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Terry Bouton Profile picture
Terry Bouton
@TerryBoutonHist
Historian of the American Revolution and democracy. Author of Taming Democracy. Will keep this, but also migrating to bluer skies.
18 subscribers
Jan 7, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
When he was packing up after interviewing @NCookBouton and me for Good Morning Britain, @richardgaisford warned us that Jan. 6 would haunt us in unexpected ways. He was right. Witnessing that awful day firsthand changed us both in numerous ways. The casual expressions of violence were the most haunting. It was bone-chilling to hear and see the different branches of the Republican Party talking proudly and excitedly about creating a new American Revolution through violence. It's a miracle J6 wasn't more of a bloodbath.
Sep 23, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
DeSantis is repeating Gordon Wood's misleading post-1619 Project take:
"In fact, the Revolution created the first antislavery movement in the history of the world. In 1775 the first antislavery convention known to humanity met in Philadelphia..."
-Power and Liberty (2021) Gordon Wood is wrong: The 1775 antislavery meeting wasn't even the first antislavery meeting for the guy who supposedly started the movement. Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet had been mobilizing Quakers, speaking out, & publishing antislavery pamphlets since the 1750s.
Aug 20, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If the AHA really wants to atone, perhaps leadership could confront the real existential threats to the discipline (book banning, attacks on curricula, teacher intimidation) beyond producing document packages for the classroom or issuing statements in trade publications. Let's engage the public where it lives: on different social media platforms. The AHA has no real social media presence. Most of its tweets get little interaction. A high quality video posted to YouTube in May defending teaching the history of racism has gotten just 3,000 views.
Apr 9, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Maybe there's more than meets the eye to that Russian missile with "For the children" written on it. This could easily be signaling the global far-right QAnon/Fox News-fueled movement that Putin has cultivated and supported from its inception.

Hear me out. 🧵
h/t @_Noelle_Cook That missile was clearly meant to send a message. But to whom? Putin doesn't have a lot of allies left. But one of the staunchest is the global QAnon & far-right conspiracy communities, which see Putin as a good-guy and tends to see Zelensky and Ukraine as bad-guys.
Mar 21, 2022 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
Spent another day at People’s Convoy camp and noticed some changes from our first visit. Two weeks in there were fewer trucks, cars, and outside visitors. The dancing at the live bands was painful to watch.

But that’s not the story.

(w/@_Noelle_Cook)

Here are our four most important observations:
1) The encampment has an ever-changing population. There are plenty of stalwarts who have been there from the start. But most of the camp is filled with people who stay for a few days or a week and then head home.
Mar 20, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Think the People's Convoy is going away? Think again. They have busy been mainstreaming and movement-building. You probably heard that they met with Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ron Johnson (R-WI). But there's been a lot more going on. 🧵 On 3/17, a Montana trucker broke away from circling the beltway, drove to the Capitol, and demanded to meet with his representatives in Congress. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) obliged, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) joined in for a tour of the Capitol Building.
Mar 6, 2022 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
We spent four hours walking around the “Peoples Convoy” Trucker encampment at the Hagerstown Speedway in MD. Anyone dismissing this as a failed event by the crazy fringe is missing the big picture.

Here are five important take-aways. 🧵

(Photos by @_Noelle_Cook). 1) There were thousands of people there. About a hundred semi-trailer cabs and hundreds of convoy pick-up trucks and SUVs filled nearly every spot in the huge Speedway parking lot. Tents were everywhere. On top of this, thousands of locals came for the day from MD, PA, WV, VA.
Mar 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The stalled Russian convoy reminds me of British General John Burgoyne's army on the way to the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. Both past and present feature huge slow-moving convoys, constant harassment, logistical nightmares, and fatal underestimates of local resistance. 🧵 Like the Russian convoy, Burgoyne led a massive wagon train overland that was slowed by heavy rains, muddy roads, unwieldy artillery, and constant attacks and sabotage by Patriot militias that felled trees across roads and blew up bridges to slow Burgoyne's march.
Jan 8, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The fixes suggested here for healing the racial divide offer no real solutions because they ignore how entrenched racism stands at the core of the split. White supremacy never gives up without a fight. You don't solve the crisis of democracy by ignoring it's central problems. 1/ In “Cease-Fire in the Culture Wars,” Yascha Mounk blames "the elite" for endangering democracy by putting Trump voters "on the receiving end of a culture war in which the most powerful elements of their own societies look down on them.”
His solution?
Aug 27, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Lt. Michael Byrd did more than he knows. I was at the Capitol Insurrection observing on the east (non-mall) side and witnessed the difference his actions made. Shooting Ashli Babbitt stopped another wave of violent insurrectionists from entering the Capitol. Just before Lt. Byrd shot Babbitt, insurrectionists inside the Capitol had managed to open a door on the House side. At the time, the crowd on east side was almost all on the center stairs, having no luck trying to (re)break into the doors that led into the Rotunda.
Jul 6, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Six months ago I witnessed the Capitol Insurrection firsthand and reported the open embrace of authoritarianism--not just by the hardcore extremists who stormed the building--but also by the crowd outside who called themselves "Patriots" and said this was "Our 1776." 1/6 Hearing a diverse mass of ordinary looking, middle-class white people discussing violence in calm, matter-of-fact tones was more chilling than the organized militias and proud white supremacists because it revealed authoritarianism's grip on a large minority of the US. 2/6
Feb 17, 2021 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
A thread on Rush Limbaugh and a wildly inaccurate zombie essay on the Declaration of Independence he claimed his father wrote. Although Rush is gone, I have no doubt this viral essay about the alleged sacrifices by the Declaration Signers will endure. 1/13 This essay symbolizes much of what Rush Limbaugh came to represent: lies, exaggerations, a patriotism based on idealized and phony representations of the past, and a veneration of the wealthy and powerful whose financial plunder he recast as sacrifice. 2/13
Feb 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
George Mason (VA) at the Constitutional Convention:

"No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?" Gouverneur Morris (PA) noted that the President "can do no criminal act without Coadjutors who may be
punished."

George Mason (VA) added, "When great crimes were
committed he was for punishing the principal as well as the Coadjutors."

And by punishment they mean impeachment.
Jan 15, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Dear Insurgents:
You aren't the 1776 Patriots who overthrew British rule.

You're the misguided "Whiskey Rebels" of 1794, who believed they could go to war against their government because "the people" would rise and join them.

They were wrong. And so are you. 1/5 Image The 1794 Insurgents called for “open resistance” believing they could "easily defeat" any army sent against them because the soldiers "will turn" and join the insurgency. Leaders said, “the militia will not come against us and if formed will come and be in our favour.” 2/5
Jan 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
We witnessed clear evidence of sophisticated coordination on the back of the Capitol. Leaders used bullhorns and speaker systems to try to stoke the crowd and direct their movements and actions. 1/4 Rioters on the back of the Capitol had a Dewalt Bluetooth speaker (h/t @kaysirota) that periodically blared Trump speeches. It's strapped to the hip of the man at the top of the stairs in this photo by @housewifeangst. He also appears to have a laminated ID around his neck. 2/4 Image
Jan 10, 2021 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
My wife and I attended the “Stop the Steal” Trump Insurrection on Wednesday (as observers, NOT participants) and there are FIVE big take-aways from what we witnessed and heard outside the Capitol that I'd like to share. (We took all the pictures below). 1/22 Image 1) This insurrection wasn’t just redneck white supremacists and QAnon kooks. The people participating in, espousing, or cheering the violence cut across the different factions of the Republican Party and those factions were working in unison. 2/22