The problem with these medium.com shock pieces is that they're demobilizing. It's hard to tell how much of Trump's first week is strategy and how much of it is incompetence. But we know that one thing that has slowed previous Republican over-reaches (Contract with America, government shutdowns, etc.) is protest and outrage, and this week has seen a ( Read more... )

Patrick Blanchfield, in a review of Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in their own Land:

What her subjects want, Hochschild repeatedly says, and what they apparently see in Trump, is an opportunity for “vindication.” But “vindication” means something more than just “recognition” or “being seen.” Etymologically, “vindication” derives from a word for ( Read more... )

Thinking about a history which I understand poorly, though it is a history of the period of my life: anti-immigrant politics as a key element of the politics of white backlash in the US. I've seen a couple of people posting this video of Reagan and Bush from 1980, and it set off a chain of fascination. There seems to be a reading of this that it ( Read more... )

It's striking to me how consistently leftists learn the wrong lessons about the Tea Party: that they took over swaths of the Republican Party by patient attention to boring things like caucuses and organization (so the Left should do the same with the Democratic Party). Of course the conventional wisdom keeps changing; two weeks ago the Tea Party ( Read more... )

The blogosphere debate over the election is superstructural to the point of ephemerality and the stuff that losing friends is made of, so I'm not sure how many more of these I can bring myself to post. Nevertheless, I thought this piece by Paul Heideman was a fair reply to Rebecca Solnit, if also proof that the whole debate is finally getting nasty ( Read more... )

You were all posting about the Republican convention, so I decided that I ought to turn on the radio for a bit. I turned it on just in time to hear this fella Chris Christie giving a very inventive talk. I'm fairly sure it was science fiction, like one of those Star Trek alternate universe episodes where the good guys are bearded and sinister. ( Read more... )

Students in Britain almost overwhelm the treasury and surround Charles and Camilla's car; meanwhile, a small group of US left intellectuals writes an open letter more or less to itself.

I can't quite get over the bizarre premise of this letter: it's like getting a group of 60 people together to write an open letter to 10 of their friends: "Open ( Read more... )

I've been so frustrated with the electoral discourse of the US left since 2000. On the one hand there's the moralism of some liberals (if you don't vote for the Democrat you're voting FOR all the evil the Republican would enact!) and the kinda messy strategic thinking of some Maoists and popular frontists (and even some anarchists these days) who ( Read more... )

Glenn Beck Leads Religious Rally at Lincoln Memorial

Not quite sure where to start with this one. I'm struck by the extent to which the notion of "politics" is becoming largely incoherent; the NYT reports, with a straight face, that this event was about religion, history, or nationality rather than "politics." While I suppose speakers may have ( Read more... )

Spending a fair amount of time online, especially on Facebook, makes me aware of holidays in a way I don't think I used to be. Sometimes I feel like I have to contend with them. I suppose before the internet I might have watched an evening news program about people's Thanksgiving plans, but those people and those plans always felt artificial or ( Read more... )