BC POLITICS
Saved by @Jacobtldr

This reminds me of a 2010 poll of Tea Party supporters in which 84% said that "the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans." Only 20% thought Obama shared the values of most Americans.

 Full polling data here. I was asked to give a talk on campus about the Tea Party in 2010, and one of my main points was that it was a weakness of the movement that it had such a delusional perception of the American people. Oops. https://t.co/DQx43ckn7R
Anyway...the dynamic described here has been a long time coming. https://t.co/skjA9Zl1gz
That's the weird, seemingly illogical, thing about the right's culture war. They simultaneously think of themselves as speaking for the majority of Americans, AND they think that they are the saving remnant protecting a decadent society from ruin.
What squares this circle is the assumption that "the real American people" consist of straight white, rural or suburban people, & anyone not in that category doesn't really count as an American. That's how right wing culture warriors can both be the "majority," and a minority.
That explicitly exclusionary vision of "Americanism" (which is often articulated in more implicit ways like "our beautiful suburbs w/o low income housing") has very deep roots in our political culture. Trump's GOP hardly invented it.
But what's arguably new is the pride with which Trump's GOP has embraced the politics of hierarchy and exclusion. No more paeans to "compassionate conservatism," no matter how empty that rhetoric was. No more talk of "a nation of immigrants," no matter how weak that often was.
Thanks to this person in the replies who said it far more succinctly than I could have. https://t.co/ylrOwmEJyw
Understanding contemporary conservatism as an attack on pluralism helps explain the ever more explicit Islamophobia of the American right, the transphobia, the hatred of higher education, the hatred of "Hollywood," the disdain for cities.
"Pluralism" is an essential value in any functioning, modern democracy. When one party ceases to even give lip service to pluralism, then it threatens to transform that democracy into something quite different.
This is why, IMHO, there is important work to be done in red & purple parts of the US to talk people off the cliff of GOP anti-pluralism. My sense (hope?) is that most (not all) of my fellow Americans are pluralists in practice, even if they may vote an anti-pluralist party.
Part of this hope derives from having grown up in a small town in PA that is now big time Trump country. Within their own communities/neighborhoods, there was often a good deal of toleration for difference. A kind of "live and let live" attitude.
But there was also a suspicion of "outsiders" borne of a lack of knowledge about the world outside that place. I'd guess that over 50% of my classmates had never left the state before they were 18. The "outside world" was an abstraction to them (and me).
Reagan's "welfare queen" rhetoric really resonated in the 80s (when I was in HS there). There was not a single African-American student in my HS, but boy did my classmates spend time talking about black people as if they knew something about them.
There is no better way to get a white, Trump voting former classmate of mine from Central Pa to recirculate a pro-Trump message on FB, than to have it come out of the mouth of a person of color. If they have a black co-worker, they will assuredly post pictures of them together.
So in their interpersonal lives, these people express a desire to be pluralists. I was the only Jewish kid in my HS, and while this sometimes produced some awkwardness, it mostly produced an "oh, that's kind of weird and exotic and I don't know what to do with it, but cool."
But that unfamiliarity and discomfort can also be turned to more angry, sinister purposes by savvy politicians and media outlets that see an advantage in it. Those former HS friends can now be found circulating Soros memes in abundance.
A kid I played Little League with is now a full blown Q adherent who posts videos fantasizing about the day when the "cosmopolitan elite, the cultural marxists" (like me) will be "eliminated from the earth." Needless to say, I don't believe he thought that way about me in 1981.
I also suspect that were I to encounter him IRL and ask him about it, he'd still stick to his guns about the Q stuff but he'd assure me that he knows I'm not one of the bad guys and that he means me no harm. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think he'd really mean it too.
What the GOP has done in the county where I grew up is that they've encouraged people to look upon their neighbors as enemies. To look at that barista with the nose ring not as a kid expressing themselves, but as an antifa terrorist who hates America. https://t.co/n8nz08cLOq
"Turning neighbors into enemies" is a hallmark of fascist political cultures. Turning benign differences into existential threats is the essence of anti-pluralistic politics. At that point, that is virtually the only message that the GOP is sending its voters.
How many times was this story repeated across the US. People vote for Trump. A person of color who they like is harmed by Trump's policies. People then say (in earnest, I believe) wait a minute, I didn't want *him* to be harmed. He's a good guy. https://t.co/1O89mGJBNs
Connecting the dots between federal policy and what happens in one's community is incredibly difficult, even for people with PHDs in Political Science or History. Most voters just don't see those connections, and the GOP has taken advantage of that knowledge gap.

More from Seth Cotlar

Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
I can’t bring myself to watch Republican Senators like Cruz, Lee, and Sasse wax rhapsodic about the Constitution while the President they support is spreading disinformation about the election and accusing Biden, Obama, and Clinton of treason. Sorry, just can’t do it.

Anyone who’s read the writings of the founders knows full well they their beloved Trump is the Platonic form of the type of President the founders most feared, and that they epitomize the sort of short sighted and craven public officials they also desperately feared.

These GOP Senators are smart and well-read enough to understand how outlandish their President is, and how embarrassingly cowardly their behavior has been these past four years.

The chutzpah of these people to pass themselves off as great patriotic lovers of the founders’ Constitution. Feh.

If they loved the Constitution, they would be telling people not to vote for Trump until he agrees to accept the results of the election. Otherwise they are aiding and abetting an attempt to shred the Constitution. Shame on them,
POLITICS
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Historian here, with a message for folks arguing against holding people accountable for the siege of the Capitol because "history will be the judge." We are in this mess, BECAUSE people in the past didn't hold their contemporaries accountable. Please don't repeat that mistake.

Nixon was forced out of office, but he was never held responsible for his egregious actions as President. You'll never guess what sort of precedent and example that set for the future President who most shared Nixon's moral turpitude.


In the 1970s, many "mainstream" media outlets buckled to right wing pressure & lent their platforms to gut bucket racists like James Kilpatrick & Pat Buchanan, rebranding them as "conservatives." We continue to reap the consequences of normalizing racism.


Here's a thread on Pat Buchanan. In the early 90s Charles Krauthammer and Bill Buckley, staunch conservatives both, called Pat a "fascist" and an "antisemite." And yet he still got major media gigs for DECADES.


Trump's career (and that of his family) is overstuffed with acts of white collar crime for which no one ever received more than a tiny fine as a slap on the wrist. Everyone one in NYC knew Trump was a morally bankrupt and corrupt crook. But somehow NBC still made him a star.
LEGAL
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Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
The 90's called and it would like it's sneering depictions of "pathetic right wing rubes" back. I know it makes a certain segment of the educated classes (of which I'm a member) feel good about themselves to read paragraphs like this, but it's lazy political analysis.


That crowd was comprised of scores (if not hundreds) of well off business owners as well as highly skilled paramilitary warriors (many of whom were trained by our own government) who came very close to achieving their goal. Their gauche affection for Olive Garden is irrelevant.

This is the article. I share the author's revulsion at what this mob did. But this is not a time for ribald humor at the expense of people who erected a gallows upon which it appears they intended to hang the Vice President and probably

Every violent political upheaval is messy and chaotic and disorganized and comprised of people who are far from paragons of wisdom and rational thought. Wednesday's uprising was not uniquely pathetic...to think it was is just to invert a celebratory American exceptionalism.

I can guarantee you, none of the people of color in the Capitol building, especially the officers who bravely fended off this mob, mistook them for a second as bumbling rubes.
HISTORY
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
Thinking about all of those Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who drilled for months (if not years) in preparation for January 6 while visions of “Antifa super soldiers” danced in their heads.

Anyway, watch this video and share it with everyone you know.
INSURRECTION
Seth Cotlar
Seth Cotlar
@SethCotlar
I seem to recall a story from a while back that revealed that Ginni Thomas met weekly with a group of right wing operatives that included the Project Veritas hoax artist.


Oh hey.

Gosh, look at that.

It’s all just so absurd, and yet so potent.


Here’s Anna Khait speaking at a pro-Trump, pro-steal the election rally last December.
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David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.
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Stephen Bush
Stephen Bush
@stephenkb
Some quick thoughts on Sam Gyimah's resignation after conversations with various Conservative MPs: 1) the chances of a second referendum are a lot higher than I thought:

2) At this point, if you are a young and ambitious Tory MP it is now so overwhelmingly in your interest to vote against the withdrawal agreement. V v hard to see how Julian Smith can cap rebellion at under 100:

3) Really just to reiterate 1) Gyimah is the kind of "No, never gonna rebel" vaguely pro-EU Tory you'd need to get on side to outweigh Labour Leavers and Real Concerners.
POLITICS
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Henry Farrell
Henry Farrell
@henryfarrell
1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.

2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.

3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.

4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.

5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast.
POLITICS
Julia Azari
Julia Azari
@julia_azari
This idea - that elections should translate into policy - is not wrong at all. But political science can help explain why it's not working this way. There are three main explanations: 1. mandates are constructed, not automatic, 2. party asymmetry, 3. partisan conpetition 1/


First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/

Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/

Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/

Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/
POLITICS
Heidi Li Feldman
Heidi Li Feldman
@HeidiLiFeldman
It takes guts to truly face hard truths. But facing them is the only way to protect oneself going forward. This is why I keep reminding people that the Republican Party is beyond repair. 1/

The Republican Party’s internal structures, at the state and federal level, are dominated by people actively opposed to democratic pluralism, rule of law, and U.S. constitutionalism. 2/

Once a political party refuses to drop its support for a leader, in this case Donald Trump, who constantly and consistently betrayed the country throughout his time in office that party cannot be salvaged as a player in U.S. constitutional democracy. 3/

Everybody else, from individual rank and file Democrats to President Joe Biden, must radically overhaul how they deal with people who do not disaffiliate from the Republican Party. 4/

Anybody who remains a Republican at this point must be presumed to be an enemy of U.S. constitutionalism, rather than as somebody with right wing policy views. 5/
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2. You lose less during Draw-down time ( it saves you from losing big during whipsaws )

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• So, you test the waters with a small position first, it could be ⅓ or ¼ of your total risk.

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• Then when position starts to go in your favor you can add to it.

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