This is one of her all-time best! An important read!
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON July 28, 2024 (Sunday)
Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began. I’ve struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means.
I keep coming back to the Ernest Hemingway quote about how bankruptcy happens. He said it happens in two stages, first gradually and then suddenly.
That’s how scholars say fascism happens, too—first slowly and then all at once—and that’s what has been keeping us up at night.
But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once.
At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime.
In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.
The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement.
And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution.
The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….”
And yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights.
Every time we expand democracy, it seems we get complacent, thinking it’s a done deal. We forget that democracy is a process and that it’s never finished.
And when we get complacent, people who want power use our system to take over the government. They get control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and they begin to undermine the principle that we should be treated equally before the law and to chip away at the idea that we have a right to a say in our government. And it starts to seem like we have lost our democracy.
But all the while, there are people who keep the faith. Lawmakers, of course, but also teachers and journalists and the musicians who push back against the fear by reminding us of love and family and community. And in those communities, people begin to organize—the marginalized people who are the first to feel the bite of reaction, and grassroots groups. They keep the embers of democracy alive.
And then something fans them into flame.
In the 1760s it was the Stamp Act, which said that men in Great Britain had the right to rule over men in the American colonies. In the 1850s it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave the elite enslavers the power to rule the United States. And in 1929 it was the Great Crash, which proved that the businessmen had no idea what they were doing and had no plan for getting the country out of the Great Depression.
The last several decades have felt like we were fighting a holding action, trying to protect democracy first from an oligarchy and then from a dictator. Many Americans saw their rights being stripped away…even as they were quietly becoming stronger.
That strength showed in the Women’s March of January 2017, and it continued to grow—quietly under Donald Trump and more openly under the protections of the Biden administration. People began to organize in school boards and state legislatures and Congress. They also began to organize over TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and newsletters and Zoom calls.
And then something set them ablaze. The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision stripped away from the American people a constitutional right they had enjoyed for almost fifty years, and made it clear that a small minority intended to destroy democracy and replace it with a dictatorship based in Christian nationalism.
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He passed it to us.
It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.
It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.
I think she tends tto overstate what things were like immediately before the transition. In particular, TR's trustbusting had laregely nullified the threat of oligaric rule by megacorporations.
I'm sure she would agree it was an oversimplification, since she teaches whole semesters on this stuff.
But what really hit me was her closing remarks:
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He passed it to us.
It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.
It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.
Yes, a good column, although all those transitions were messier than described. [Simplification is certainly permissible in an essay.] And it looks to me like we might be seeing the collapse of a major political party for the first time since that of the Whigs in the 1850's; we do that very infrequently. -----Alan
And this old White guy way out West would still be thrilled to see a Harris choose Whitmer as her running mate; I figure that would be a real smash-mouth ticket. A person can dream. ----Alan
The Whigs pioneered the political party nominating convention as well as country-wide political organizing. They invented the phrase "keep the ball rolling" by rolling a big ball plastered with pro-Whig signs, having a new group to take over rolling it at every electoral boundary, proving their nation-wide organization. ----Alan
Just before I woke up this morning I was having a bad dream of a type I hadn't had for a long time. I was having great trouble finding my way to a courthouse through a badly decayed city which it seemed I should be familiar with, and time was getting short. I had been called by the defense (of a young woman) and it seemed I could give critical testimony. ----Alan
A typical (for me) bad dream before/while waking; something going wrong and I can't fix it, even as my mind goes over it again and again with slight variations. Going to court of course reflects my work. -----Alan
No. On rare occasions I have an actual bad dream, from which my sweetie wakes me, but mostly I just have frustrating dreams. I used to have dreams about water undermining our house, and also of becoming separated from Miyoko and Naomi in a crowd; but whatever the underlying meaning or explanation, those seem to have stopped quite some time ago. -----Alan
I think the Professor is mistaken with regard to Harris not ticking the charisma key. The groundswell of support for her within and beyond the Democratic Party is remarkable. Of course some of that is negative, i.e. anti-Trump, but it still redounds to her benefit.
Lichtman is not going to state his formal opinion for several weeks, I believe; there is time for adjustment. I shouldn't be surprised if support for Harris increases notably. If I were on her short list for VP, I would be campaigning for her very actively---indeed would have been doing so before now, and for Biden before he withdrew. Thinking of precedents, Hoover's failure to deal effectively with the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 moved Black voters to abandon the Republican Party and vote for Democrats. -----Alan ------Alan
Vance's catlady comment is not only hurtful and insulting to infertile people and women who have difficulty bearing children or who cannot do so at all. There's another cohort that is still being ignored, that is people like myself, who always wanted marriage and a family but whose life circumstances have made that impossible.
It is not by choice that I am Miss. It is not by choice that I am childless. And yet, guess what, J.D.? I manage not to be miserable (mostly) and I do love my country. So you can take your insensitivity and shove it!
I contribute two thumbs up. The US tax code has numerous benefits for people with children, public schools are free, etc. The Weirdbilly deserves an express ticket to the rubber room. IMO.
I plead innocence; someone else invented the moniker 'Weirdbilly" and I merely perpetuated it. That my disquisitions are recognizable here is a complement, albeit understandable. ----Alan
How Trump could replace JD Vance [Click] Vance would have to “voluntarily” withdraw from the ticket, and time is getting very short; voting begins in early September, and before that ballots must be printed and distributed (to counties, I presume). I figure that gives the GOP a couple of weeks to pull off the substitution. Sounds like a disaster either way. ——Alan
This is one of her all-time best!
ReplyDeleteAn important read!
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
July 28, 2024 (Sunday)
Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began. I’ve struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means.
I keep coming back to the Ernest Hemingway quote about how bankruptcy happens. He said it happens in two stages, first gradually and then suddenly.
That’s how scholars say fascism happens, too—first slowly and then all at once—and that’s what has been keeping us up at night.
But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once.
At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime.
In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.
The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement.
And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution.
(Continued…)
The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….”
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights.
Every time we expand democracy, it seems we get complacent, thinking it’s a done deal. We forget that democracy is a process and that it’s never finished.
And when we get complacent, people who want power use our system to take over the government. They get control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and they begin to undermine the principle that we should be treated equally before the law and to chip away at the idea that we have a right to a say in our government. And it starts to seem like we have lost our democracy.
But all the while, there are people who keep the faith. Lawmakers, of course, but also teachers and journalists and the musicians who push back against the fear by reminding us of love and family and community. And in those communities, people begin to organize—the marginalized people who are the first to feel the bite of reaction, and grassroots groups. They keep the embers of democracy alive.
And then something fans them into flame.
In the 1760s it was the Stamp Act, which said that men in Great Britain had the right to rule over men in the American colonies. In the 1850s it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave the elite enslavers the power to rule the United States. And in 1929 it was the Great Crash, which proved that the businessmen had no idea what they were doing and had no plan for getting the country out of the Great Depression.
The last several decades have felt like we were fighting a holding action, trying to protect democracy first from an oligarchy and then from a dictator. Many Americans saw their rights being stripped away…even as they were quietly becoming stronger.
That strength showed in the Women’s March of January 2017, and it continued to grow—quietly under Donald Trump and more openly under the protections of the Biden administration. People began to organize in school boards and state legislatures and Congress. They also began to organize over TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and newsletters and Zoom calls.
And then something set them ablaze. The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision stripped away from the American people a constitutional right they had enjoyed for almost fifty years, and made it clear that a small minority intended to destroy democracy and replace it with a dictatorship based in Christian nationalism.
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He passed it to us.
It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.
It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.
Nicely said.
DeleteI think she tends tto overstate what things were like immediately before the transition. In particular, TR's trustbusting had laregely nullified the threat of oligaric rule by megacorporations.
DeleteI'm sure she would agree it was an oversimplification, since she teaches whole semesters on this stuff.
DeleteBut what really hit me was her closing remarks:
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He passed it to us.
It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.
It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.
Yes, a good column, although all those transitions were messier than described. [Simplification is certainly permissible in an essay.] And it looks to me like we might be seeing the collapse of a major political party for the first time since that of the Whigs in the 1850's; we do that very infrequently.
ReplyDelete-----Alan
And this old White guy way out West would still be thrilled to see a Harris choose Whitmer as her running mate; I figure that would be a real smash-mouth ticket. A person can dream.
ReplyDelete----Alan
The Whigs pioneered the political party nominating convention as well as country-wide political organizing. They invented the phrase "keep the ball rolling" by rolling a big ball plastered with pro-Whig signs, having a new group to take over rolling it at every electoral boundary, proving their nation-wide organization.
ReplyDelete----Alan
"Vance VP" - Marsh Family parody adaptation of "Dancing Queen" by ABBA, on JD Vance [Click] In the great tradition of US campaign songs!
ReplyDelete——Alan
Just before I woke up this morning I was having a bad dream of a type I hadn't had for a long time. I was having great trouble finding my way to a courthouse through a badly decayed city which it seemed I should be familiar with, and time was getting short. I had been called by the defense (of a young woman) and it seemed I could give critical testimony.
ReplyDelete----Alan
Sounds most unsettling! Also sounds like the foundation of a story, if one had a bent that way. Or, perhaps a drawing?
DeleteA typical (for me) bad dream before/while waking; something going wrong and I can't fix it, even as my mind goes over it again and again with slight variations. Going to court of course reflects my work.
Delete-----Alan
When a bad dream wakes you up, do you sit and consider a happy ending? That's a family practice here since when the kids were little.
DeleteNo. On rare occasions I have an actual bad dream, from which my sweetie wakes me, but mostly I just have frustrating dreams. I used to have dreams about water undermining our house, and also of becoming separated from Miyoko and Naomi in a crowd; but whatever the underlying meaning or explanation, those seem to have stopped quite some time ago.
Delete-----Alan
Harris vs Trump! Allan Lichtman Explains Which Way the Election is Leaning with Kamala Harris [Click]
ReplyDelete—Alan
You beat me to it, Alan. Great minds, eh?
DeleteI think the Professor is mistaken with regard to Harris not ticking the charisma key. The groundswell of support for her within and beyond the Democratic Party is remarkable. Of course some of that is negative, i.e. anti-Trump, but it still redounds to her benefit.
Lichtman is not going to state his formal opinion for several weeks, I believe; there is time for adjustment. I shouldn't be surprised if support for Harris increases notably. If I were on her short list for VP, I would be campaigning for her very actively---indeed would have been doing so before now, and for Biden before he withdrew. Thinking of precedents, Hoover's failure to deal effectively with the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 moved Black voters to abandon the Republican Party and vote for Democrats.
Delete-----Alan
------Alan
Vance's catlady comment is not only hurtful and insulting to infertile people and women who have difficulty bearing children or who cannot do so at all. There's another cohort that is still being ignored, that is people like myself, who always wanted marriage and a family but whose life circumstances have made that impossible.
ReplyDeleteIt is not by choice that I am Miss. It is not by choice that I am childless. And yet, guess what, J.D.? I manage not to be miserable (mostly) and I do love my country. So you can take your insensitivity and shove it!
Video: 'Organic wildfire': How Vance's cat ladies comment continues to be a gift for Democrats - Click
thumb up
DeleteI contribute two thumbs up. The US tax code has numerous benefits for people with children, public schools are free, etc. The Weirdbilly deserves an express ticket to the rubber room. IMO.
DeleteWerebilly? Alan, you have a genius for bestowing apt monikers on idiotic politicians.
DeleteI love that you knew the unsigned post was from Alan!
DeleteHey, CAT Lady...have you found the Facebook page "Cat Ladies for Kamala Harris"? It is so much FUN! Check it out.
I plead innocence; someone else invented the moniker 'Weirdbilly" and I merely perpetuated it. That my disquisitions are recognizable here is a complement, albeit understandable.
Delete----Alan
"complement" should read "compliment" Proofreading is my friend.....
Delete----Alan
Trump effect in clean tech sector deepens angst in Europe's boardrooms - Click
ReplyDeleteVideo: Former CIA director says Trump will weaken the safety and security of Americans | Four Corners - Click
ReplyDeleteKamala to Debate Empty Podium after Trump Cancels [Click]
ReplyDelete——Alan (who thought it an obvious move when Trump first began talking about not participating)
Excellent. Why waste the free air time?
DeleteWil says they should set up an orange balloon wearing a diaper at the other podium and at the end she can go over and pop it.
Interesting idea! Or simply a dummy (not of the living variety)
Delete----Alan
Apparently he's walked his comment back a little. Now he says he might still debate her but a case can be made for not debating her. LOL
Delete3:15 / 9:36
ReplyDeleteTrump support plummets as Kamala scores huge GOP endorsement [Click]
——Alan (Who opines that the talking heads/legacy media are greatly exaggerating the significance of polling.)
Polls show Dewey defeats Truman [Click] More detail than in most accounts.
Delete—Alan
Entire South Korean Spy Network's Cover Blown! [Click] Ouch.
ReplyDelete-----Alan
How Trump could replace JD Vance [Click] Vance would have to “voluntarily” withdraw from the ticket, and time is getting very short; voting begins in early September, and before that ballots must be printed and distributed (to counties, I presume). I figure that gives the GOP a couple of weeks to pull off the substitution. Sounds like a disaster either way.
ReplyDelete——Alan
And candidates passed over for Vance in the first place might be ill disposed to become his replacement.
Delete----Alan