Shards from the Embattled Republic

While I'm on campaign in Nevada, there will probably be more of these occasional lists of links to provoking commentary. Some annotated by me. 

David Frum reacts to the January 6 hearings: But if there is one lesson to take from the Trump years, it’s not the cynical Twitter joke “LOL nothing matters.” The lesson is that everything mattered: every act of conscience, every act of honest reporting, every denial of the Big Lie, every ballot. ... if or when you read somebody saying today, tomorrow, or at any time during these hearings that the hearings failed to accomplish something important, keep in mind: That will only be true if you let it be true.Yes, what we do matters. That's so hard to believe because nothing we do pans out right away -- or almost nothing. But choosing to do what we can changes us and what the future can look like. Or so I believe.

Juliette Kayyem on what knocking down Trump looks like: ... most of the committee’s witnesses against the former president are or were members of Team Trump or the GOP. Look at them, the committee is saying—there is a way out. ... longtime Trump skeptics aren’t the committee’s target audience. The message to his remaining supporters is: Trump has peaked. His best days are behind him. You won’t be the first to take the off-ramp, but you don’t want to be the last. ... If the former president ends up a rich, lonely man who can no longer fill a stadium, begging a dwindling number of radical adherents for attention while his children grift off his name, then America will have won. Nice image. And with the Atlanta indictments, we might get more. But the strain of Christian nationalist terrorism in some of the old, white, Republican constituency will be with us, even after Trump.

Retired Chicago journalist Mark Jacob: Let’s look at the characteristics of fascism and whether they define MAGA Republicanism. There’s a cult of personality. Check. There’s demonization of “outsiders” as a threat to the culture’s survival. Check. There’s the mindset that political opponents pose such a danger that stopping them justifies all means necessary, including lying and cheating. Check. There’s propaganda overwhelming or extinguishing journalism. Check. There’s coercion of businesses to force submission to the autocrat’s wishes. See Disney and Ron DeSantis. There’s social regimentation. See the efforts to roll back rights for women and LGBTQ people and impose Christian values in a country that’s supposed to have separation of church and state. Fascism also means there’s a drumbeat of violent rhetoric and corresponding violent actions. See January 6, 2021. He's scared by the GOPers. So am I.

Rayne at Emptywheel: There will be a change as the nation becomes less white because this country’s potential is a true liberal democracy in which each citizen has the vote. The question is whether change to realize the fullness of potential comes with increasing violence or not. The GOP is fine with more violence because any resulting deaths are more likely to support their grip on power by diminishing their opposition. Survivor wisdom.

Historian Thomas Zimmer wonders: ... is it possible to establish a stable multiracial, pluralistic democracy? Such a political, social and cultural order has indeed never existed. There have been several stable, fairly liberal democracies – but either they have been culturally and ethnically homogeneous to begin with; or there has always been a pretty clearly defined ruling group: a white man’s democracy, a racial caste democracy, a “herrenvolk” democracy. A truly multiracial, pluralistic democracy in which an individual’s status was not determined to a significant degree by race, gender, or religion? I don’t think that’s ever been achieved anywhere. It’s a vision that reactionaries abhor – to them, it would be the end of “western civilization”. And they are determined to fight back by whatever means necessary. Building a stable multiracial, pluralistic democracy is our generation's challenge, our wildly expanded version of what Abraham Lincoln asked almost 160 years ago: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." We can hope that struggle doesn't descend into greater violence.

Carlos Lozada: The justices sound just like the rest of us, even though their battles matter so much more. ... Consider the logic: Because the right to an abortion was not part of the American tradition back when women lacked political power, it cannot be a constitutional right today. And it need not be a constitutional right today because women, deprived of the right, at least still have the power to ask for it back. The Supremes are not offering wisdom; they are revealing what they care about and what they don't like. They don't like empowered women. Yes, that includes Barrett.

Jessica Valenti: Civility isn’t important, morality is. And Republicans want to focus on the former because they have none of the latter. They hope that by focusing on politeness—and painting understandable fury as improper or hysterical— Americans will forget just how unscrupulous and immoral they are. The only acceptable response to what’s happening in this country right now is constant and prolonged rage. The kind of anger that doesn’t give a fuck about politeness or ‘politics’—the kind of outrage that understands the power of unruliness. 

Matt Yglesias: But I think the evidence is pretty clear and unambiguous that large-scale protest marches and demonstrations are an effective means of changing the political situation. People often invoke the idea of “organizing” in a non-specific way, but I think that time spent specifically on organizing protests — on getting permits, picking days, encouraging friends to attend, getting snacks and water together, volunteering to drive people or host people when travel is needed — is time very well spent. Matt is often an annoying troll, but as a well-nigh professional campaigner and organizer, I cannot agree more. It's the people who participate, even in the mundane work, who change themselves and make change possible for others.

Real journalism: “The harsh reality is we don’t have trans elders because they didn’t survive,” they said. Actually, I'm fortunate enough to know a few trans elders. But I also know these are special survivors who didn't know whether they could survive.

Via Jill Filipovic

Perry Bacon Jr: The most important contest in American politics is, of course, between the Democrats and the Republicans. But the Democrats are having a far more interesting and consequential intraparty fight than the Republicans, who are increasingly all Trump-like. On the Democratic side, there is a real divide: Does the party want a few more AOCs, particularly in very blue areas, or more-traditional Democrats in basically every seat? Primaries provide an arena in which we figure out what kind of future we are struggling for.

Audra J. Wolfe: Is Nuclear Power Just Too Dangerous? A survey of the world’s worst nuclear disasters highlights the catastrophic consequences of technical hubris. Some days it seems as if you can't ask this question if you are properly alarmed about climate catastrophe. But events like the Russians clomping through radioactive Chernobyl are a reminder of some implications.

Seth Masket at Mischiefs of Fortune: Religiosity is highly statistically significant and is positively related to gun violence. The more religious a state, the more gun deaths it has. This doesn't prove a causal relationship, but it also really doesn't support the idea that increased faith will reduce shootings. (Also, the idea that shootings came into the classroom because we drove God out is a particularly monstrous claim, however the mechanism is supposed to work, portraying God as either callous or vicious or homicidal.) Plain talk from a political scientist.

This little BLM group on Martha's Vineyard meets every summer Sunday to honor people who have been harmed or killed by police or the criminal justice system. This is what local organizing for justice looks like. Here, Dana remembers the people killed by a white Supremacist in a Buffalo supermarket.

And in more heartening news from Heather Cox Richardson: "former president Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter celebrated their 76th wedding anniversary [July 8]. Theirs is the longest presidential marriage in our history. They were married in Plains, Georgia on this date in 1946."