Historian @Georgetown - Democracy and Its Discontents - Podcast: @USDemocracyPod - Newsletter: Democracy Americana https://t.co/icbS5V67kY
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Let’s avoid self-defeating approaches to dealing with Trump. Not much separates raging at his every word from despairing over our supposedly hopeless situation. MAGA desires to project strength – something we should subvert rather than confirm. Let’s not indulge the false bravado
I wrote about a key challenge of life under clownish authoritarianism: Resisting the temptation to constantly rage against Trump’s latest antics – while making sure the silliness and buffoonery of Trumpism doesn’t obscure how extreme and dangerous the situation is. 2/
As we are all facing life under a clownish wannabe-authoritarian, it is worth grappling with the question of how we should calibrate our reactions to Trump. I take his latest press conference and his imperialist threats towards Greenland, Canada, and Panama as an example.
I focus on some of Modern Conservatism’s intellectual leaders in the 1950s/60s - Buckley and Bozell, Whittaker Chambers’ diagnosis of liberalism, and Frank Meyer’s view of the civil rights movement - to investigate the origins of a radicalizing dynamic that led to Trumpism. 2/
This was a beast to write – an attempt to synthesize my thoughts on a question that has shaped the political and historical research on the Right since at least 2016: How did Trumpism come to dominate and define the Right’s politics and identity so quickly and easily? 2/
What should we call the pro-Trump forces that are dominating the American Right today? Conservatives? Reactionaries? Something else? The terminology really matters because it reflects and shapes how we think about the nature of Trumpism and how to situate it in U.S. history.
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation. 2/
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.
Consider this my closing argument: As of right now, only one of the two major parties in the United States, the Democratic Party, for all its many flaws, is a (small-d) democratic party. The other one is firmly in the hands of a radicalizing ethno-nationalist movement. 2/
There is a pervasive idea that in a country like the United States, with a supposedly centuries-long tradition of stable, consolidated democracy, authoritarianism simply has no realistic chance to succeed, that “We” have never experienced authoritarianism.
I wrote about the mix of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, lack of political understanding, and (willful) historical ignorance that has created a situation in which a lot of people simple refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously. 2/
This warning was not coming from the Left. Although he rejects the label, Kagan is probably best described as a neocon. He’s an influential Never Trump Ex-Republican. And he believed that unless we changed course, America was on a trajectory towards a Trump dictatorship.
Donald Trump’s closing pitch to the American people is rage, intimidation, and vengeful violence. He is threatening – or promising, if you ask his supporters – fascism. No more plausible deniability for anyone who refuses to see the threat. 2/
Project 2025 not only remains an excellent window into where the Right currently stands ideologically, it also focuses our attention on who the people leading the reactionary authoritarian charge are – a toxic bunch, driven by the desire to dominate others. 2/
Flashback to the Republican National Convention: While delegates wave hundreds of “Mass Deportation Now!” sign, JD Vance declares that America is not an idea, but a white Christian “homeland,” and those who are bound to it by ancestry and blood decide who belongs. 2/
I wrote about the Right’s defining political project: A blood-and-soil nationalism that is fundamentally incompatible with multiracial, pluralistic democracy. It has come to dominate the Republican Party, and the elevation of J.D. Vance captures this perfectly. 2/
I wrote about the Right’s defining political project: A blood-and-soil nationalism that is fundamentally incompatible with multiracial, pluralistic democracy. It has come to dominate the Republican Party, and the elevation of J.D. Vance captures this perfectly.
If America is to claw its way out of this crisis to something better, it must do so on the basis of an honest assessment of what Trumpism is, what fueled its rise, and where it came from. The anti-Trumpers, however, are offering something very different. 2/
I wrote about why the “These guys are weird” messaging matters: It crystallizes a central fault line – who gets to define “normal” America? – and catalyzes a significant shift in how Democrats handle (and finally reject!) Republican assertions of representing “real America.” 2/