Shards from the Embattled Republic

An occasional list of links to thought provoking commentary. Very likely the last of these link collections until after the election on November 8. I'm busy doing my bit to uphold democratic [small "d"] governance; are you?

[New Hampshire] Congresswoman Ann] Kuster said that the abortion decision, the Jan. 6 inquiry, and rising concern about gun violence have altered the terms of the election.

“For the first time, I’m running on freedom and safety, which used to be bedrock Republican issues,” she said. “The Republicans are running on chaos.” H/t E.J. Dionne

MAGAs on the march

 Eve Fairbanks has some thoughts about the MAGA millions.  

"... As much as they superficially wish for it, I don’t think many liberals or anti-Trump Republicans have thought through what would happen if there were a mass change of opinion against Trump. We have called Trump supporters bigots, cultists, “psychotic” and developmentally injured, “pathological,” stricken by “mental shortcomings,” and “akin to drug addicts.” I’m not saying any one of these characterizations is necessarily unfair. 

"But if Trump voters did come around to a more left-wing view, then that would mean that a whole bunch of irredeemably warped people we spent years fearing and loathing would suddenly be in our boat. In our camp. ... The corollary to them turning out to have some of our capacities is that we may be a little more like them than we prefer to think — a prospect too gruesome for many Democrats to imagine."

That student of national security Juliette Kayyem draws a picture of what holding off the Trump movement might look like.

"A win, at this stage, isn’t that Trump’s troops make an apology. It is that they remain an online threat, a cosplay movement, a pretend army that can’t deliver, whose greatest strength is in their heads rather than reality."

Laura Jedeed reminds us how many of our neighbors we're up against.

"Trump voters comprise 28.6% of the adult population of the United States, that’s over one in four people. You cannot exclude the Trump voter from public life because they are the public.... Not everyone grew up with the quintessentially American promise of increasing prosperity and moral virtue, but a lot of us did. We are all dealing with the death of that dream in different ways. And some of those ways are monstrous. 74 million monsters. Could that be true?"

An experienced interim pastor, who works with religious congregations in conflict, looks at the British Windsor royal family and these divided States of America and offers observations about how healing comes about.

"Until we as a nation are willing to honestly look at our ugly reality, we will never heal."

As so often is the case, Peter Beinart wishes we could see ourselves as others see us.

"One of the easiest things for an American politician to say about China is that China’s government fears the United States because it fears freedom. One of the hardest things to say is that China’s government—and many of its constituents—fear the United States because they see it as the successor to the imperial powers that ravaged China for one hundred years."

Carlos Lozada has moved on from cultural criticism to offering opinion at the New York Times.

"Together, the big joke and the big lie have turned the nation’s political life into a dark comedy, one staged for the benefit of aggrieved supporters who, imagining that the performance is real and acting on that belief, become its only punchline."

Karen Attiah hopes we'll take ourselves serioiusly.

"Watching all the U.S. cheerleading of women in Iran against abusive police forces, let’s also make sure we are willing to be just as brave when it comes to police brutality and control of our bodies at home."

Gabriel Winant appreciating recently deceased socialist, feminist, firebrand and writer Barbara Ehrenreich:

With Ehrenreich, you cannot count on safe passage. Look at yourself, she always asks the reader; what do you see there? This procedure, which linked social critique to the ethics of the self and the politics of authenticity, allowed Ehrenreich to bottle the magic of the New Left in her writing. Some of the libidinal and political force that ripped through college campuses and consciousness-raising circles is encapsulated in her pages, and it was still available for us decades later when we needed it; this is the basic source of her tremendous standing among young socialists. To rework historically specific political experiences into ideas durable enough to be transferred to the next generation for their own use—this is among the highest possible achievements of a radical.