No better example of this than AOC; watching her journey from a self-aggrandizing member of the Squad, to an actual legislator under Nancy’s tutelage, to a coveted spot on a convention stage, has been incredibly satisfying.
Perhaps the claim that she was self-aggrandizing and not interested in being an actual legislator was always wrong and she hasn't really changed all that much? I never have seen actual evidence for the claim, just dislike of her style and particular ideological slot.
I think that claim started by those to her right, and then when she became a legislator it is now something said by far-leftists. That said, I do think her rhetoric adjusted from "America should be more moral" to something more like "I love America and that why I'm fighting to make it better." Those two aren't mutually exclusive but they emphasize different aspects.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a master of the art of kayfabe.
Before a crowd, or on Twitter, she is great at reading the room and plays the babyface when her supporters are watching and heels it up when she wants to rile up her many detractors.
Yet she understands the duties of her representation and actually does the routine work of lawmaking and constituent services. She gets the grander aspects of politics.
A lot of people are pointing to her speech this week and saying maybe in the next decade she's presidential material. I doubt that; she's been slimed for her entire career and the attacks will catch up to her. But, she has better chances of being a New York U.S. Senator or governor.
Being slimed by MAGA is an accolade, not a burden. No newbie ever knows what the reality is like, and she used social media to educate her followers on the process of learning what the job entails. I see that as a major positive, not a liability.
AOC is a master of generating a short 140/280 character quip and compressing wit and a devastating insult into a tweet.
AOC shutting down a Ben Shapiro debate: "Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions. And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one."
AOC on Kevin McCarthy's ouster as speaker: "Contrary to how McCarthy’s defenders are behaving, men failing up is not a Constitutionally protected right. The man made risky decisions and faced the natural consequences of them. I am not his mom, and my job is not to put pool noodles around hard corners for Republicans."
There are two things that America really is the greatest ever at: 1) creating a sense of national identity that's not limited by ethnicity 2) using the good parts of our heritage as a weapon against the bad parts. Both are liberal.
There are no two countries entirely comparable, but in its own way, China has created a sense of national identity that's not limited by in-empire ethnicity as well, and that's evolved over several dynasties and regimes.
It strikes me that almost no modern large countries haven't had to adopt pan-ethnicity to some extent, because they are bound to be multi-ethnic, and modern technology and communications generally engender more equitable treatment than the past. So there are some similarities between the pan-ethnic melting pot states of the US, Canada*, Australia, and the other large countries: India, Brazil, Russia, China.
*Canada is a contradiction: Quebec is an ethnic-nationalist highly autonomous sub-national jurisdiction within a state that otherwise now has its identity even less limited by ethnicity than the US.
I recognize this argument is very vague and broad, but so is the world.
I’ve often said to friends of mine - of which many are either immigrants or first-generation Americans with immigrant parents - my belief is that what makes someone an American is simply building a life here and believing in our Constitution and system of government. IMO, the closest thing I have to a religion is a belief that our Constitution is, despite its imperfections, the most durable government framework yet devised.
“If there’s any part of America that MAGA people still love, other than the single individual of Donald Trump, it’s hard to see what it is.”….what an excellent home-hitting point Noah.
Do you mean in the same sense as members of either party might pander to our love of our country to obtain votes? I liked this article because it offered some hope that the Democratic party as a whole is sufficiently sincere about their patriotism to completely forgo their recent "progressive" insanity. And, perhaps, the politicians they elect will follow suit.
I think the Democrats are correcting course a bit and also listening to their base of voters. I think MAGA Republicans are a different base of voters and Trump has shown that he has no principles. If you look at the speakers of the DNC, they at least have a clear set of principles even if you don't agree with their policy positions. There is a difference between pandering as a politician and being seen as a leader, I'm hoping Democrats take on the leadership role though.
Like you, I also enjoyed this article because I do think and believe that the Democratic party is being sincere and taking on more of an active approach, instead of letting progressives lead some of the major discourse. Even though I don't blame party leaders for the actions of social justice warriors online or people that are chronically online, I do think that they were too passive in how those people ended up being seen as the face of the party even if that wasn't the case.
Who is “he?” Trump? I was replying to Jaryd Hermann’s pull quote about MAGA people only loving Trump, and saying that a lot of other white supremacists or misogynists could court the MAGA vote. Trump succeeds because a lot of people want him to, and it has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans.
Generally great, but spoiled by the absurd claim that Gaza protests are driven by hatred of America. How about disgust that the Netanyahu regime is murdering tens of thousands of people, while its ministers openly advocate genocide, and the US government persists with the delusional belief that if they support Israel long enough a peaceful solution will emerge? If, as I hope, Harris changes tack and pulls the plug on Netanyahu, will you say that she hates America too?
Isn't a "peaceful solution" to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict impossible, because the entire Palestinian national identity is built around violent resistance to Zionist colonization, pretty much guaranteeing that any self-identifying Palestinians who aren't thoroughly subjugated by Israel will wage war against it?
The conflict could end of course with the total victory of one side or the other: a Palestinian victory would mean the destruction of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Levant, while a Zionist victory would mean the Palestinians were either ethnically cleansed themselves or ceased to identify as Palestinians.
Denazifying Germany was possible because Nazism wasn't an intrinsic part of the German national identity: Germany had after all existed as a united nation-state for 62 years before the Nazi takeover. By contrast the Palestinian national identity was born in struggle against Zionism, being finally crystallized by the Nakba of 1948.
(Also I think Noah will almost certainly be biased towards Israel given that he's Jewish himself.)
There is viable, or at least not impossible, two-state solution. But the way there is not the wishful thinking of the last 40 years. It may be close to impossible, but that beats impossible.
The essentials:
- Imposed solution, not dependent on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
- West Bank and annexed parts of Jerusalem cleared of all settlers and removed from Israeli control.
- All Palestinian areas, above plus Gaza, under a new occupation by some entity dominated by the US, but including Arab, Turkish, European forces. Civil and limited political rights, but obviously Hamas and other anti-democratic or theocratically inclined parties outlawed. And beaten down. Similar to some proposals for Gaza, or post-WW2 occupations. Expensive, but consider the current cost. Draconian at first, but less than the current occupation. Bloody at first, but less than now and previously.
- Economic relations with Israel to the degree mutually agreed.
That's it. I said almost impossible. I also said better than impossible. Or should we spend the next 40 years banging our heads against the same wall?
Secondary issues can be solved, including formal mutual recognition, or a face-saving approximation; right of return (none, but compensation); access to and control over a port in northern Israel, corridor Gaza<>WB. Etc.
Sadly, none of the above will ever come to pass based on current political calculus. AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby have a literal stranglehold on US Israeli policy. Trump + GOP will always give them 100% of what they want; and the Dems 80%. Which means covering for them in the Security Council, and selling them hardware.
The only thing that will change the calculus is a broad international boycott contingent upon their deepening the genocide or almost-genocide in Gaza. The world will need to see not just a hill, but a mountain of dead and starved Gazan children, before any meaningful sea-change occurs.
Well put. The heart of the Israeli Right's argument for never granting a Two-State solution is that the Palestinians are irremediably crazy killers who must remain locked up for ever in their ghettos. Never mind that nearly half of them are children.
Netanyahu indeed built his political brand on the notion that he was the best man to keep the Palestinians caged in their ghettos, but that notion of containing the conflict of course collapsed last October 7, which likely explains why Israel is now pulverizing Gaza much as Syria (under father Assad) pulverized Hama in 1982.
Especially given that Netanyahu is also a crook who likely faces prison if he loses power.
Souli Khatib of Combatants for Peace puts this differently that both Israeli and Palestinian identities are formed by the presence of the other people and possibly peace will come from understanding that both national narratives are flawed. Also in the 1920s a specific Palestinian nationalism was starting to split off from Arab nationalism. I think.
Wasn't it precisely _because_ of Jewish colonization of Palestine under the British Mandate that a specifically Palestinian nationalism emerged in the first place?
I don't know, the people I see on Instagram posting constantly about "Genocide Joe" and "Holocaust Harris" sure seem like they'd have another grievance about American hegemony or foundational racism even if the Gaza conflict ended tomorrow.
There's a reason that the Gaza protestors are protesting about Gaza and not Ukraine or Myanmar or Nigeria--and the reason is definitely not that they think they can save the most innocent lives by protesting about Gaza.
There's nothing constructive the Gaza protestors can reasonably hope to accomplish by wearing keffiyeh and chanting "from the River to the Sea." And given the protestors' apparent opposition to a two-state solution (which is the only category of non-genocidal solution that's even potentially possible), it doesn't seem like the protestors *want* to accomplish anything beyond signaling radicalism for status purposes.
OK, explain it to me. If protests are about hating America, why is that the protests are about US aid to Israel and not (as you point out) about US aid to Ukraine*? Maybe that Israel is murdering people with US weapons, while Ukraine is defending itself against a murderous attack.
* Of course, the Republicans, who really hate America, are protesting when the US defends democracy
Because protesting *against* aid to Ukraine would mean agreeing with Republicans, which is (fortunately) anathema to these children. But do you seriously disagree with the point that the same protestors could have done far more good (in terms of expected value in civilian lives saved) by protesting *for* aid to Ukraine or *for* aid to the Rohingya?
Hell, what do you think the campus Gaza protestors want to accomplish, exactly? The closest thing to a concrete policy any of them seem to espouse is "end US aid to Israel until it agrees to stop existing."
Because the Palestinian national self-conception is inseparable from the violent struggle against Zionism, Israel will arguably only be safe if it eradicates the "Palestinians" as a national identity: the same action that is branded "genocide" when Russia tries (admittedly for less sympathetic reasons) to do it to Ukraine, or when China (ditto) tries to do it to the Uyghurs.
There's currently a sizable community of Americans of Palestinian, or just Muslim, origin. When it's your own relatives or co-religionists getting abused, it becomes personal.
Why (incidentally) do Muslims (in the West or elsewhere) typically have more passion about defending Palestinians than they do about defending Uyghurs or Rohingya?
Is it because the Uyghurs and Rohingya are both on the periphery of the Muslim world while the Palestinians are right at its heart?
I'm talking about the overwhelmingly non-Muslim American college students who make up the majority of protestors. Obviously the situation is different where there's a personal connection. But most of the protestors have no stronger of a connection to the Palestinian cause than to the Ukrainian or Rohingya causes, for example, so their choice to focus on Gaza deserves examination.
Can't speak to the motivations of the non-Arabs/Muslims. The Jewish-American protestors *are* following a very proud and very ancient tradition of protesting injustice in any form. Especially when it's being committed in their name.
Being opposed to Netanyahu or even Zionism does not make you anti-American. Opposing the $1T/yr war machine spending does not make you anti-American either, though there is a huge lobbying effort to try and persuade you of that. America is great and our strength lies in our tolerance, diversity and strong economy, all of which are undermined by our endless interfering in foreign affairs.
We killed a lot of civvies in both of those wars. There's a difference between patriotism and nationalism. And anti-nationalism. And sometimes the lines between gets blurred.
I don't usually like Great Man theories of history, but it's really hard to imagine all this going the way it did without Trump, specifically, running for office. Obama was (is!) sunny and patriotic; if his handpicked successor had lost to a garden-variety Republican, would everyone in lefty tastemaker circles have collectively concluded America was a white supremacist s***hole?
If he had gotten hit by a bus in 2014, I think we'd be drawing very different conclusions about the ineluctable forces of intellectual history and where they've led us.
And didn't Trump become president largely because an enemy power (Russia) helped him into the White House?
He was a terrible businessman (he managed to bankrupt a CASINO for goodness' sake!) who was bailed out by the Kremlin so that they could use his real estate empire to launder money. He was encouraged to run for President by Paul Manafort and Roger Stone (both of whom had likely been working for Moscow since the 1970s), assisted in the primaries by an FSB hack of Fox News (which they used to provide Trump with inside info on his rivals' campaign strategies) and then used Wikileaks in the general election to start the whole "Hillary's emails" attack line.
Eh I mean it was such a close election that it was plausibly both. If they hadn’t hacked the DNC emails, the lack of that storyline alone might have convinced a few tens of thousands of people in the right states.
I do agree that how close it was, given what a monster Trump is, reflects poorly on us though
And extremely telling that Russian and ChiCom Intelligence STILL strongly support Trump in this 2024 election. The media covers that Iran wants to help Harris; but fails to mention the much stronger, ongoing efforts by Russia and Xi to elect Trump.
This really isn't the case. Russia tried to help him. He didn't object. But mostly, Hillary was just very unlikeable and ran a very bad campaign, to boot.
Russia didn't just help Trump win the general election by releasing hacked DNC emails via Wikileaks, they also helped Trump win the GOP primary by hacking Fox News emails and using them to give Trump inside information on his rival Republicans.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause, for the most part. But I do think that a combination of Trump and HRC was enough to affect things on the margins.
I am 100% convinced that the worst and most consequential comment made by a politician in the last 40 years has been HRC’s “basket of deplorables.” As soon as I saw her say that, I knew Trump would win in 2016.
I wonder if HRC was also harmed by the hint that (as a former First Lady) she had married her way into the political establishment? (And Bill's infidelity would have only added to this suspicion!)
Other First Ladies such as Nancy Reagan, Barbara or Laura Bush, or Michelle Obama had not been seen as political figures in their own right in the same way.
The sliming of Hillary Clinton began ever since Bill Clinton locked the nomination in 1992. After a quarter century, the mass media and popular perceptions of her caught up to her and tripped her up in the former Blue Wall states.
Same thing is happening with AOC. She's not going to be president, at best a New York senator or governor.
FOX News is indeed the single most powerful voice in American politics. Bar none.
The only reason Harris is doing so well right now, is that FOX never saw her rising to the top of the ticket, and thus never mobilized the sort of multi-year smear campaign like they've done for AOC and HRC.
I fully agree with your take on Hillary, but am reluctant to apply that to AOC.
Robert Graves served In the administration of 8 different presidents. Bush 43 brought him in as National Security Adviser in 2007 when pressure was peaking about how badly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in an unprecedented move, Obama asked him to stay on in the change from Republican to Democratic administrations. That meant he had to collaborate with HRC as Secretary of State. Here's what he had to say.
"My experience working with Hillary illustrated, once again, that you are never too old to learn a lesson in life. Before she joined the Obama administration, I had not known her personally, and what views I had were shaped almost entirely by what I had read in the newspapers and seen on television. I quickly learned I had been badly misinformed. I found her smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world. I promised myself I would try never again to form a strong opinion about someone I did not know."
Sounds like presidential material to me. But is that the Hillary the American people knew? No chance. The relentless "Hillary Hater" Republican campaign over the previous 22 years started with the Gingrich/Limbaugh "Hillarycare" campaign against healthcare reform and the continuous conspiratorial attacks on Bill Clinton during his presidency, and bled over into the general conception of both Clintons. But once Clinton's presidency was over, the mainstream press ignored the continuing libel and slander as typical background noise from the right, and didn't pay much attention to her even when she was SoS. The "Smoke Effect" (where there's smoke there must be fire) of this relentless negativity was a major contributor to voters' negative impressions of her during the campaign, and created fertile ground for the Republican Benghazi fishing expedition and the widespread misconception that there was something illegal or "crooked" about her use of private email as Secretary of State. [I'll address this further when I get my column going.]
However, AOC is in a different category, at least in part because of her youth and social media presence and savvy. I would be reluctant to draw parallels between the two, not least because she has more instrumentality in controlling the narratives.
I have less than 50 pages left in "Scenes of Subjection"! Hooray! I may get ice cream! But I assume that when this book was originally written in 1997 the deep skepticism that Congress really intended the Reconstruction Amendments to bring full equality was still there.
I am very proud to have been stubborn enough to finish this book. It had some useful metaphors that real historians could work with in a generative way but real historians should not consider it any kind of authority. Clearly because I am a masochist I ordered "Lose Your Mother" because Saidiya Hartman said clearly that "the afterlife of slavery" was not in the book.
I think I'm missing the point. America has a lot of appalling history that we've been thinking and talking about more than pre-Trump -- but that's what I mean, it's more than before he showed up. Had he not showed up, I think we'd be paying less attention to it because the present would be better and it would seem more firmly in the past
This is hard to say because at least online people might need a convincing way of talking about the past to counter anti-wokes who want the past all to themselves. Many of these people supported Trump because he was the closest mainstream political figure to what they had been saying for years.
Possibly tangentially, I was annoyed in 2016 that many educated ordinary Democrats could not take up the many other obvious arguments that Trump was not fit to be president and could only say that Trump was a bigot and thus dispatch him from serious consideration in public life for reasons that only other educated people understood. If you have been trained to see things first in terms of what groups have been left out you will of course see and talk about the past that way. It was relatively straightforward to see Trump as an example of white backlash but it was not necessary to condemn the entire past on that account or feel trapped in an endless loop
I just discovered the word "oikophobia" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikophobia) for an aversion not only to one's country but to one's culture and traditions.
In the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, I was struck by the "this is who we are" mantra that appeared in the opinion pages of The NY Times and in comments from leftists in my home state. Biden's response was the opposite: This is not who we are. And I took Biden's side in an online debate with an elected official who contended that she meant that phrase not just figuratively but literally. Really? Do you include yourself in that condemnation?
"This is who we are," in the context of reactions to events like Jan. 6 or the reckoning with the events of 1619, seems to be to capture the attitude that underlies what Noah is describing here in the 2010s. I still bristle when I hear the term. Who's the we? Does it innclude those themselves who use that term to describe what disgusts them? Is it a self-loathing or a hatred of an "other" evil in our past and in our midst? I see it is a kind of manichaeism - a preoccupation with the original sins of our nation's past combined with a self-aggrandizing, self-absolution that comes from calling it out and separating one's self from the world or in this case, the culture and history of our nation.
It’s just so obvious that “this is not who we are” and sayings like it are meant aspirationally: this is not who we *should* be. We ought to be better than <this, whatever this is>!
The churlish insistence that no, this is who we essentially are, always have been, is contemptible — it’s burning solidarity to power a performance of sophistication. If abolitionists, or early environmentalists, or union leaders, or whoever, had thought that way we’d have a much worse country today.
That could be no more than what Philip Roth called "the indigenous American berserk" and certainly had antecedents in some instances of Reconstruction mob violence. The illiberal America that our host is talking about that was afraid of Irish immigrants goes back a good 200 years existing alongside the more liberal America where people could come together across difference.
"This is who we are" means exactly that; the "we" is ''America". Some years ago I read that polls showed that roughly 40% of Americans favored autocracy over democracy. I thought at the time that that had to be an exaggeration - and then America elected Trump. Even if he won because of a confluence of unusual factors including people voting against Hillary and never thinking Trump could win, that still leaves a segment of voters that falls remarkably close to that 40%. Then, after Trump continuously demonstrated his unfitness for office for 4 years, he still got 55 million votes in 2020.
And when the sitting president claimed, with all the evidence showing it was a lie, that the 2020 election was stolen, Republicans in Congress, without any apparent remorse or guilt, readily violated their oaths of office and either refused to refute the lie or repeated it loudly. So when the President called on his supporters to come to Washington and violently oppose the certification of the election, tens of thousands of them came, and a large number actively assaulted the Capitol and threatened the Vice President and members of Congress.
Republican state legislatures and governors are actively attempting to repress Democratic votes, Republican court appointees and Congressmen are bending over backward to roll back society to the 1950s - or even the 1850s. The Heritage Society has spent 4 years developing a program to effectively dismantle the Federal government. Trump has taken over the RNC, and they and Republicans around the country are working to try to steal the upcoming election, starting with insisting to their followers that the Democrats will cheat "again". Meanwhile Republicans have nominated a demonstrated (and convicted) con man, grifter, and fraudster.
Mr. Duncan, you are making my point. By your account, this (insert all evils here) is who maybe 40% of us are, while the other 60% are not. Whatever the proportions and however fixed or enduring the attitudes of your estimated 40%, the expansive "we" is not who we all are. Does the "we" include you, your family, most of your friends? I think not. When I hear "this is who we are," I hear "this is who they are" but it's not who I and others in my family or party or group are. If that's your meaning, you should say so. IMO, it's not a helpful or hopeful point of view, especially if the they are viewed as irredeemable. It's just another version of "us" and "them." So, no, this is not who we all are.
I've always been a "Progressive Patriot". Not because this country is perfect, but because the striving to realize the best of America's ideals is a persistent theme of American history.
I'm slightly surprised there wasn't a bump in patriotism after Obama's election. Personally I felt my patriotism skyrocket when my president was black (and I am a veteran, so I've pretty much always been a bit jingoistic). It took a hit with Trump's election - I was embarrassed - and wanted to believe "this isn't who we are," but the truth is the reason anti-Americanism took root at that time was because Donald Trump wasn't elected by a fringe, he was as much a part of America as Obama.
But when Biden was elected rather emphatically - and then passed quite a few progressive priorities - it made it quite easy to be proud of America again. I never thought America was a great evil, but my faith in this country was shaken, and while my pride has returned I do think Trump's election and things like the 1619 project gave me a greater understanding of my country and its history.
But the chance to elect a black woman, a desi woman, and the child of two immigrants would be a powerful message and would just make me so proud of my country in a way that Obama made me. It's maybe not rational, but here we are.
During and after Obama's election, America was still in the jaws of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Then the 2010s began with the Tea Party wave, which seized upon patriotism like a junkyard dog and made a burlesque LARP of the notion of patriotism. Of course, it was a foreshock to the Trump presidency.
Think of it as the concept of savory and unsavory associations, Vasav. Your mind can process three things simultaneously from an event: the impressive (the basic senses), the emotional (your mood and attitude) and the rational (your memories and ideas). If you were embarrassed by Trump, as I was and am, it's because you are processing Trump's personage and rhetoric, the significant chunk of the electorate who sees him as infallible, and they all hate you as a person. It's hard not to be hurt, or to be threatened, in such an atmosphere.
Not all "Pro-Palestine activists" are dead-ending behind protesting the DNC. I have an acquaintance who is an antifa/communist stereotype, and even she was emphasizing the need to unite around Harris until the election is over. I was quite surprised. Switching out Biden seems to have gotten her on board. She's not very hopeful that Harris will have a different Israel policy, but some portions of the far left are getting behind "vote blue, no matter who"
I agree 100% that the Republican message is dark, dreary and deeply pessimistic - in essence deeply anti-American if you believe, like I do, that America is about optimism and positivity. But I don't buy for a second that Democrats have embraced the opposite. Waving around placards like robots doesn't change the fact that Dems have spent the better part of a decade running this country down as a an irredeemable white supremacist hellhole. Sorry, they don't get to change that message on a dime. Their patriotism is a mile wide and an inch deep and is solely designed to get Kamala Harris into office. Nothing more and nothing less.
Well, the truth is that Democratic *politicians* never "spent the better part of a decade running this country down as a an irredeemable white supremacist hellhole". That was always just activists and intellectuals. What the Democratic politicians are doing now is leading folks away from the dead-enders. And that's good. That's called leadership.
As I expect you have probably said on this topic before, it bears mentioning that America has never been less of a “white supremacist hellhole” than it is now.
It has made all the activists of the past decade seem like cos-players at a comic book convention, dressing up in fabulous battle gear for Instagram, in an anodyne, climate-controlled environment.
They were literally protesting the actions of people long dead and ignoring the fruits of their labors — from Lincoln’s work to Obama’s two-terms as President.
MAGA was the perfect foil for them, proving their outrage, while growing from it.
I love that the feared protests outside the DNC have been mostly unattended — with piles of protest signs lying around in the park — and the kindling of hope inside the auditorium has been sucking all the nation’s oxygen in.
It gives MAGA less fuel to burn the country down with.
Everyone can agree that all of this energy is best spent building the America of the 21st Century: clean power, clean transportation, clean appliances, clean air for everyone — and more homes!!
I suspect the reason why a lot of leftist activists don't mind campaigning against the Democrats (even if it means returning Trump to the White House) is that the "Resistance" of the Trump years gave them meaning which they felt they have lost since Biden became President.
The far left and the Trumpists are in a toxic relationship, but they need each other and feed off each other's excesses. Trump being in power is good for the far left because it gives them permission to be as extreme.
Both of them try to prop Biden up to more than he is, which is one of the most milquetoast politicians of my lifetime.
Creating a Blue Wave to sweep the presidency and both houses of Congress takes precedence right now over trying to restrain Israel. Trump and the GOP in general are a severe threat to our future safety, prosperity and democratic way of life.
But that doesn't mean the Israeli craziness under Netanyahu is forgotten. As an ethno-state with an ongoing ethnic cleansing program, coupled with a genocide or near-genocide, have made them into an albatross around our necks, considerably eroding our soft power when we need all of it to try to contain China. And hopefully prevent them from starting the next world war. A war that will either impoverish us; or end life on the planet.
But the political reality in DC is that AIPAC has an extremely strong grip on both parties. Like the pro-Palestine marchers, they are also a single-issue political force.
The constant complaint about the US withholding weapons to Israel, I think, is missing the potential consequences. I think this is bad communication on the part of Biden. Maybe there’s something that can’t be made too public. It strikes me that if Iran or other Middle Eastern countries think the US will withdraw its support, Israel may get attacked again more severely, and Israel could get tempted to use nuclear warheads.
This could lead to the normalization of nuclear warfare and also a massive disruption in oil markets, causing a worldwide recession and destabilized governments, as voters direct their outrage at their leaders to invent solutions.
I wonder how essential our relationship to Israel will be once we are running on EVs, rather than oil. When we can let international oil markets tank, the Middle East quagmire will likely get worse.
And with the climate crisis, temperatures will make a lot of it uninhabitable. The Hajj will become more and more of a mass death ritual, driving further extremism.
The Likud and Hamas need to be disempowered, or they will lead their peoples to an even worse war. I don’t know how the US can do this.
I just know that we need to stop using fossil fuels ASAP, and Mr. T isn’t going to facilitate that. Kamala needs to win this fall. Then we can figure Israel out…
Scott Alexander had a really good post on this following the 2016 election. His point is that the number of true, actual American white supremacists is vanishingly small, in no way either a serious "movement" or political force. https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
You only need a few, extremely committed people willing to commit violence to upend the calculus. The Brownshirts started out small. If the militiamen on Jan. 6th had brought guns--or had started their push a half hour earlier--the outcome could've been very different. If the Trump shooter had had slightly better aim...You get the idea.
That you think the threat of organized political terrorism is just "crying wolf" is extremely naive.
Minimizing the danger to this country, by minimizing the head count of white supremacists.
My family--and most of our relatives and family friends--are, or were, pretty racist. Not to the level of joining a neo-Nazi march; but certainly to the level of providing financial and political support. I think you underestimate the power of GOP-stoked white grievance.
You do not have to believe everything Umar Lee wrote about 10 years since Ferguson, which very conveniently is in his newsletter here on Substack. But from the POV of someone strongly involved in the protests 10 years ago the protesters were protesting very concrete injustices that they had experienced which were not fully addressed because the national response was too interested in grand theories of racism. "Between The World And Me" may have been inspired by what happened but on the spot Ta-Nehisi Coates was in France and had nothing brilliant to say--was essentially reduced to telling people to read Jelani Cobb who was actually in Ferguson.
Great article Noah. Patriotism should reflect our better selves, the ideals of our country and principles that the US was founded on. This is opposed to the vision of "patriotism" that is driven by reactionary demagogues and grifters who are constantly trying to make our country more and more exclusionary.
Who knew not demonizing the people who represent would get you votes.
I know that this never really was as much of a problem in the democratic party as it has been occasionally perceived. But still, its good to see them reject that idea in favor of more appealing ideas to the average voter.
They say the new Tide leaves clothes brighter! I always believe adverts and also everything said at corporate offsites. All it takes is a few scripted lines and the whole image of a product changes! My t-shirt says so.
This is ridiculous. Nicole Hannah Jones has been extremely vocal about her hatred of America. Palestinian (pro-Hamas) activists have been chanting "death to America" for months -- those are Democrats. Waving the flag at your convention doesn't mean you love America. It means you love power and know that waving the flag will "give people a lump in their throat" and make them more likely to give you that power. The GOP did the same thing. You can hear the consultants, "show lots of flags, people like that."
In the real world though (as opposed to the reality TV show that our politics has become) the postmodernist liberals running the show have been very upfront about their beliefs. They think the country was born in racism, our original sin, and they want to fundamentally remake the country as a progressive utopia. To be fair, there's a strain of postliberal utopianism on the Right too, but the Left has been talking about this far longer. The difference between the screaming, blue-haired, gender-studies activist and Kamala Harris is only a matter of degree (and policy wise, not even that -- she just knows to wrap her extremism in the flag, just like Trump does.) Joe Biden was the last sane one and he's too feeble to stand up to the lunatics now.
I think you're under-estimating the number of powerful Democrats who were never comfortable with the hardcore anti-racism ethos of the 2014-2021 and are happy to not have to pretend to tolerate it anymore. I've never met a left-leaning person in real life who actually ardently believes these things, except for very marginal non-powerful people who most other people gravitate away from. It's not correct that the people "running the show" are true believers on this topic.
I'm not sure it's a ringing endorsement to say that all the left-wing people you know were happily regurgitating (or at least not opposing) totally insane racialist rhetoric for years even though they didn't believe it. That's not a sign of virtue but of cowardice.
In a time of extreme polarization, it is absolutely necessary for each party to be willing to call out its own, since any criticism from the other side will be ignored. (I have been very public in my distaste with the Jericho March in 2020 for example and the messianic overtones many apply to Donald Trump. I think this is very dangerous.)
Sorry. I misread you. So I reframe my point: the Democratic Party is run by cowards, people who had a chance to stand up to insanity and didn't. Again, not a ringing endorsement.
I think your first few paragraphs bind every Democrat to the anti-Americanism that exists on the left, but somehow don't bind every Trumpist to the anti-Americanism of hating everything about America. I don't see the parry that still loves Obama as anti-American. And he clearly loves and believes in America, and believes his story is unique to this country. But the modern Republican party has become the party of Trump in the last 8 years.
Tying Trump to Trumpism is far more direct than tying Kamala to a caricature of a very specific, protesting Democrat. So I see it as Trump is an anti-American Trumpist, but Kamala and most Democrats are not the same as anti-American leftists.
But I don't want my criticism of part of your comment to overshadow how much I agree with the other part of your comment. Personally, I have more faith in competence from the party that has implemented the beginnings of an industrial policy, rather than the party of Trump. I'd likely be voting Democratic anyway, but your last paragraph is a major reason why.
"Personally, I have more faith in competence from the party that has implemented the beginnings of an industrial policy."
Bingo, Vasav. Nailed it in one. Add to that Infrastructure & CHIPS, and the Dems might just save us from a China determined to rule the world. The GOP with their borrow-and-spend tax cuts are just selling deck chairs on the Titanic.
That may be a fair criticism, Vasav. I do agree that Obama is not "unAmerican" the same way the pro-Hamas people outside are, but he is part of a continual slide that has run from Bill Clinton (who really did love this country) to Nicole Hannah Jones (who clearly despises it.) I see Obama is the bridge between them, still postmodernist (unlike Clinton) but not openly racialist like Jones or Harris. (Biden was an outlier, an Clinton-era throwback who got the job because the DNC feared no one else could win, and lost it for the same reason.) There is a similar slide on the right from America-loving Reagan to narcissist in chief Trump.
In some ways the parties have mirrored each other. The Democrats started from postmodernist ideology (in the 60's) and worked their way to a fawning cult of personality over an obviously unqualified candidate (Harris). The Republican base started a personality cult around Trump (despite the party's wishes otherwise), but that is now morphing (via smarter men like Vance and Cotton) into a coherent set of policies. The commonality I see is that both have given up on Enlightenment-Lockean-Millian-liberalism. The Dems walked away from it accidently between 2008-2020. The Reps are consciously walking away from it now.
To be honest, I find Deneen's argument on this (not his solutions, but his argument) to be pretty convincing: Lockean liberalism may well be dying of old age, having solved the problem it was created for (confessional European monarchies killing each other over rival interpretations of God) but refusing to fade away over the centuries due to lack of alternatives. Both parties are pecking around for alternatives. The Dems have seized on wokeness. The Reps are still trying to coalesce. And folks like Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks and Bari Weiss will be playing Weekend at Bernie's with liberalism's corpse until it starts to stink up the whole country... but I suspect our future is illiberal. The fact that I don't like it doesn't make it false. 30 years from now, we may well look back at both of these candidates as moderates.
I really think the recent unreasonableness on the left on Israel + climate has led to them having less power in the coalition.
Examples: DSA unendorsed AOC for not being extreme enough on Israel, and weeks later she gave one of the best received speeches at the DNC. The Sunrise Movement refusing to endorse Biden vs Trump, even after he passed the biggest climate bill in US history. The far left shutting down nuclear power plants and natural gas when those decrease emissions.
If you don't give people a reason to work with you, you're not going to keep any allies!
Considering how effective AIPAC just was in ousting two other members of the Squad, AOC is rightfully afraid. If they pump $15 million like they did against Bowman into her next primary, she's gone.
This is why Netanyahu gets standing ovations from Congress. He knows they're all rightfully terrified of AIPAC.
Didn't both the Squad members that AIPAC help defeat have serious personal flaws though?
Ilhan Omar (as the most visibly Muslim woman in Congress) was likely an even higher-priority AIPAC target, but saw off her primary challenger just fine.
AIPAC didn't go after Omar this cycle. If they'd pumped $10-15 million into her primary campaign like they'd done with the two others, she'd likely have lost. Because NOBODY in a House race can beat an intelligently invested sum like that. They also avoided going after AOC; but she's resoundingly popular in her district, and she'd hit back hard. So why then did AIPAC leadership decide to spare Omar?
Were they tapped out cash-wise, and chose to focus on the vulnerabilities of the other two? Did they worry they'd earn the moniker of being anti-Muslim? I'd love to know to the real reason(s).
No better example of this than AOC; watching her journey from a self-aggrandizing member of the Squad, to an actual legislator under Nancy’s tutelage, to a coveted spot on a convention stage, has been incredibly satisfying.
Perhaps the claim that she was self-aggrandizing and not interested in being an actual legislator was always wrong and she hasn't really changed all that much? I never have seen actual evidence for the claim, just dislike of her style and particular ideological slot.
I think that claim started by those to her right, and then when she became a legislator it is now something said by far-leftists. That said, I do think her rhetoric adjusted from "America should be more moral" to something more like "I love America and that why I'm fighting to make it better." Those two aren't mutually exclusive but they emphasize different aspects.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a master of the art of kayfabe.
Before a crowd, or on Twitter, she is great at reading the room and plays the babyface when her supporters are watching and heels it up when she wants to rile up her many detractors.
Yet she understands the duties of her representation and actually does the routine work of lawmaking and constituent services. She gets the grander aspects of politics.
A lot of people are pointing to her speech this week and saying maybe in the next decade she's presidential material. I doubt that; she's been slimed for her entire career and the attacks will catch up to her. But, she has better chances of being a New York U.S. Senator or governor.
Being slimed by MAGA is an accolade, not a burden. No newbie ever knows what the reality is like, and she used social media to educate her followers on the process of learning what the job entails. I see that as a major positive, not a liability.
AOC is a master of generating a short 140/280 character quip and compressing wit and a devastating insult into a tweet.
AOC shutting down a Ben Shapiro debate: "Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions. And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one."
AOC on Kevin McCarthy's ouster as speaker: "Contrary to how McCarthy’s defenders are behaving, men failing up is not a Constitutionally protected right. The man made risky decisions and faced the natural consequences of them. I am not his mom, and my job is not to put pool noodles around hard corners for Republicans."
There are two things that America really is the greatest ever at: 1) creating a sense of national identity that's not limited by ethnicity 2) using the good parts of our heritage as a weapon against the bad parts. Both are liberal.
There are no two countries entirely comparable, but in its own way, China has created a sense of national identity that's not limited by in-empire ethnicity as well, and that's evolved over several dynasties and regimes.
It strikes me that almost no modern large countries haven't had to adopt pan-ethnicity to some extent, because they are bound to be multi-ethnic, and modern technology and communications generally engender more equitable treatment than the past. So there are some similarities between the pan-ethnic melting pot states of the US, Canada*, Australia, and the other large countries: India, Brazil, Russia, China.
*Canada is a contradiction: Quebec is an ethnic-nationalist highly autonomous sub-national jurisdiction within a state that otherwise now has its identity even less limited by ethnicity than the US.
I recognize this argument is very vague and broad, but so is the world.
Yeah, just ask the Uighurs or the Tibetans. You are completely wrong. Chinese culture is absolutely, positively Han dominated.
I’ve often said to friends of mine - of which many are either immigrants or first-generation Americans with immigrant parents - my belief is that what makes someone an American is simply building a life here and believing in our Constitution and system of government. IMO, the closest thing I have to a religion is a belief that our Constitution is, despite its imperfections, the most durable government framework yet devised.
France can be good at both these things, sometimes...
“If there’s any part of America that MAGA people still love, other than the single individual of Donald Trump, it’s hard to see what it is.”….what an excellent home-hitting point Noah.
Don’t MAGA people love a misogynist, white supremacy? I don’t think Trump is necessary for that.
He isn't necessarily against it, if it means those people can deliver him power and the White House...
Do you mean in the same sense as members of either party might pander to our love of our country to obtain votes? I liked this article because it offered some hope that the Democratic party as a whole is sufficiently sincere about their patriotism to completely forgo their recent "progressive" insanity. And, perhaps, the politicians they elect will follow suit.
I think the Democrats are correcting course a bit and also listening to their base of voters. I think MAGA Republicans are a different base of voters and Trump has shown that he has no principles. If you look at the speakers of the DNC, they at least have a clear set of principles even if you don't agree with their policy positions. There is a difference between pandering as a politician and being seen as a leader, I'm hoping Democrats take on the leadership role though.
Like you, I also enjoyed this article because I do think and believe that the Democratic party is being sincere and taking on more of an active approach, instead of letting progressives lead some of the major discourse. Even though I don't blame party leaders for the actions of social justice warriors online or people that are chronically online, I do think that they were too passive in how those people ended up being seen as the face of the party even if that wasn't the case.
Who is “he?” Trump? I was replying to Jaryd Hermann’s pull quote about MAGA people only loving Trump, and saying that a lot of other white supremacists or misogynists could court the MAGA vote. Trump succeeds because a lot of people want him to, and it has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans.
Generally great, but spoiled by the absurd claim that Gaza protests are driven by hatred of America. How about disgust that the Netanyahu regime is murdering tens of thousands of people, while its ministers openly advocate genocide, and the US government persists with the delusional belief that if they support Israel long enough a peaceful solution will emerge? If, as I hope, Harris changes tack and pulls the plug on Netanyahu, will you say that she hates America too?
Isn't a "peaceful solution" to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict impossible, because the entire Palestinian national identity is built around violent resistance to Zionist colonization, pretty much guaranteeing that any self-identifying Palestinians who aren't thoroughly subjugated by Israel will wage war against it?
The conflict could end of course with the total victory of one side or the other: a Palestinian victory would mean the destruction of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Levant, while a Zionist victory would mean the Palestinians were either ethnically cleansed themselves or ceased to identify as Palestinians.
Denazifying Germany was possible because Nazism wasn't an intrinsic part of the German national identity: Germany had after all existed as a united nation-state for 62 years before the Nazi takeover. By contrast the Palestinian national identity was born in struggle against Zionism, being finally crystallized by the Nakba of 1948.
(Also I think Noah will almost certainly be biased towards Israel given that he's Jewish himself.)
There is viable, or at least not impossible, two-state solution. But the way there is not the wishful thinking of the last 40 years. It may be close to impossible, but that beats impossible.
The essentials:
- Imposed solution, not dependent on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
- West Bank and annexed parts of Jerusalem cleared of all settlers and removed from Israeli control.
- All Palestinian areas, above plus Gaza, under a new occupation by some entity dominated by the US, but including Arab, Turkish, European forces. Civil and limited political rights, but obviously Hamas and other anti-democratic or theocratically inclined parties outlawed. And beaten down. Similar to some proposals for Gaza, or post-WW2 occupations. Expensive, but consider the current cost. Draconian at first, but less than the current occupation. Bloody at first, but less than now and previously.
- Economic relations with Israel to the degree mutually agreed.
That's it. I said almost impossible. I also said better than impossible. Or should we spend the next 40 years banging our heads against the same wall?
Secondary issues can be solved, including formal mutual recognition, or a face-saving approximation; right of return (none, but compensation); access to and control over a port in northern Israel, corridor Gaza<>WB. Etc.
Sadly, none of the above will ever come to pass based on current political calculus. AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby have a literal stranglehold on US Israeli policy. Trump + GOP will always give them 100% of what they want; and the Dems 80%. Which means covering for them in the Security Council, and selling them hardware.
The only thing that will change the calculus is a broad international boycott contingent upon their deepening the genocide or almost-genocide in Gaza. The world will need to see not just a hill, but a mountain of dead and starved Gazan children, before any meaningful sea-change occurs.
Well put. The heart of the Israeli Right's argument for never granting a Two-State solution is that the Palestinians are irremediably crazy killers who must remain locked up for ever in their ghettos. Never mind that nearly half of them are children.
Netanyahu indeed built his political brand on the notion that he was the best man to keep the Palestinians caged in their ghettos, but that notion of containing the conflict of course collapsed last October 7, which likely explains why Israel is now pulverizing Gaza much as Syria (under father Assad) pulverized Hama in 1982.
Especially given that Netanyahu is also a crook who likely faces prison if he loses power.
Souli Khatib of Combatants for Peace puts this differently that both Israeli and Palestinian identities are formed by the presence of the other people and possibly peace will come from understanding that both national narratives are flawed. Also in the 1920s a specific Palestinian nationalism was starting to split off from Arab nationalism. I think.
Wasn't it precisely _because_ of Jewish colonization of Palestine under the British Mandate that a specifically Palestinian nationalism emerged in the first place?
I don't know, the people I see on Instagram posting constantly about "Genocide Joe" and "Holocaust Harris" sure seem like they'd have another grievance about American hegemony or foundational racism even if the Gaza conflict ended tomorrow.
There's a reason that the Gaza protestors are protesting about Gaza and not Ukraine or Myanmar or Nigeria--and the reason is definitely not that they think they can save the most innocent lives by protesting about Gaza.
There's nothing constructive the Gaza protestors can reasonably hope to accomplish by wearing keffiyeh and chanting "from the River to the Sea." And given the protestors' apparent opposition to a two-state solution (which is the only category of non-genocidal solution that's even potentially possible), it doesn't seem like the protestors *want* to accomplish anything beyond signaling radicalism for status purposes.
OK, explain it to me. If protests are about hating America, why is that the protests are about US aid to Israel and not (as you point out) about US aid to Ukraine*? Maybe that Israel is murdering people with US weapons, while Ukraine is defending itself against a murderous attack.
* Of course, the Republicans, who really hate America, are protesting when the US defends democracy
Because protesting *against* aid to Ukraine would mean agreeing with Republicans, which is (fortunately) anathema to these children. But do you seriously disagree with the point that the same protestors could have done far more good (in terms of expected value in civilian lives saved) by protesting *for* aid to Ukraine or *for* aid to the Rohingya?
Hell, what do you think the campus Gaza protestors want to accomplish, exactly? The closest thing to a concrete policy any of them seem to espouse is "end US aid to Israel until it agrees to stop existing."
Because the Palestinian national self-conception is inseparable from the violent struggle against Zionism, Israel will arguably only be safe if it eradicates the "Palestinians" as a national identity: the same action that is branded "genocide" when Russia tries (admittedly for less sympathetic reasons) to do it to Ukraine, or when China (ditto) tries to do it to the Uyghurs.
There's currently a sizable community of Americans of Palestinian, or just Muslim, origin. When it's your own relatives or co-religionists getting abused, it becomes personal.
Why (incidentally) do Muslims (in the West or elsewhere) typically have more passion about defending Palestinians than they do about defending Uyghurs or Rohingya?
Is it because the Uyghurs and Rohingya are both on the periphery of the Muslim world while the Palestinians are right at its heart?
I'm talking about the overwhelmingly non-Muslim American college students who make up the majority of protestors. Obviously the situation is different where there's a personal connection. But most of the protestors have no stronger of a connection to the Palestinian cause than to the Ukrainian or Rohingya causes, for example, so their choice to focus on Gaza deserves examination.
Can't speak to the motivations of the non-Arabs/Muslims. The Jewish-American protestors *are* following a very proud and very ancient tradition of protesting injustice in any form. Especially when it's being committed in their name.
Being opposed to Netanyahu or even Zionism does not make you anti-American. Opposing the $1T/yr war machine spending does not make you anti-American either, though there is a huge lobbying effort to try and persuade you of that. America is great and our strength lies in our tolerance, diversity and strong economy, all of which are undermined by our endless interfering in foreign affairs.
This was true of protests against the Iraq and Vietnam wars. There is always a group like this that latches onto any protest
We killed a lot of civvies in both of those wars. There's a difference between patriotism and nationalism. And anti-nationalism. And sometimes the lines between gets blurred.
I don't usually like Great Man theories of history, but it's really hard to imagine all this going the way it did without Trump, specifically, running for office. Obama was (is!) sunny and patriotic; if his handpicked successor had lost to a garden-variety Republican, would everyone in lefty tastemaker circles have collectively concluded America was a white supremacist s***hole?
If he had gotten hit by a bus in 2014, I think we'd be drawing very different conclusions about the ineluctable forces of intellectual history and where they've led us.
And didn't Trump become president largely because an enemy power (Russia) helped him into the White House?
He was a terrible businessman (he managed to bankrupt a CASINO for goodness' sake!) who was bailed out by the Kremlin so that they could use his real estate empire to launder money. He was encouraged to run for President by Paul Manafort and Roger Stone (both of whom had likely been working for Moscow since the 1970s), assisted in the primaries by an FSB hack of Fox News (which they used to provide Trump with inside info on his rivals' campaign strategies) and then used Wikileaks in the general election to start the whole "Hillary's emails" attack line.
Lol, we wish it was the shadowy Russians. Hard to accept it was just luck and dumb Americans.
Eh I mean it was such a close election that it was plausibly both. If they hadn’t hacked the DNC emails, the lack of that storyline alone might have convinced a few tens of thousands of people in the right states.
I do agree that how close it was, given what a monster Trump is, reflects poorly on us though
My point is that Trump was unlikely to have even become the Republican nominee without Russian help, let alone the actual President.
And extremely telling that Russian and ChiCom Intelligence STILL strongly support Trump in this 2024 election. The media covers that Iran wants to help Harris; but fails to mention the much stronger, ongoing efforts by Russia and Xi to elect Trump.
We don't see a lot of people still talking about "ChiComs" these days for some reason. ;)
This really isn't the case. Russia tried to help him. He didn't object. But mostly, Hillary was just very unlikeable and ran a very bad campaign, to boot.
Actually, the bipartisan Senate investigation on 2016 Russian election interference was pretty damning. Russian Intelligence didn't just "try"; but engaged in an massive influence campaign: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-releases-election-security-findings-first-volume-bipartisan-russia-report
The Russians and Chinese are also going all-in for Trump this election cycle.
Russia didn't just help Trump win the general election by releasing hacked DNC emails via Wikileaks, they also helped Trump win the GOP primary by hacking Fox News emails and using them to give Trump inside information on his rival Republicans.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause, for the most part. But I do think that a combination of Trump and HRC was enough to affect things on the margins.
I am 100% convinced that the worst and most consequential comment made by a politician in the last 40 years has been HRC’s “basket of deplorables.” As soon as I saw her say that, I knew Trump would win in 2016.
I wonder if HRC was also harmed by the hint that (as a former First Lady) she had married her way into the political establishment? (And Bill's infidelity would have only added to this suspicion!)
Other First Ladies such as Nancy Reagan, Barbara or Laura Bush, or Michelle Obama had not been seen as political figures in their own right in the same way.
The sliming of Hillary Clinton began ever since Bill Clinton locked the nomination in 1992. After a quarter century, the mass media and popular perceptions of her caught up to her and tripped her up in the former Blue Wall states.
Same thing is happening with AOC. She's not going to be president, at best a New York senator or governor.
FOX News is indeed the single most powerful voice in American politics. Bar none.
The only reason Harris is doing so well right now, is that FOX never saw her rising to the top of the ticket, and thus never mobilized the sort of multi-year smear campaign like they've done for AOC and HRC.
Good point about the hold that Fox News has on conservative America, which is probably why the Kremlin targeted it in 2014.
I fully agree with your take on Hillary, but am reluctant to apply that to AOC.
Robert Graves served In the administration of 8 different presidents. Bush 43 brought him in as National Security Adviser in 2007 when pressure was peaking about how badly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in an unprecedented move, Obama asked him to stay on in the change from Republican to Democratic administrations. That meant he had to collaborate with HRC as Secretary of State. Here's what he had to say.
"My experience working with Hillary illustrated, once again, that you are never too old to learn a lesson in life. Before she joined the Obama administration, I had not known her personally, and what views I had were shaped almost entirely by what I had read in the newspapers and seen on television. I quickly learned I had been badly misinformed. I found her smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world. I promised myself I would try never again to form a strong opinion about someone I did not know."
Sounds like presidential material to me. But is that the Hillary the American people knew? No chance. The relentless "Hillary Hater" Republican campaign over the previous 22 years started with the Gingrich/Limbaugh "Hillarycare" campaign against healthcare reform and the continuous conspiratorial attacks on Bill Clinton during his presidency, and bled over into the general conception of both Clintons. But once Clinton's presidency was over, the mainstream press ignored the continuing libel and slander as typical background noise from the right, and didn't pay much attention to her even when she was SoS. The "Smoke Effect" (where there's smoke there must be fire) of this relentless negativity was a major contributor to voters' negative impressions of her during the campaign, and created fertile ground for the Republican Benghazi fishing expedition and the widespread misconception that there was something illegal or "crooked" about her use of private email as Secretary of State. [I'll address this further when I get my column going.]
However, AOC is in a different category, at least in part because of her youth and social media presence and savvy. I would be reluctant to draw parallels between the two, not least because she has more instrumentality in controlling the narratives.
Yeah, I remember saying back then that my main wish was no more Kennedys, Bushes, or Clintons. I still voted for HRC though.
“Garden-variety Republican” = more adept at using dog whistles?
Well…yeah. I didn’t vote for Mitt Romney but he’d be a lot better than Trump
I’d vote for Romney every day and twice on Sunday… though elections are on Tuesdays so I guess he gets one vote from me.
I have less than 50 pages left in "Scenes of Subjection"! Hooray! I may get ice cream! But I assume that when this book was originally written in 1997 the deep skepticism that Congress really intended the Reconstruction Amendments to bring full equality was still there.
I am very proud to have been stubborn enough to finish this book. It had some useful metaphors that real historians could work with in a generative way but real historians should not consider it any kind of authority. Clearly because I am a masochist I ordered "Lose Your Mother" because Saidiya Hartman said clearly that "the afterlife of slavery" was not in the book.
I think I'm missing the point. America has a lot of appalling history that we've been thinking and talking about more than pre-Trump -- but that's what I mean, it's more than before he showed up. Had he not showed up, I think we'd be paying less attention to it because the present would be better and it would seem more firmly in the past
.
This is hard to say because at least online people might need a convincing way of talking about the past to counter anti-wokes who want the past all to themselves. Many of these people supported Trump because he was the closest mainstream political figure to what they had been saying for years.
Possibly tangentially, I was annoyed in 2016 that many educated ordinary Democrats could not take up the many other obvious arguments that Trump was not fit to be president and could only say that Trump was a bigot and thus dispatch him from serious consideration in public life for reasons that only other educated people understood. If you have been trained to see things first in terms of what groups have been left out you will of course see and talk about the past that way. It was relatively straightforward to see Trump as an example of white backlash but it was not necessary to condemn the entire past on that account or feel trapped in an endless loop
I just discovered the word "oikophobia" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikophobia) for an aversion not only to one's country but to one's culture and traditions.
In the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, I was struck by the "this is who we are" mantra that appeared in the opinion pages of The NY Times and in comments from leftists in my home state. Biden's response was the opposite: This is not who we are. And I took Biden's side in an online debate with an elected official who contended that she meant that phrase not just figuratively but literally. Really? Do you include yourself in that condemnation?
"This is who we are," in the context of reactions to events like Jan. 6 or the reckoning with the events of 1619, seems to be to capture the attitude that underlies what Noah is describing here in the 2010s. I still bristle when I hear the term. Who's the we? Does it innclude those themselves who use that term to describe what disgusts them? Is it a self-loathing or a hatred of an "other" evil in our past and in our midst? I see it is a kind of manichaeism - a preoccupation with the original sins of our nation's past combined with a self-aggrandizing, self-absolution that comes from calling it out and separating one's self from the world or in this case, the culture and history of our nation.
It’s just so obvious that “this is not who we are” and sayings like it are meant aspirationally: this is not who we *should* be. We ought to be better than <this, whatever this is>!
The churlish insistence that no, this is who we essentially are, always have been, is contemptible — it’s burning solidarity to power a performance of sophistication. If abolitionists, or early environmentalists, or union leaders, or whoever, had thought that way we’d have a much worse country today.
💯
That could be no more than what Philip Roth called "the indigenous American berserk" and certainly had antecedents in some instances of Reconstruction mob violence. The illiberal America that our host is talking about that was afraid of Irish immigrants goes back a good 200 years existing alongside the more liberal America where people could come together across difference.
One of my grandparents had a friend that “offered her condolences” that their child was marrying a Catholic. And this was in the 1970s!
"This is who we are" means exactly that; the "we" is ''America". Some years ago I read that polls showed that roughly 40% of Americans favored autocracy over democracy. I thought at the time that that had to be an exaggeration - and then America elected Trump. Even if he won because of a confluence of unusual factors including people voting against Hillary and never thinking Trump could win, that still leaves a segment of voters that falls remarkably close to that 40%. Then, after Trump continuously demonstrated his unfitness for office for 4 years, he still got 55 million votes in 2020.
And when the sitting president claimed, with all the evidence showing it was a lie, that the 2020 election was stolen, Republicans in Congress, without any apparent remorse or guilt, readily violated their oaths of office and either refused to refute the lie or repeated it loudly. So when the President called on his supporters to come to Washington and violently oppose the certification of the election, tens of thousands of them came, and a large number actively assaulted the Capitol and threatened the Vice President and members of Congress.
Republican state legislatures and governors are actively attempting to repress Democratic votes, Republican court appointees and Congressmen are bending over backward to roll back society to the 1950s - or even the 1850s. The Heritage Society has spent 4 years developing a program to effectively dismantle the Federal government. Trump has taken over the RNC, and they and Republicans around the country are working to try to steal the upcoming election, starting with insisting to their followers that the Democrats will cheat "again". Meanwhile Republicans have nominated a demonstrated (and convicted) con man, grifter, and fraudster.
So yes, this is who we are.
Good comment.
Mr. Duncan, you are making my point. By your account, this (insert all evils here) is who maybe 40% of us are, while the other 60% are not. Whatever the proportions and however fixed or enduring the attitudes of your estimated 40%, the expansive "we" is not who we all are. Does the "we" include you, your family, most of your friends? I think not. When I hear "this is who we are," I hear "this is who they are" but it's not who I and others in my family or party or group are. If that's your meaning, you should say so. IMO, it's not a helpful or hopeful point of view, especially if the they are viewed as irredeemable. It's just another version of "us" and "them." So, no, this is not who we all are.
I like that you call Taylor Swift an institution of American life ❤️
I've always been a "Progressive Patriot". Not because this country is perfect, but because the striving to realize the best of America's ideals is a persistent theme of American history.
I'm slightly surprised there wasn't a bump in patriotism after Obama's election. Personally I felt my patriotism skyrocket when my president was black (and I am a veteran, so I've pretty much always been a bit jingoistic). It took a hit with Trump's election - I was embarrassed - and wanted to believe "this isn't who we are," but the truth is the reason anti-Americanism took root at that time was because Donald Trump wasn't elected by a fringe, he was as much a part of America as Obama.
But when Biden was elected rather emphatically - and then passed quite a few progressive priorities - it made it quite easy to be proud of America again. I never thought America was a great evil, but my faith in this country was shaken, and while my pride has returned I do think Trump's election and things like the 1619 project gave me a greater understanding of my country and its history.
But the chance to elect a black woman, a desi woman, and the child of two immigrants would be a powerful message and would just make me so proud of my country in a way that Obama made me. It's maybe not rational, but here we are.
During and after Obama's election, America was still in the jaws of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Then the 2010s began with the Tea Party wave, which seized upon patriotism like a junkyard dog and made a burlesque LARP of the notion of patriotism. Of course, it was a foreshock to the Trump presidency.
Think of it as the concept of savory and unsavory associations, Vasav. Your mind can process three things simultaneously from an event: the impressive (the basic senses), the emotional (your mood and attitude) and the rational (your memories and ideas). If you were embarrassed by Trump, as I was and am, it's because you are processing Trump's personage and rhetoric, the significant chunk of the electorate who sees him as infallible, and they all hate you as a person. It's hard not to be hurt, or to be threatened, in such an atmosphere.
Not all "Pro-Palestine activists" are dead-ending behind protesting the DNC. I have an acquaintance who is an antifa/communist stereotype, and even she was emphasizing the need to unite around Harris until the election is over. I was quite surprised. Switching out Biden seems to have gotten her on board. She's not very hopeful that Harris will have a different Israel policy, but some portions of the far left are getting behind "vote blue, no matter who"
I agree 100% that the Republican message is dark, dreary and deeply pessimistic - in essence deeply anti-American if you believe, like I do, that America is about optimism and positivity. But I don't buy for a second that Democrats have embraced the opposite. Waving around placards like robots doesn't change the fact that Dems have spent the better part of a decade running this country down as a an irredeemable white supremacist hellhole. Sorry, they don't get to change that message on a dime. Their patriotism is a mile wide and an inch deep and is solely designed to get Kamala Harris into office. Nothing more and nothing less.
Well, the truth is that Democratic *politicians* never "spent the better part of a decade running this country down as a an irredeemable white supremacist hellhole". That was always just activists and intellectuals. What the Democratic politicians are doing now is leading folks away from the dead-enders. And that's good. That's called leadership.
As I expect you have probably said on this topic before, it bears mentioning that America has never been less of a “white supremacist hellhole” than it is now.
It has made all the activists of the past decade seem like cos-players at a comic book convention, dressing up in fabulous battle gear for Instagram, in an anodyne, climate-controlled environment.
They were literally protesting the actions of people long dead and ignoring the fruits of their labors — from Lincoln’s work to Obama’s two-terms as President.
MAGA was the perfect foil for them, proving their outrage, while growing from it.
I love that the feared protests outside the DNC have been mostly unattended — with piles of protest signs lying around in the park — and the kindling of hope inside the auditorium has been sucking all the nation’s oxygen in.
It gives MAGA less fuel to burn the country down with.
Everyone can agree that all of this energy is best spent building the America of the 21st Century: clean power, clean transportation, clean appliances, clean air for everyone — and more homes!!
Yeah!!
I suspect the reason why a lot of leftist activists don't mind campaigning against the Democrats (even if it means returning Trump to the White House) is that the "Resistance" of the Trump years gave them meaning which they felt they have lost since Biden became President.
The far left and the Trumpists are in a toxic relationship, but they need each other and feed off each other's excesses. Trump being in power is good for the far left because it gives them permission to be as extreme.
Both of them try to prop Biden up to more than he is, which is one of the most milquetoast politicians of my lifetime.
Creating a Blue Wave to sweep the presidency and both houses of Congress takes precedence right now over trying to restrain Israel. Trump and the GOP in general are a severe threat to our future safety, prosperity and democratic way of life.
But that doesn't mean the Israeli craziness under Netanyahu is forgotten. As an ethno-state with an ongoing ethnic cleansing program, coupled with a genocide or near-genocide, have made them into an albatross around our necks, considerably eroding our soft power when we need all of it to try to contain China. And hopefully prevent them from starting the next world war. A war that will either impoverish us; or end life on the planet.
But the political reality in DC is that AIPAC has an extremely strong grip on both parties. Like the pro-Palestine marchers, they are also a single-issue political force.
I agree.
The constant complaint about the US withholding weapons to Israel, I think, is missing the potential consequences. I think this is bad communication on the part of Biden. Maybe there’s something that can’t be made too public. It strikes me that if Iran or other Middle Eastern countries think the US will withdraw its support, Israel may get attacked again more severely, and Israel could get tempted to use nuclear warheads.
This could lead to the normalization of nuclear warfare and also a massive disruption in oil markets, causing a worldwide recession and destabilized governments, as voters direct their outrage at their leaders to invent solutions.
I wonder how essential our relationship to Israel will be once we are running on EVs, rather than oil. When we can let international oil markets tank, the Middle East quagmire will likely get worse.
And with the climate crisis, temperatures will make a lot of it uninhabitable. The Hajj will become more and more of a mass death ritual, driving further extremism.
The Likud and Hamas need to be disempowered, or they will lead their peoples to an even worse war. I don’t know how the US can do this.
I just know that we need to stop using fossil fuels ASAP, and Mr. T isn’t going to facilitate that. Kamala needs to win this fall. Then we can figure Israel out…
Your mention of how opposing extremists feed on one another reminded me of Doug Muder's famous "Terrorist Strategy 101" article from back in 2004.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2004/11/9/72151/-
Very clever. More people need to be aware of this.
Scott Alexander had a really good post on this following the 2016 election. His point is that the number of true, actual American white supremacists is vanishingly small, in no way either a serious "movement" or political force. https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
You only need a few, extremely committed people willing to commit violence to upend the calculus. The Brownshirts started out small. If the militiamen on Jan. 6th had brought guns--or had started their push a half hour earlier--the outcome could've been very different. If the Trump shooter had had slightly better aim...You get the idea.
That you think the threat of organized political terrorism is just "crying wolf" is extremely naive.
I don't really know what point you think I'm making, but it's definitely not the one you're arguing against with this comment.
Minimizing the danger to this country, by minimizing the head count of white supremacists.
My family--and most of our relatives and family friends--are, or were, pretty racist. Not to the level of joining a neo-Nazi march; but certainly to the level of providing financial and political support. I think you underestimate the power of GOP-stoked white grievance.
You do not have to believe everything Umar Lee wrote about 10 years since Ferguson, which very conveniently is in his newsletter here on Substack. But from the POV of someone strongly involved in the protests 10 years ago the protesters were protesting very concrete injustices that they had experienced which were not fully addressed because the national response was too interested in grand theories of racism. "Between The World And Me" may have been inspired by what happened but on the spot Ta-Nehisi Coates was in France and had nothing brilliant to say--was essentially reduced to telling people to read Jelani Cobb who was actually in Ferguson.
It’s also called propaganda.
Great article Noah. Patriotism should reflect our better selves, the ideals of our country and principles that the US was founded on. This is opposed to the vision of "patriotism" that is driven by reactionary demagogues and grifters who are constantly trying to make our country more and more exclusionary.
Who knew not demonizing the people who represent would get you votes.
I know that this never really was as much of a problem in the democratic party as it has been occasionally perceived. But still, its good to see them reject that idea in favor of more appealing ideas to the average voter.
They say the new Tide leaves clothes brighter! I always believe adverts and also everything said at corporate offsites. All it takes is a few scripted lines and the whole image of a product changes! My t-shirt says so.
This is ridiculous. Nicole Hannah Jones has been extremely vocal about her hatred of America. Palestinian (pro-Hamas) activists have been chanting "death to America" for months -- those are Democrats. Waving the flag at your convention doesn't mean you love America. It means you love power and know that waving the flag will "give people a lump in their throat" and make them more likely to give you that power. The GOP did the same thing. You can hear the consultants, "show lots of flags, people like that."
In the real world though (as opposed to the reality TV show that our politics has become) the postmodernist liberals running the show have been very upfront about their beliefs. They think the country was born in racism, our original sin, and they want to fundamentally remake the country as a progressive utopia. To be fair, there's a strain of postliberal utopianism on the Right too, but the Left has been talking about this far longer. The difference between the screaming, blue-haired, gender-studies activist and Kamala Harris is only a matter of degree (and policy wise, not even that -- she just knows to wrap her extremism in the flag, just like Trump does.) Joe Biden was the last sane one and he's too feeble to stand up to the lunatics now.
What a crappy set of choices.
You know what I want? A ruling class that can do this: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-a-50000-ton-forging Competence. I'm past a lot of policy disagreements; make my country functional again and I will consider voting for you.
I think you're under-estimating the number of powerful Democrats who were never comfortable with the hardcore anti-racism ethos of the 2014-2021 and are happy to not have to pretend to tolerate it anymore. I've never met a left-leaning person in real life who actually ardently believes these things, except for very marginal non-powerful people who most other people gravitate away from. It's not correct that the people "running the show" are true believers on this topic.
I'm not sure it's a ringing endorsement to say that all the left-wing people you know were happily regurgitating (or at least not opposing) totally insane racialist rhetoric for years even though they didn't believe it. That's not a sign of virtue but of cowardice.
In a time of extreme polarization, it is absolutely necessary for each party to be willing to call out its own, since any criticism from the other side will be ignored. (I have been very public in my distaste with the Jericho March in 2020 for example and the messianic overtones many apply to Donald Trump. I think this is very dangerous.)
I didn't say "all the left-wing people [I] know."
Sorry. I misread you. So I reframe my point: the Democratic Party is run by cowards, people who had a chance to stand up to insanity and didn't. Again, not a ringing endorsement.
I'm absolutely on board with your last paragraph.
I think your first few paragraphs bind every Democrat to the anti-Americanism that exists on the left, but somehow don't bind every Trumpist to the anti-Americanism of hating everything about America. I don't see the parry that still loves Obama as anti-American. And he clearly loves and believes in America, and believes his story is unique to this country. But the modern Republican party has become the party of Trump in the last 8 years.
Tying Trump to Trumpism is far more direct than tying Kamala to a caricature of a very specific, protesting Democrat. So I see it as Trump is an anti-American Trumpist, but Kamala and most Democrats are not the same as anti-American leftists.
But I don't want my criticism of part of your comment to overshadow how much I agree with the other part of your comment. Personally, I have more faith in competence from the party that has implemented the beginnings of an industrial policy, rather than the party of Trump. I'd likely be voting Democratic anyway, but your last paragraph is a major reason why.
"Personally, I have more faith in competence from the party that has implemented the beginnings of an industrial policy."
Bingo, Vasav. Nailed it in one. Add to that Infrastructure & CHIPS, and the Dems might just save us from a China determined to rule the world. The GOP with their borrow-and-spend tax cuts are just selling deck chairs on the Titanic.
That may be a fair criticism, Vasav. I do agree that Obama is not "unAmerican" the same way the pro-Hamas people outside are, but he is part of a continual slide that has run from Bill Clinton (who really did love this country) to Nicole Hannah Jones (who clearly despises it.) I see Obama is the bridge between them, still postmodernist (unlike Clinton) but not openly racialist like Jones or Harris. (Biden was an outlier, an Clinton-era throwback who got the job because the DNC feared no one else could win, and lost it for the same reason.) There is a similar slide on the right from America-loving Reagan to narcissist in chief Trump.
In some ways the parties have mirrored each other. The Democrats started from postmodernist ideology (in the 60's) and worked their way to a fawning cult of personality over an obviously unqualified candidate (Harris). The Republican base started a personality cult around Trump (despite the party's wishes otherwise), but that is now morphing (via smarter men like Vance and Cotton) into a coherent set of policies. The commonality I see is that both have given up on Enlightenment-Lockean-Millian-liberalism. The Dems walked away from it accidently between 2008-2020. The Reps are consciously walking away from it now.
To be honest, I find Deneen's argument on this (not his solutions, but his argument) to be pretty convincing: Lockean liberalism may well be dying of old age, having solved the problem it was created for (confessional European monarchies killing each other over rival interpretations of God) but refusing to fade away over the centuries due to lack of alternatives. Both parties are pecking around for alternatives. The Dems have seized on wokeness. The Reps are still trying to coalesce. And folks like Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks and Bari Weiss will be playing Weekend at Bernie's with liberalism's corpse until it starts to stink up the whole country... but I suspect our future is illiberal. The fact that I don't like it doesn't make it false. 30 years from now, we may well look back at both of these candidates as moderates.
I really think the recent unreasonableness on the left on Israel + climate has led to them having less power in the coalition.
Examples: DSA unendorsed AOC for not being extreme enough on Israel, and weeks later she gave one of the best received speeches at the DNC. The Sunrise Movement refusing to endorse Biden vs Trump, even after he passed the biggest climate bill in US history. The far left shutting down nuclear power plants and natural gas when those decrease emissions.
If you don't give people a reason to work with you, you're not going to keep any allies!
Considering how effective AIPAC just was in ousting two other members of the Squad, AOC is rightfully afraid. If they pump $15 million like they did against Bowman into her next primary, she's gone.
This is why Netanyahu gets standing ovations from Congress. He knows they're all rightfully terrified of AIPAC.
Didn't both the Squad members that AIPAC help defeat have serious personal flaws though?
Ilhan Omar (as the most visibly Muslim woman in Congress) was likely an even higher-priority AIPAC target, but saw off her primary challenger just fine.
AIPAC didn't go after Omar this cycle. If they'd pumped $10-15 million into her primary campaign like they'd done with the two others, she'd likely have lost. Because NOBODY in a House race can beat an intelligently invested sum like that. They also avoided going after AOC; but she's resoundingly popular in her district, and she'd hit back hard. So why then did AIPAC leadership decide to spare Omar?
Were they tapped out cash-wise, and chose to focus on the vulnerabilities of the other two? Did they worry they'd earn the moniker of being anti-Muslim? I'd love to know to the real reason(s).