Politics & Rule
Curfew
The disturbing emergency alert sound from my phone (for DC’s 4th curfew night) makes me think of an air raid siren. The blaring is an apt metaphor for this presidency.
Riots
Minnesota Governor Walz’s assertion that ongoing riots are no longer about George Floyd ring true in a way. But were they ever about one man? Floyd’s death was certainly no one-off. The protests—and the participation of so many young people—should give pause to those leaders who would gloss over this society’s brutal injustices and disparities.
'Mr Smith Goes to Washington'
I watched "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) last night. Despite the many differences to today's world and the oversimplification of the state political machine, the politics in the film strike me as relevant to our own time. Thing is, though, it would probably resonate with Americans regardless of ideological or party orientation. Anti-Trump people could take its anti-corruption and pro-democracy message to heart. Pro-Trump people could embrace how the Washington outsider triumphs, and credulous pro-Trumpers could go for the anti-corruption, pro-democracy stuff too. Finally, the rough-and-tumble quality of the political game would resonate across the political spectrum.
Happening Here
WPA Federal Art Project in New York City, ca. 1936/37. The play was based on a novel about fascism happening here.
Repository: Library of Congress.
'Authoritarian Style'
“Trump’s authoritarian style is remaking America” by Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post
A Walls from 1916
Speaking of imagined walls, here’s one from 1916, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The Changing Faces of Nationalism
As a historian who sometimes teaches about Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I have to give Trump credit for one thing: His constant upending of the broad political consensus that emerged after World War II and the Cold War means that basic historical terms are constantly making it into the news and national discourse as quasi new problems, new questions. As upsetting as these times are, as abhorrent as Trump is, it is hard to deny the value of Ron Elving’s reaction to the president’s recent statement about being a nationalist: “We are about to have a national conversation about the word nationalist. And Elving wants to offer nuances to the term’s meanings in past and present—well, as much as anyone can in some 1,100 words.
Noooo!
I have had health insurance through my employer these past seven years, but I still depend on the Affordable Care Act. It has made the scope of coverage meaningful, especially by including so-called preexisting conditions. It has also relieved me of anxiety caused by not knowing if I would have health insurance from one year to the next. Yes, coverage has been growing more expensive, but at least there have been those statewide exchanges and—if need be—subsidies, which, I thought, would still make insurance possible.
Enter bomb-throwing DJT.
Image: Angela De Rosette, SP.M.0911, 2001, Library of Congress
North Korea
Dear National Security Establishment,
Please stop your collective freak-out about North Korea. The power of that country’s weapons lies mainly in our inability to tolerate any risk whatsoever.
Angry America
Jeet Heer’s provocative commentary in the New Republic is worth a read: “America Has Always Been Angry and Violent." The historical rhetoric he offers is startling. I definitely need to read more U.S. history.
What's Going On?
No really, Laurel Leff wants to know. This isn’t a poltical-rhetorical question but something bigger. What are we to make of the president’s recent nod to Holocaust denial? We need to consider the matter in an open, fearless, and dispassionate way, but how?
For those of us who teach and research the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, the Trump administration’s refusal to mention Jews in a statement commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day has been both horrifying and confusing.
Read Leff’s whole piece, and if you haven’t read Deborah Lipstadt on why “Holocaust denial” is an appropriate term here, be sure to follow that link in Leff’s piece too.
Justitia
After the latest Spiegel cover and all the news it embodies, this cartoon by Sam Machado feels really good, particularly with its use of gender against the U.S. chauvinist-in-chief.
German Magazine Cover
Feels more like a lobotomy to me, but this image by the leading German news weekly works too.
Totally Normal
Asked whether federal workers are dissenting in ways that go beyond previous party changes in the White House, Tom Malinow ski, who was President Barack Obama's assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said, sarcastically: "Is it unusual? . . . There's nothing unusual about the entire national security bureaucracy of the United States feeling like their commander in chief is a threat to U.S. national security. That happens all the time. It’s totally usual. Nothing to worry about."
– Juliet Eilperin, Lisa Rein, and Marc Fisher, "Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump," The Washington Post, January 31, 2017.
History under Trump
Interesting comment today by Cameron Blevins: History and Its Limits under Trump.
The Past in the Present
Am still shaking my head over the new administration’s discriminatory ban on Muslims entering the United States. It was no surprise after the hateful rhetoric of the election season, but announcing it on Holocaust Remembrance Day? And not mentioning Jews in a statement about the Holocaust? I wish I could call these actions tone-deaf, but they feel more intentional and sinister than that, even if the more apt historical parallels are the U.S. rejection of Jews fleeing Nazism and the internment of Japanese-Americans as an entire class of people during the Second World War.
From the Historian who Brought us 'Ordinary Men'
"I would suggest that a major source of our unease — beyond Trump’s personal unfitness for the presidency — is not that Trump is going to attempt to construct some fascist-style dictatorship, but rather that the trends that are manifested in his triumph represent a threat to our democracy that has arrived from an unexpected direction. That is what has left me, in any case, bewildered and unprepared."
"But Hitler was a fixated ideologue with a strong party organization, while Trump is an opportunistic narcissist driven above all by the need for adulation. Hitler was the 'little corporal,' the man of the people, who feigned austerity, while Trump is a billionaire who flaunts his wealth and luxurious life-style. Ultimately, Trump seems far more a hybrid of Berlusconi and Putin, potentially merging kleptocracy and autocracy, than the reincarnation of an ideologically driven, war-mongering, and genocidal dictator."
Christopher R. Browning, “Dangers I didn't see coming: ‘tyranny of the minority’ and an irrelevant press,” Vox, January 18, 2017.I recommend reading Browning’s whole piece. See also the earlier comments by the sociologist and political scientist Theda Skopol, “A guide to rebuilding the Democratic Party, from the ground up,” Vox, January 5, 2017, which is about much more than the Democratic Party. She understands something that conservatives of various stripes have long acted on, but which Democrats have ignored to everyone’s detriment.
Gaslighting
I have been learning new terms these past months. Today it was “alternative facts,” which goes together with an older term, apparently repurposed for our current political and cultural moment—“gaslighting.” I saw the latter term on a protest sign at the Women’s March yesterday.
Hate Speech and Fresh Air
Hate speech is like mold: Its enemies are bright light and fresh air.
– Howard Gillman, “Bigots at the Gate: Universities Shouldn’t Duck the Fight against White Nationalism," Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2016.
'American Tragedy'
. . . A friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.
– David Remnick, “An American Tragedy,” The New Yorker, November 9, 2016.