This is an image of the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, to make way for Trump’s garish ballroom. The East Wing was erected in 1942; it created a beautiful symmetry with the West Wing, which dates to 1902.
I can’t help linking this demolition to the post-No Kings Day AI video, which Dan recently referenced, in which Trump, with a crown, basically shits on the protestors, i.e., on the American people. A video released by Trump.
Both of these are perfect metaphors for Trump’s destruction of our democracy and our national values.
John Dewey, one of America’s greatest philosophers, was born this day in 1859. Dewey was incredibly prolific and made important contributions to virtually every field of philosophy. He is perhaps best known, though, for his work in ethics, theory of knowledge, and – especially for our purposes here – theory of democracy.
One of the things Dewey said about democracy is this:
In conception, at least, democracy approaches most nearly the ideal of all social organization; that in which the individual and society are organic to each other. For this reason democracy, so far as it is really democracy, is the most stable, not the most insecure, of governments. In every other form of government there are individuals who are not organs of the common will, who are outside of the political society in which they live, and are, in effect, aliens to that which should be their own commonwealth.
An implication of this, Dewey says, is that understandings of democracy that rely solely on the idea of majority rule as a brute matter of dominant numbers decided in an election is inadequate:
There still appears to be in majority rule an instrument for putting all on a dead level, and allowing numerical surplus to determine the outcome. But the heart of the matter is found not in the voting nor in the counting the votes to see where the majority lies. It is in the process by which the majority is formed. The minority are represented in the policy which they force the majority to accept in order to be a majority; the majority have the right to “rule” because their majority is not the mere sign of a surplus in numbers, but is the manifestation of the purpose of the social organism. Were this not so, every election would be followed by a civil war; there would be no need of writing concerning the weakness of popular government; it would be the only striking fact about democracy.
I think this helps us understand some things about Trump and Republicans’ assault on our democracy – and about Saturday’s No Kings protests.
Boiled down to its essence, the Republican push – led by the Trump-Miller-Vought triumvirate, bolstered by Congress, with pathways cleared by the Supreme Court – is to (1) ensure that the (structural) minority has no role in any determination of the purposes of the social organism and thereby (2) transform our democratic organism into an entirely different social form, one in which many individuals “are not organs of the common will . . . are outside of the political society in which they live, and are, in effect, aliens to that which should be their own commonwealth.”
I pointed to “structural minority,” because in truth Trump and the Republicans are not – from the viewpoint of our social organism – the majority. Polling clearly shows that their positions on a long list of policies (a long list of manifestations of the public will) are in the minority, and this has been true for some time. Aside from all of the cultural and sociopolitical dynamics that brought Trump back to the Oval Office, none of this would have been possible without longstanding structures overempowering the Republican power base that, combined with gerrymandering, have effectively and artificially overturned the organic dynamism that Dewey says should be the hallmark of democracy. And what the Republicans want is more of the same and then some.
What makes the No Kings protests important in this respect is that it is the structural minority – i.e., real majority – working to reestablish the organic nature of democracy – a social organism in which democratic processes really are about producing a “common will.” It is a little disappointing that the national turnout was not larger, but a 40% increase over June is nothing to sneeze at. If we grow by 40% every 3-4 months, by spring we will be at 13 million – the 3.5% of the population that theorists say leads to successful resistance to authoritarian regimes. And there are promising signs that things will move more quickly than that.
For the long term, we have to acknowledge that we are a long way from Dewey’s conception. Over much of the past half century, we have been moving both closer to it – with the expansion of rights and inclusion for people of color, women, LGBTQ+ and more – and farther away from it, with the structural matters I just mentioned. As we move forward, it is critical that we develop a vision for how to nurture the social organism and ensuring that everyone knows they are together in the commonwealth.
Astounding racism, anti-semitism, and violent language on this private Telegram chat channel for young Republican leaders around the country …. How in the world did we get here?
‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat
Hindu nationalism in India has provoked a great deal of collective violence against Muslims and their communities since Independence. It represents a case study in the use of hate as a political tool. The RSS was deliberately designed in India after the models offered by fascist paramilitaries in Germany and Italy. This piece in the Washington Post describes its influence in India today. Paul Brass has written extensively about this symbiosis between nationalist government and organized and violent paramilitary organizations.
The RSS is a warning to all nations where populism is spiking
We Americans love to label things, no doubt. And labeling things can be important in politics. Labels can give us a shorthand, and they can serve as rallying cries. At this point, we can’t for instance any longer avoid calling what Trump and Company are doing a form of fascism. And that label is a shorthand, because it can be backed up by thoughtful, knowing analysis – as I think some of the posts on this blog show.
Sometimes, though, labels cannot be backed up by any genuine claim to reality; sometimes labels are applied without any effort to justify them. They are, simply, lies. In those cases, labels are usually meant to do only two things: (1) generate division, fear, and hate, and (2) demonize opposition.
In the past few days, Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders have gone to significant lengths to label the October 18 No Kings rallies as “Hate America rallies.” Here is what Johnson said: “They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out.” Tom Emmer followed up by saying that the Democrats in Congress are refusing to fund the government “to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party.” (Video on both here.)
This is of course complete demagoguery and unsupportable by any facts on the ground. Indeed, it’s hard to see how one could even go about trying to justify such absurd claims. But, the Trump-Republican-Lie-Machine has been in full mode for quite some time now. So, as absurd as this demagoguery is, it is important to respond to it: to set the record straight, to bolster the morale of the millions of patriotic Americans who will stand up and speak out on Saturday, and to ensure that we do not ever give up on the idea that truth is worth seeking and advocating.
Thankfully, people are speaking up. Robert Reich asks, why are the Trumpists going to such lengths, and answers: they are afraid of the size of the rally, and “Trump’s power depends on maintaining the illusion that he’s all-powerful, and that most Americans . . . adore him.”
The No Kings Rally on October 18 is not a “hate America” rally.
Quite the contrary.
It’s a rally of millions of people who believe in American freedom and are not going to allow you and President Trump to turn us into an authoritarian country. pic.twitter.com/g3Mh8PxMKT
History matters, and Tim Snyder is excellent on twentieth century totalitarian regimes. He puts his finger on this horrendous antifa conspiracy theory.
The Department of (In)justice has indicted Letitia James after Trump’s repeated calls for indictments against his enemies. Shameful and surely illegal! The Guardian reports:
Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, personally presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, the person said. US attorneys do not typically present to a grand jury.
This is the same hack unqualified "prosecutor" appointed by Trump to bring charges against James Comey.
Last week, the Trump administration sent to nine universities A Compact for Excellence in Higher Education, the idea being that institutions that sign on to the compact would receive “preferential access to federal funds.” This is the latest effort by Trump to gain control over higher ed, which is part of the larger project of commandeering American culture on behalf of MAGA values – i.e., white, male, Christian-nationalist dominance. (That, at any rate, is the project of Trump’s “handlers.” I suspect that for Trump himself, like everything else, it has to do with power, revenge, and adulation.)
The compact itself is of course a wolf barely in sheep’s clothing, a grab bag of right-wing fantasies about how to reshape universities and to indoctrinate students in MAGA jingoism. Many have already condemned it, including the American Council of Learned Societies.
Predictably, the University of Texas board – the MAGAist of boards appointed by the MAGAist of governors in one of the MAGAist of states – has expressed enthusiasm for the compact. It is a real tragedy to watch Texas, with its host of fine institutions, go the way of Florida in ransacking higher education.
Whether any of the other nine institutions follows suit remains to be seen. That list comprises Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Arizona, Penn, USC, Virginia, and Vanderbilt. Frankly, if any of these institutions caves, it will signal something very bad. We’re at a tipping point, with some recent stiffening of the backbone of American higher ed, in the face of Trump’s assaults; we cannot afford backsliding.
Indeed, as Johns Hopkins political scientist Henry Farrell points out in today’s New York Times: the administration with this move “wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble.” He elaborates:
The administration would have played its cards differently if it had a stronger hand. Its best outcome would have been a private deal under which the nine universities announced simultaneously that they were signing onto the compact. Such an announcement might indeed have panicked other universities around the country.
That this didn’t happen suggests that the administration’s threats aren’t enough on their own to compel submission.
Farrell’s larger point is this: authoritarians seek to gain control of civil society through threats, intimidation, selective use of force that “divide and conquer” any opposition. But if enough of the public and institutions of civil society hang together against the threats, no authoritarian can ultimately overcome them.
Affirming Democracy, Gathering Resistance 