped our politics since 1986, shall we?

In 1986, Reagan's sixth year, the GOP had to defend vulnerable Senators elected w/him in 1980. (The House was already Democratic).1/ But the Reagan Revolution already was unpopular. So, demanding "ballot integrity," GOP sent mail to voters in Democratic counties IN, LA, and MO. Undeliverable mail meant purging of those voters. A GOP leader from LA explained: 2/

The GOP effort to slam through the Kavanaugh nomination is a flashpoint because it reveals the essence of today's GOP: a belief that some people are better than others, and should rule the rest of us. That has been the heart of GOP since 1980; the Kavanaugh case exposes it. 1/ In 1981, Reagan said "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He meant that regulations protecting workers + the environment hampered businessmen's freedom, and taxes to pay for the bureaucrats to enforce regulations redistributed wealth. 2/

A short history of American tax policy for @winesalongirl, highlighting the larger questions at stake: when we levy taxes, we are deliberately shaping society. The question is... what society are we shaping? 1/ Before the Civil War, the US had no national taxation because southern slave holders kept the government small and inactive. They wanted no interference with slavery + wanted money to accumulate in their hands, so they could advance "progress." A few tariffs funded government./2

@DineshDSouza Sigh. @KevinMKruse and @TheTattooedProf and I drew straws, and I lost.

OK. Here goes....

Lincoln's GOP was not "left-wing." It was, indeed, conservative. It held to the principle the Founders stated in the Declaration of Independence: that "all men are created equal."/1 @DineshDSouza @KevinMKruse @TheTattooedProf That concept was flawed from the start, of course, because the Founders also enslaved people and denied that women had rights. But Americans at the time believed the government was set up to promote the ability of white men to work hard and rise. But the 1830s brought change./2

Someone asked for a thread on "identity politics." Here goes: The roots of this idea are in a famous 1964 article by political scientist Philip Converse. In that era, the vast majority of voters believed in the "liberal consensus," the New Deal idea that the government... /1 had a role to play in regulating business, protecting social welfare, and promoting infrastructure. So Converse argued that voters did not, generally, vote according to ideology-- they all agreed-- but by "group benefit." Huge news which launched all studies of voter behavior. /2

@led260 @DineshDSouza @KevinMKruse Thanks, Lisa.

The first two books were quite fine-grained scholarly looks at GOP from 1850-1901. Then: @led260 West from Appomattox (a NYTBR editor's choice), about politics and the rise of the middle class. Important ideas, lots of good material, but a detailed read: amazon.com/West-Appomatto…

@DineshDSouza Seriously? You're going to try this again, after what @KevinMKruse did to you?

OK then. Let's take a look at the history of the Republican Party, shall we? @DineshDSouza @KevinMKruse The Republican Party formed in 1854, after rich slaveowners got Congress to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which let them spread slavery across the nation. Northerners recognized that free workers-- the little guy-- would be shut out of the West + rich slaveowners would take over.

Re: Posse Comitatus.

1. This 1878 law is a big deal, passed not to keep troops out of the South, but to keep troops from being used against strikes after President Hayes called them out at the bequest of railroad baron Thomas A. Scott during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike. 2. It said that troops (army, amended 1956 to include Air Force, and others say they abide by it even if not specifically named) could not be used domestically unless authorized by the Constitution or Congress (which meant they could be used to put down domestic insurrection)...