I've been glued to politics since I was a tween, and I can say confidently that there is no media company that provides what the Bulwark does. This is a community, full stop. It reminds me of my very best experiences in college - meaningful, respectful debate, with intelligent people, who have good intentions and a sense of humor. It's been a true lifeline through the Trump era - forever grateful for y'all ❤️
I’m going to add to that thought by saying that the Bulwark is great even without the comments, but I would love to see some of the more articulate and interesting people here (not me) write an occasional piece that could be more widely circulated to people who do not often have time for the comments. Something perhaps like letters to the editor was once upon a time when I was in high school and we were in outraged to write in and one or two of my classmates actually got published.
Here in Santa Cruz, California, our local paper, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, (or The Senile, as some like to call it) has a robust letters to the editor section and is one of the main reasons I read it every day and sometimes (when the mood has struck me), I even read one of my own submissions. I love this idea and think it would be a hit. There are lots of smart, incisive commenters here on The Bulwark.
I'm nowhere near being a techie, and I'm not sure this is what you're talking about, but if you hover over the circle beside a person's name a box will appear which contains a subscribe button. I think if you choose that you'll be notified when they make a comment.
I've never done this myself, but I've gotten notices that other folks have subscribed to me - and will then get a list of multiple "likes" from them all at once, from various content on which I've commented. You could always experiment and see what happens.
Now that you mention it, I have subscribed to a couple of responders I consistently interact with (or "Like" their comments). It doesn't seem to help with seeing their posts on individual stories.
I guess what I'd like is another option "View" option besides Newest or Most Liked that would be people I consistently want to see comments from.
Fully believe that magats will feast on endless economic crap-wiches to have their cultural grievances validated. As you mention, I cannot figure out how to effectively remedy this, as their self-awareness to recognize the truth seems non-existent. Any conversation (even in a calm, questioning manner) only seems to trigger defensive 'what-about-ism' and ignorant repetition of deep rabbit-hole BS.
The only problem is they are preaching to the choir. They need to get their message out into the political ether where it will be read and listened to by other reachable voters. This problem is shared by all anti-Trump media - they do not seem to have a plan or the tools to reach a wider audience. The Bulwark is essential to our well-being and motivates us to engage - but they are too important to keep stymied in their own bubble. I hope they have staff that are dedicated to figuring this out. The world needs them!
Certainly they are preaching to the choir but I can't tell you how often I have forwarded excerpts, used opinion statements, linked to their Youtube Takes, etc... to discuss and sometimes argue political and cultural points with my MAGA/Trump-supporting circle.
This is a cherished investment in both $$ and time - including the value I get from you all as commenters.
(sorry if I violate copyright but I have been and will always be a soft rogue in legal and social mores)
But do the MAGAnuts read and, more importantly, understand and internalize what you show them, or just, as their hero does, ignore it as so much rabble and riff-raff mumblings?
Good differentiation. My Trump-supporting circle is reasonably smart and logical and they do listen and comment and sometimes do the "but Biden" response. The true MAGA-ites argue and really don't connect any dots. My Trump-supporting circle are now more or less anti-Trump, not necessarily due to me but I think having a broader view of his and his administration's actions outside of the Fox bubble has been an eye opener
You and Ian are doing great. I think some people can get doomy because you can't convert everyone, but every group has die-hards who will never waver. But the MAGA-fied Republican Party cannot win on the die-hards alone, many of whom aren't even particularly loyal to it as a whole, just to Trump. It's those "soft" supporters who won 2024 for him, and so if we can pick them away, we can win again.
I have several like-minded friends who already spend a lot of time in cyberspace and don’t have the time to take the plunge into The Bulwark. I totally understand that—I spend entirely too much time listening, reading, and thinking about everything in cyberspace.
The newsletter audience is the choir, but the videos are not. I think that getting their message out into the political ether is exactly why they stepped up the video content.
Good point. I have been disappointed lately that there are so many podcasts and would have preferred more written articles. But I'm the "choir," so if it reaches many who are not (or not yet), all the better.
I'd be really happy to see them address this the next time they do a "state of the Bulwark" update - I feel like they might be reaching a wider audience than suspected, especially on YouTube.
The Bulwark message is getting out, and hopefully more rapidly over time.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen it with friends. Annually, three of my college friends and I get together for a reunion weekend. Three years ago, one of them was aware of the Bulwark. Two years ago, two lightly followed the Bulwark’s articles. Last year, one friend now religiously follows everything Tim Miller does (except Snapchat - we’re early Gen X). A second regularly reads Bulwark articles, and the third is aware of much of what the Bulwark is producing. Granted, none of us are MAGA, but I find it heartening that pro small-L liberalism messages are permeating society. (…and channeling my inner-JVL pessimism, I just hope its not too late.)
They collaborate with other popular podcasters, and are on msnbc (msnow) a lot, plus others-I see Tim do an excellent job crushing the dimwits over on Piers Morgan, it's always a fun watch.
I agree. I was part of an experiment The Atlantic ran a few years ago where they invited members to subscribe at a certain price point. Part of that experience was a new conversation platform, hosted by Atlantic staff.
It was great for awhile. We had a book club and actually were able to have live online (text) conversations with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tara Westover, who wrote a memoir called "Educated" that knocked me out of the water.
The project didn't fulfill their (probably) financial goals, and they discontinued it. But a small group of regulars, including me, got permission to keep the group going privately.
It's mostly petered out now. I've moved on, reserving my commenting time for The Bulwark and other Substack sites I subscribe to.
I think the reason the community effort at The Bulwark worked and the one The Atlantic attempted didn't is because building community has been one of the founding principles at The Bulwark, not an afterthought to build subscriptions, as I suspect it was at The Atlantic.
A couple of weeks ago, for less than a day, there was a notice at the bottom of several Atlantic articles that they were soliciting ideas for starting a comments section, and a link you could click to submit said opinions. I eagerly recommended that they take their cues from TB, but couldn't get it to submit; it appeared that the option had already been disabled.
I submitted my experience to a place I found elsewhere on their website, but never got a response. Do you know anything about this?
I don't. They've had a policy of not enabling online comments because of the issues with content management. Thus the Discord group, which required a $100 or so commitment to get access to.
And that group was gone after about a year. I'm not sure they see community engagement as an important part of what they do.
I completely agree…the Bulwark is a guiding light for me in these dark times. I so appreciate being a part of this community. I feel like JVL, Sarah & Tim are my personal friends. Thank you for all you do my Bulwark peeps!! 🩷
I remember being a regular on some news media sites in the late 2000s and early 2010s that had generated some real communities in the comments sections (the Gawker sites, particularly Jezebel, come to mind) but it felt like the companies running them were completely hostile to those communities. They were constantly making changes to undermine and fragment the existing network of regulars and friends, preferring low-quality fly-by commenters for some reason. What's great about The Bulwark is they understand that the community here is key to their success and longevity, and they foster it instead.
I'll do you one even earlier -- UseNet in the 1990s. In my case, alt.support.divorce and alt.support.marriage.
Until Google acquired it, anyway. That's when I first heard the term "trolls" applied to the people who overwhelmed the discussions with garbage and worse. But I met people on those sites that became friends, including a few that carried over into real life. I'm still Facebook friends with a number of them.
Well, while I might have been too young for Usenet, I've found plenty of community and long-lasting friendships on its latter-day equivalents, like Internet forums in the 2000s and now Discord servers.
But I believe the subject was specifically the idea of news websites like The Bulwark creating that kind of community, and how genuinely rare it is for the people running those sites to value that enough to foster it rather than shut it down. Not the idea of Internet communities in general, which of course have always been around.
Douthat is such a fraud and it says everything that's needed to know about Times executive management that they keep this intellectually and morally bankrupt fool around.
It doesn't give them "conservative" cred. It just shows them for the out of touch elites they are (and I hate using the over- and mis-used word "elite").
I watched everything I thought was good about the good ol' USA melt and then then twist into something unrecognizable under Reagan, and believed he was the worst of my lifetime. I guess I lived too long.
No, by all means, use "out of touch elites" for the Times all you want. The Times has one overriding prerogative: to conserve and entrench their own status, power, and privilege (especially as as king makers and breakers).
It's amazing how turgid and....bad 'intellectual' movement conservative writing is. Buckley wrote like an oblivious, overconfident, untalented college freshman; Will's missives sound like a dictionary in search of an editor; and they all cram in as many multi-syllabic words as possible to demonstrate how intellectually serious they are and therefore must be taken as, regardless of their bankruptcy of ideas. It's a style, really a norm I've seen repeated over and over.
Contrast that with the writing here, which is just fun to read. Is there a connection between having a truly moral center and good writing? You make the call.
Elizabeth Bruenig is the one who always reads to me like when one of my college students is really realllllly stretching to pad out their essays with fancy but meaningless words. Like a thesaurus threw up, but the content is completely hollow.
I read a Dothout column years ago, understood where he and the NYTs was coming from and never, other than reading the headline as I scroll by, read another. There was a time when I'd watch a few minutes of FOX to see what the others were thinking and talking about. You don't have to keep drinking from the ocean to know it's salty.
No fear, JVL. You can adjust your views when you see things you didn't see before (like the racism on the Right), question that your take might not be right, and respond to your readers' criticisms ("Why don't you tell us what to do about the horrors you see coming around the corner?"). I don't think Douthat does any of that.
Hi Frau. Political psychologist Karen Stenner, who studies the authoritarian disposition, thinks racism is really “differentism”. Those with that disposition, about a third of any society, value what she calls “oneness and sameness” and are troubled by too much diversity. She says "some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy."
In this article, she explains all of that. It ends with “Where Do We Go From Here?" and spells out what a liberal democracy needs to do to accommodate that third of Americans. https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism
The problem with tolerance as a normative value is that living it necessitates putting up with all kinds of people who offend nature and decency simply by breathing. Including that guy in the mirror. No wonder it doesn't win elections.
I seem to recall at The Bulwark earlier this year identifying the authoritarian personality as being typically MAGA. I can’t remember the name of the article.
The Match-Throwing Club is one of your best pieces of work, JVL. It's an excellent parable.
As for NATO, let's be clear; we could push Russia out of Ukraine in half a year without endangering a single American life, if we were willing to fulfill our old role as the arsenal of democracy. The problem is, the left doesn't like the 'arsenal' part, and the right doesn't like the 'democracy' part
The really important part of this Triad is part 2. It is correct. The focus on 'kitchen table issues' is trying to bribe people out of a moral crisis. Trying to bribe people out of a moral crisis is, you know, doomed to failure from the start. It's like trying to create dry water.
Where did you come up with the idea that “the left doesn’t like the arsenal part”? Since the invasion, the Democrats have pushing to arm Ukraine over Republican objections. Biden did everything he could told to supply arm, with the Republican congress fighting him every step of the way. Please give an example of Democrats objecting to arms for Ukraine. Just one, please.
Biden armed Ukraine, but only enough to bleed Russia, not enough to push them back.
The Republicans objected, of course, which was inevitable due to the moral case as I frequently say - they quite like the idea of military powerful authoritarian states pushing around their Democratic neighbors - but ultimately I believe Biden was too cautious with the things he could have done, and I believe a big reason for that is the fact that a lot of DSA-aligned individuals were talking about how terrible it was that we were willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
I think some of that perception that the left of the party insufficiently supports Ukraine is a very online one. I've seen it too (much of it, I believe, the result of active Russian disinformation - similar to the way Russian agents were going on sites like Tumblr in 2016 pretending to be BLM bloggers to convince left-leaning young people not to vote for Hillary Clinton) but I find that when I talk to DSA leftists outside of the internet, they're vociferously pro-Ukraine, just about to-a-man. At most, these's some squeamishness on the left about involving ourselves in foreign conflicts that comes out of leftover Bush-era sentiment (especially among Millennials who came of political age then), but rarely to the extent that anyone would vote or advocate against that. (To be clear, I disagree with that squeamishness; I think it's kneejerk and shallow and doesn't account for the idea that every conflict is different. But I also find the people who feel that vague squeamishness aren't hard to talk out of it.) The people who are outright anti-supporting-Ukraine are turbo-online and they don't vote, and so are irrelevant, even if they can be extremely loud.
As someone who is probably to the left of the average Bulwark reader/commenter and has spent a lot of time in leftist communities both on- and offline, consistently one of the biggest divides in the left has always been between the people who actually Do Stuff (vote, volunteer in their communities, organize, protest) and the people who do nothing but whine (because as long as they don't have the power, they can always be the ones complaining about and "critiquing" power; they never have to give up the moral high ground). Unsurprisingly, the people in the former group tend to have less extreme beliefs and more realistic goals, because they have to engage with reality as it actually exists. But of course the Internet is going to favor the "spends all their time complaining" faction over the people who are too busy organizing marches and distributing free meals to the homeless and holding anti-fascist book club meetings.
From what I've heard of DSAs (I've never been all that active or interested in them myself), there's a similar disconnect between the rhetoric and the policy platforms vs. the people you meet at actual, in-person meetings for local chapters.
Thank you for your instructive observations and analyses of the Left/DSA. Forty + years I was involved with the latter as graduate student at a California public university but have not been since and only know what I read online. I fully support providing Ukraine with the resources to defend itself. I am also vehemently in opposition to what the Israeli government and military has done to Gaza. Now that I am retired (32 years as a high school teacher in California and of primarily farmworker students), I need to better understand the potential movement that lies in it embryonic stage. I do participate in the local protests but more must be done. I know better.
I agree. People know the difference between right and wrong; it really is not that difficult to ascertain. That’s why people, even Republican voters, are upset about the way the Trump regime is treating immigrants. Same with corruption. People say “oh, they all do it,” but that’s not true. In addition, the scale of corruption right now is almost incomprehensible. Yet, there are plenty of examples to help people understand how the ultra rich and ultra powerful are taking advantage of our democratic systems and our citizenry.
As a certified commie pinko socialist, I'm all for the "arsenal of democracy" bit. And yes, Dems and liberals need to step up to the moral fight - state what you stand for, call out amorality and immorality for what it is, and make it clear that only one can remain standing. What's essential is to make it absolutely clear that morality is what you do - it's behavior, not people. If someone wants to hold (to me) reprehensible ideas, fine. If you instantiate those ideas, we have a problem. Of course some humans are so corrupted they equate to "evil." But as a general rule focusing on unacceptable behavior is on many dimensions the road to success.
Rather, the problem is that the Right has been totally captured by curiously Russian-flavoured paleoconservative foreign policy ideas.
They want Russia to have a freehand to murder Eastern Europeans and Asians, so that the USA can have a freehand to murder North and South Americans.
They'll disguise their beliefs sure - see 'spheres of influence' and 'regional powers' - but at the end of the day, this comes down to wanting to write new pages of history with the blood of innocents.
But Russia is now enthralled to the Alexander Dugin Mother Russia fascism. Snyder and Masha Gessen (“The Future Is History”) have excellent studies of it. So it fits the paleo-Right narrative.
I really loved Adam Kinzinger's suggestion of Europe and America using all frozen sanctioned Russian money/assets to send to fund Ukraine for their weapons and other war-time needs. Russia paying for Ukraine to fight themselvs-i think it's an excellent, smart strategy. I'm so frustrated we can't just do this immediately!
Yes, great! I listened to that yesterday and discussed it with my high school senior. This is the world he’s entering, sadly, but he has to know the how we got here.
Maybe it is weird and also too in the feelings, but whenever we get these State of The Bulwark updates, I feel like I'm on the team, too. I've subscribed to lots of publications - some I really enjoyed - and have never once felt that before. I think I'm really just echoing your concept of community, but I wanted to say it anyway.
I have never felt like part of an online community - much less one that is about the state of our state - I am so grateful the Bulwark is this for so many of us!
Less of a weirdo, but still weird which is a GOOD thing. Weirdos ask awkward questions. Weirdos challenge assumptions. Weirdos look for different paths.
The Bulwark community is a home for weirdos who reject this failing era's binary thinking. We want to build something new and better and are here to listen, talk, challenge assumptions, and forge a new paradigm that moves beyond the stale, used futures visions animating the old paradigm's competing sides. We love you and the Bulwark *because* you are weirdos like us.
When I'm retired in my rocking chair and see where all the OG bulwarkers ended up in prominent areas of public life and service like under a new democratic ( lower case) administration full of the wise and young, i will feel immensely proud to have been a small part of restoring liberalism ( when its not a dirty word anymore). All the way from Australia we support you
I’m supporting from Canada. We’re a lot closer to the problem. For the time being, we haven’t become the 51st state. The tariffs have really hammered us, though.
“As I said yesterday: Even if America woke up in 2028 and came entirely to its senses, the damage that has already been done cannot be undone except over the course of decades.”
Agreed JVL, not just here, but abroad. In fact, Trump released his National Security Strategy yesterday, and it proves that these nefarious actors are trying to destroy the EU specifically because they are too democratic.
He claims to be the defender of democracy, while simultaneously trying to destroy Europe’s and our own. How quaint!
They see the EU as the obstacle or impediment to peace with their guardrails and law based democracies. It claims that US hegemony relies on the US controlling or having undo influence over the region, but also we will no longer support our European allies and move towards a world with three spheres of influence; aligning our long term interests with Russia and right-wing parties across the globe.
Clearly, Trump and his minions no longer believe they can lose elections, because democrats would never agree to this if they ever regain power; Yet, here we are!
If anyone still has any doubts as to whether these people would ever give up power readily or willingly, then may I suggest a good therapist, because that ship has sailed! IMHO…:)
Thank you, agree, it’s happening before our eyes, no one is talking about it, and they’re not even hiding their intentions anymore; as though it’s a fait accompli!…:)
the number one thing trump taught the already fascist-friendly gop is you can lie your way through anything, which has removed any sense of hesitation about extremist policies.
"This brings us back to George Packer. Many on the left hesitate to say plainly that MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance because:.."
I dissent partially. There are plenty of liberals and lefties that do this constantly. There are liberals-left people like you described and some/many of these people are well known/elite. Part of it is a kind of weird red-brown alliance because there is a certain kind of lefty that sees the Democratic Party as the real barrier to true socialism/revolution (TM). See also "after Hitler, us" or the "Social Democrats are the Real Social Fascists."
Part of it is elected politicians concerned about alienating soft Trumpists that they think they can convince sides.
But "MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance..." is the belief of many many Democracts
I think the important parts for liberals and anti-Trumpers to remember here is that *MAGA* is racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic, but that Trump voters as a whole are not. MAGA is the core, but they are not a large enough voting block on their own to put Trump into the office and they relied on low-info/low-attention swing voters to put them over the top in a national election. Liberals/anti-Trumpers need to remember that these low-info/low-attention swing voters are a moveable block and are separate from the MAGA movement. They cannot go around saying "Trump voters are racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic," they need to focus on singling out the MAGA movement from that equation so that those swing Trump voters don't think you're lumping them in there with the rest and feel insulted personally as a result. "People don't remember what you say, but they remember how you treat them."
There is also a group of libertarians within MAGA, not just the SV tech guys, often the small business owners that would have been “country club” GOP in the before times. Some might be on board for the cultural aspects, mostly they just hate people telling them what they should do. I keep waiting for some of these to drop out as big government Trumpism reveals itself. Sean Duffy’s sermons instructing us to dress up to fly is going to backfire with this group…..it’s a very woke approach.
Libertarians don't care about big government telling *people* what to do, they care about big government telling *them* what to do. If the government isn't affecting their personal life choices directly they will let it trample those of others with no fucks given. It's never been about how big government gets or what it does, it's about *who* it's doing those things to for the libtardians.
Reminds me of VP candidate Palin who said "people just want the government out of their lives!" Um no. They very much want the government fucking with other people's lives, just not theirs.
Sorry you went through the shutdown nightmare. Me too - terribly stressful. Hope all is well for you now (or as well as anything can be anymore). Take care.
You're right about many self-identified libertarians, perhaps more than would like to admit it.
But I also know people distributing red cards *because* they're libertarians, and *horrified* by what is happening to the rights of people besides themselves.
Ahh yes, the libertarian versions of pre-2015 Bulwark staff who thought that everyone else inside of their tent was also there for the raw ideology rather than the desired outcomes.
You can't *be* a libertarian for any length of time without noticing the label attracts a variety of kooks, cranks, and contrarians. Idealism merely requires insisting that ideals should matter more than that, and avoiding the too-clever-by half reasoning games that those who think themselves clever enough to pull off contrarianism are prone to, the Thielish sort of "here's why smart libertarians should be fascists" reasoning.
A healthy culture of inquiry does make room for contrarians, since the off chance they might be right is an important corrective, and for the mainstream's own epistemic hygiene. But this role for contrarians is a subordinate role, serving a mainstream that will more usually be right – not a role that self-styled "masters of the universe" like.
Too many tech- and finance-bros adopt contrarian politics as a love affair with their own cleverness and power. Even when that puts them on the right side of particular issues, it's a habit generally corrosive to clear, honest thinking.
I'll take your word for it, but libertarians being concerned about the rights of people besides themselves surprises me. To me, that makes them classical liberals. When I think of libertarians, who are considered part of the Right, I think of Ayn Rand types - "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute" (Wikipedia).
Libertarians will insist they are not "part of the right." But I think most are more right than left. When a Libertarian doesn't have a Libertarian to vote for, 90% of the time he or she votes for the Republican. Okay, maybe 80%.
Funnily, Ayn Rand hated libertarians – though that says more about her and the control she wanted to exert over her followers than about anything else.
Not everyone likes to use the label "classical liberal" (and, confoundingly, some who do are, for some reason Trump apologists – go figure!). Cato Institute folks and journalists who have Reason Magazine somewhere on their resume often fit your idea of "classical liberal", even if they'd call themselves "libertarian". Radley Balko, Cathy Young (now at The Bulwark)...
It's paywalled as archived material now, but Matt McManus published a wonderful essay a few years back on why self-styled libertarians have been pulled apart into a faction which would fit within Cass Sunstein's big-tent liberalism and another faction (more interested in hierarchy than equal liberty, it turns out) who broke bad. Lacking that link, I'll link to Cass Sunstein instead:
Perhaps a public reminder of what small-l "libertarian" actually means, because what you describe certainly isn't that, at least where government power is concerned.
People like Thiel are not libertarians in my opinion. They genuinely seem to want authoritarianism so long as they’re in charge. Democracy has given them the world and they’ll burn it down just to have a little bit more power.
Well, that's the funny thing about labels. They can be self-applied or externally-applied whether or not the people actually match the definition of the label.
I'm an atheist who generally hates religion, but do you think that would have stopped the racists from labeling me a jew when they find out that I have a jewish mother even though religion is an ideology and not a genetic component? See where I'm going with this?
I never understood why some Libertarians have flocked to MAGA. No President has defecated on our Constitution more than Donald Trump. I thought Libertarians cared about the Constitution.
Hating being told what to do is what motivated the hostility to what the federal government was telling people to do during the pandemic. I find that very immature. "You are not the boss of me!" A mature person recognizes that no man is an island and lives in a society where his or her actions can affect others. That's why you don't run a red light. That is certainly what public health is about. These ignorant, immature individuals have no concept of how they play a part in public health.
Yes yes yes. Also, focusing on the idea of "MAGA" as a specific and specifically unacceptable set of behaviors - not people - allows room for many who will not listen if they feel judged. Here is also where the leftist cultural warriors will have to take a back seat while pragmatists work on areas of agreement. But it starts with making it crystal clear that racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic behaviors are unacceptable in a modern liberal democratic republic.
Yes to this, Steve! "the leftist cultural warriors will have to take a back seat while pragmatists work on areas of agreement".
As to the unacceptable BEHAVIORS you cite, don't we already have a lot of laws against those that show they are not acceptable? However, racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic THOUGHTS and SPEECH must be allowed, and they already are under the 1st Amendment. And challenged in public discourse.
I think you're looking at a distinction that has no practical difference. A Trump voter may be a person who thinks having an 'R' at the helm is of utmost importance and if they have to put up with Trump, they're able to accept it. But that doesn't make them better than the true believer, who loves the racism and the misogyny that Trump brings in his baggage, it makes them worse. Because they know they're supporting a bad guy and they still do. So, whether they are MAGA or just a Trump voter, they're responsible for what he's done and anything MAGA has done. And I'm not going to forgive them that.
I would consider the type of voter you're talking about to be *within* the MAGA movement--perhaps a degree removed from the straight up racists, but those aren't the people I'm talking about in that 5-10% who put that MAGA group over the top. I'm talking about the Trump-to-Biden-to-Trump voters who haven't had an "R" next to their name all of their lives. I'm talking about low-attention/low-info swing voters here.
Was on furlough during gov shutdown and since I usually hop on here at work when automated tools are running I'd been gone for a bit. Also been busier than usual with work even after coming back due to staffing reductions. But I get in here when I can. Fridays are typically slower than Mon-Thur like it is everywhere else.
“People don't remember what you say, but they remember how you treat them." Unless you are Hillary Clinton very specifically calling only a small portion of t**** supporters “deplorables”.
👏👏 Many of Trump’s voters are corporate or financial leaders who think Democrats believe spending more money on social welfare will fix everything. They are also the crowd who want fewer regulations.
Many of us Democrats do believe that MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance. The problem is that many of us Democrats get moral satisfaction out of hurling e̶p̶i̶t̶a̶p̶h̶s̶ epithets at MAGA without wanting to do the hard work of addressing the culture of grievance that the bad actors in the GOP are exploiting.
This is not a problem that you can throw government money at to fix. Biden tried and it failed spectacularly. You need to reframe the appeal of the Democratic Party so that white rural voters can feel like they are not violating their identity by voting for a Democrat.
Part of this, I think, is the Tim Walz model. Tim works in Minnesota. Tim would not work in Hoboken, NJ. The Dems need to figure out how to straddle Tim Walz and Zohran Mamdani.
As a non-joiner like JVL, I cannot understand why anyone’s identity would be so wrapped up in being part of a political party. Like Josh Brown once said, “I don’t see myself ever joining one of the political parties because the more I see of partisanship, the more I come to the conclusion that ‘membership’ in any organized group forces you into positions and postures that require the shutting down of your brain.”
I guess I am a joiner. In fact, I hold an elected leadership position in my local Democratic Party. I work hard every election to get out the vote for the Democrats on the ballot. Does that entail some compromise? Sure does.
But I have more of a say about our politic than if I didn't join. I get a voice in who our condidates are. They don't always align with my politics, but almost always decidely better than their opposition. Many of our candidates are truly wonderful and I am proud to support them.
Over the last two decades we have turned our historic village/rural town from a Republican stronghold to a purple community, including denying Trump a majority of votes.
If I lived in a metropolitan area, I might be more inclined to join a justice or environmental pressure group rather than the Democrats. But I want to be in the game, so I certainly would be a joiner.
Sandy, there are a multitude of reasons people participate in organized religion. My question is why do people allow membership in a political party to become so central to their identity that they could never see themselves voting for someone from a different party? I was a Republican in 2008 when I voted for Obama. It did not feel at all like I was violating my identity. I voted for the person I thought was the better candidate.
I’m drawing a parallel with Catholics(I was raised as one!). It’s a social identity especially for the Irish (like my family). It’s starting to change now with the younger generation, but when I was growing up, you would NEVER marry a Protestant, or, God forbid, a Jew. For some, politics has replaced religion. MAGA would NEVER vote fora Democrat!
Sandy, I totally get it. Raised a Protestant, I married a Catholic (of a different ethnicity) and eventually converted. In any case, I must be weird because I refuse to be pigeonholed by being a member of anything. It’s as though membership in a group relieves people of having to actually think.
And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are people in red states like mine who understand what needs to be done. It involves running for every office in every election in every county in the state, with people who live in and know those areas.
It means showing up to speak at community events and articulating what you see needs to be done. That leads to inspiring dispirited Democrats, especially those living in rural areas, to action.
This is what people like Jess Piper from Blue Missouri and David Pepper from Blue Ohio are trying to do. It's something the national and state Democratic parties have been especially poor at.
As someone from Ohio, it's like "Duh" -- to me -- about finding people that can best represent your party's principles and values AND also reflect the values of the communities they serve.
That includes acknowledging that DEI has caused real harm by taking all the money out of many institutes of higher education for expensive consultants, who engaged in discriminatory hiring. (I’ve seen it up close and personal, so don’t try to argue with me about it. )Nor should the outrage of women athletes forced to compete with men in some sort of transition be shrugged off.
Has to be a big tent approach. Tired of reading Never-Trumpers complaining about progressive Democrats not being the answer. 50 states with blue, red, and purple in most of them. Where I live, a centrist would not work, but in the San Joaquin Valley probably (but I despised the Blue Dogs—).
I'd go even further in the dissent. This idea within parts of the the left that "everything is racism" is ultimately unhelpful (as well as wrong). That's because it further entangles cultural issues with the result that the solution to (all) problems is to "fix" racism.
Even in marginal cases, this sort of thinking will lead to the wrong prescriptions. Consider, for example, "white resentment" (a form of soft racism). In contrast to a typical "hard" racist (e.g. one that thinks minorities are genetically inferior), white resentment is often driven by the feeling of a loss of standing, losing one's way in society. Many in this segment don't see themselves as racist. Rather, its about "others" being given unfair advantages and that sort of thing.
If should be easy to see that scolding these sorts about their awful racism is not going to work/help. Indeed, it probably makes things worse as it tacitly says 'yep, we are going to give these others an unfair advantage and too bad for you!'.
To be sure, systemic racism, is, of course, a real problem. However, there are many entanglements and nuances when it comes to the topic. If all you have is a hammer...
You see, I've never bought the idea that there are "soft Trumpists" any more than there were soft Peronists. Democrats are looking for something they're not going to find.
1 comment and 2 questions: 1. Do you have any examples of those Lefties who say, "After Hitler, us"? 2. The number of lefties that see the Democratic Party as the real barrier to true socialism/revolution is very small. These are the furthest left of the Far Left who themselves are about 12% of the Left (Dem/Lean Dem) (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/). 3. Does this weird red-brown alliance envision a world of true socialism without white people? Is that their racism?
OK, but I still would like to know who are the American "weird red-brown alliance lefties that see the Democratic Party as the real barrier to true socialism/revolution" as DBR put it. The article didn't mention Americans who go by this.
I'm inclined to agree … but, then, what do we DO about it? There isn't a way to address racial reactionism with economic policies, but if we call it what it is, we're "attacking" the reactionaries and "making everything about race." Getting so sick of this 😞.
My view is that MAGA is primarily about opposition to the liberal social changes - the Pill, the Civil Rights Act, women's rights and sexual minorities' rights and how they've changed the culture. But the economic changes - globalization and technology that have resulted in a hollowing out of the middle class if you don't have a college degree - have contributed to their sense of lost pride.
I'm afraid that, because of AI, those WITH a college degree may soon become ripe for the same kind of radicalization 😱. A lot of them stand to face unemployment, PLUS they have massive personal debt.
I largely agree with the insights put forward in Part 2 on its merits, but not with its recommendations. The merits of that argument apply to the *MAGA movement*, which is not the entirety of those who voted for Trump in 2024. If it were only the MAGA movement voting for Trump, then we would have President Harris in the White House as we speak. The truth is that the MAGA movement is some 35-40% of the country that relies on a combination of the electoral college system + gaining an extra 5-10% of low-attention voters to put them over the top. That means that we need to rely on making sure that the MAGA movement doesn't get enough low-attention voters to put them over the top, and low-attention voters broadly do not give a shit about moral imperatives and think that political parties are equally or semi-equally corrupt. These arguments will not sway them over into the team blue column. Instead, what they care about are mostly economic issues and *some* social/cultural issues--namely the affordability crisis, inflation, the left going too far on shit like trans rights and "wokeness", crime, and immigration/border security. These are not the *only* economic and social/cultural issues they care about, but it is broadly apparent that they care about these things a great deal more than they do about political corruption and moral imperatives.
If team blue wants to starve the MAGA movement of these crucial low-info/low-attention voters then they should instead be hammering home how the current admin is fucking them over on economic issues, paired with showing them that MAGA cares more about billionaires than it does the working class. Show them how the current admin is increasing their grocery costs with tariffs, increasing their electricity bills with AI data center buildouts run amok, increasing their healthcare insurance costs by letting the ACA credits expire, and is not doing anything about home affordability that also impacts rents. And after they've done that, show them the slide deck of Trump shucking it up with all the tech billionaires while he demolishes the white house to build a ballroom and takes Qatari jet and crypto bribes while letting Honduran drug dealers and Jan 6th rioters out of jail. Make the same "Kamala is for they/them, not you" connection that Trump used in 2024, but make "they/them" into tech billionaires instead of trans swimmers and show them how Trump has not only done nothing to help them with affordability, he's actually made things more expensive for them.
I really like your new "they/them" vs "you", the average voter. Have an ad campaign with those rich dudes taking selfies at the Mar-a-Lago Halloween Orgy. "You" can't afford to buy Halloween candy, but "they" get unlimited booze while watching half naked girls dance in the Gold Ballroom. The whole thing was/is obsene.
I think both of you are right. Short term get the low info voters on-side. That will put a pause on the ongoing dismantling of the US.
When the fickle swing voters helped Biden win the first time, everyone on team democracy let out a sigh of relief. It didn't last. Long term, we need to make the 35-40% of MAGA the 5-10%. If we can't we as a society are going to teeter on the edge of authoritarianism forever.
Unfortunately, I don't know if the corruption and moral reasoning would work with MAGA considering they seem to vote for the most corrupt and immoral candidates and policies.
I don't think we ever get MAGA down to a size of 5-10% of the national electorate. You can maybe get it down to 25-35% through generational attrition, but that's going to take a lot of time. Even if 3 years from now the economy has entered recession and Trump leaves office as a total failure, MAGA will dismiss the man in the same way that Bush/Cheney became people who were never spoken about positively in conservative politics post-2009, but they will not reject the grievance ideology. At best, Trump becomes the next Bush/Cheney for the conservative movement and they drop *some* of the ideology--probably things like tariffs--but the anti-immigration/anti-liberal stuff is going to stick with them for the long haul.
I agree with this comment too. We're not going to get MAGA down to 5 to 10% anytime soon. (It will happen eventually but that's several elections off.) What you have to do is get those 15% of voters who are voting for MAGA candidates, particularly Trump.
I can say this is a pretty accurate assessment for the Trump-supporting circle I travel in. Right now they are pissed at ICE (but very pro-border protection) and everything else they are unhappy about Trump's administration is economic things and how utterly stupid the cabinet people are starting to seem (to them).
Your solution seems to be pretty good too for the people I know. I can say with certainly, the minute the Democrats start pushing woke, DEI, trans type of things, these folks will shift more right again. Dems should stay away from most of the culture stuff, for now.
Sarah Longwell and James Carville have been trying to sell dems this message for years now lol. Elected dems are *starting* to come around to it.
I sometimes wonder if Kamala running in 2024 fell in line with these voters' impressions of dems always trying to be "woke" and elect a "first" into the White House (a first woman of color president) rather than caring about the things they cared about. Like, I wonder what the outcome would have been if it were Trump vs Andy Beshear in 2024. Then again, the Biden presidency might have been a big enough disaster--in the minds of these voters--that no dem would have won that cycle regardless of who it was.
My sister who was a strong Trump supporter told me she made a mistake and not to tell her husband she said that :-)
The general consensus is one of caution leaning towards that Trump is mentally off and his cabinet is a joke. That sentiment goes back and forth.
I can say that the 6-Dem video on illegal orders didn't help except to unite them - not necessarily more towards Trumpism but against Dems. That is starting to loosen again.
That is interesting the 6 Dems video didn’t go over very well. I guess it means they are still connected to the right wing media, but not happy with the results the administration is giving them. Do you think they would go back to an old school Republican or are they past that.
Hard to say. The majority liked what Trump promised - cost of living improvement, removal of violent/criminal illegal immigrants, reduction of the bureaucratic overload, toning down the uber-liberal culture (woke), and oddly enough getting past the Biden corruption (beats me). Yes they are still in the Fox bubble but not necessarily other right-wing media (at least those closest to me like family, friends).
I think they would go to a candidate that promised what Trump did but actually not lie about it or have a different agenda AND be more "normal". Oddly enough a lot of them like Florida Governor whats-his-name. Not particularly keen on Vance.
I think the Biden corruption was pushed by Fox pretty regularly which is probably why they feel that way. So they like DeSantis who didn’t get much traction in his bid last time around. I haven’t heard much of him lately, but maybe he still has currency. I wonder if, by the time Trump’s presidency is done, anyone from the inner circle will stand a chance at succeeding Donald.
But “pushing” for MAGAs is simply bringing it up, talking about it. They are all real human stories embedded and not to find a way to talk about related issues disappears those individuals.
"The truth is that the MAGA movement is some 35-40% of the country that relies on a combination of the electoral college system + gaining an extra 5-10% of low-attention voters to put them over the top. That means that we need to rely on making sure that the MAGA movement doesn't get enough low-attention voters to put them over the top, and low-attention voters broadly do not give a shit about moral imperatives and think that political parties are equally or semi-equally corrupt."
This is terrific political analysis. I would put the ceiling of MAGA at no more than 35%. MAGA relies on those other voters, usually low information, who assumes both parties are corrupt and are against democracy and are voting on things like economics and some social issues. MAGA can't win general elections on its own. MAGA has to win general elections to continue to survive as a political movement post-Trump. And that ain't happening.
It's basically the same political analysis that Sarah Longwell has been saying for a long time now. The ongoing Secret Pod format in a nutshell:
Longwell: "JVL, defeating Trumpism is about moving 10% of the electorate who are low-info/low-attention swing voters back into the pro-democracy column by fielding likable/moderate candidates who run on the economic and cultural issues the swing voters consistently tell us they care about in the focus groups."
JVL: "All voters who aren't anti-Trumpers are decadent shitlings who want America to burn because they are fat/happy/bored in an economy where *everyone* is buying pleasure boats at record levels and our downfall is inevitable and we deserve this."
Of the Bulwarkers, Sarah is the best when it comes to political analysis. JVL is good also, but sometimes he lets his extreme pessimism cloud his objectivity. Tim would be my choice when it comes to political communication and strategy.
Sarah stole that analysis from me. Okay, she doesn't know me from a hill of beans, but I have been saying that for a long time. I've done a lot of political analysis over the years. Taught poli sci for 25 years but I don't think I could teach it today because the game has changes so much.
The analysis is probably right but what good does it do us? Biden's election was based on the same analysis and he delivered as best he could. They turned on him anyway because they are low info and fickle. Eventually even a perfect Dem President will lose them because the economic environment is not controlled by the President.
The fascists don't need to win every election if no one is going to roll back their power when they loose. They just need to turn the ratchet each time they win and eventually they'll win the war. So any strategy predicated on ignoring fighting the moral battle while depending on a fickle section of the electorate to deliver occasional victories is just slow suicide.
We need a strategy that will deliver a durable 40-45% core of our own which wants to fight the moral battle when they win, otherwise there is no point. Don't bother courting the fickle swing voters with actual policy. Give them charismatic flattery and pandering to try to get their vote but nothing more. When they happen to go our way because the fascists don't deliver, use the cycle or two before they abandon us again to play as many power games as possible. Attempt to win the field position battle against the fascists before the swing voters inevitably turn again.
My 92-year-old mom is one of the low information voters of whom you speak. She really misses her daily Atlanta Journal Constitution, but refuses to learn to go online to read the paper.
She is also very Southern, and about 20 years ago, told me that she just can't vote for a black person. (I was horrified.)
She told me a year ago that she voted for Kamala, saying that she couldn't understand why anyone would vote for "that dreadful Trump person."
"Momma, you voted for a black woman!" I exclaimed.
"What?" she replied, looking very confused. "No she's not!"
Wow! Bravo in so many respects. JVL, you are an excellent writer. I look forward to reading your every post and how you challenge my thinking. Regarding your growing company, perfect guideposts, powerful yet simple structural ethos. Your success is no surprise. I could not be happier with my longtime subscription. And wow again to u/PTS_Dreaming. You nailed it! Thanks for the contribution!
Okay, are we sure that "Peter dePenaloza" is not JVL's pseudonym? This sounds like when Trump used to call reporters pretending to be "John Miller" in order to praise himself.
I can't believe I'm typing this, but that Reddit comment is absolutely right. None of this is about economics, its about a particular type of white, predominantly male culture that does not like seeing the world change. I also agree with the dual approach, and we need to be tying in stuff like AI, internet "bro" culture becoming increasingly open about seeing women (and girls) as objects to be used, and a bunch of obscenely wealthy people who know the law doesn't really apply to them. Education is going to need a lot of work to fix as well. We should expect the best for and from our people, and do whatever is needed to help them, but the Liberal Order can't just sit back and assume the society will just passively get better and remain conductive for liberal values.
I do think there is one thing missing: there should be a gentle cutting off of red states around non-critical things. Democrats shouldn't be doing anything about reducing their education or healthcare funding, but if Democrats at the federal level are planning some big infrastructure projects, bending over backwards to throw bones to the people calling them "godless socialists" shouldn't be priority. They don't want that help, don't give it to them while continuing to protect and help the people in those states that really need it.
I had an American History professor who made the point that while the Union absolutely won the Civil War, the Confederacy won Reconstruction and the intervening period. With Trump and the MAGA movement, they appear to have won again. We can't hope to win against them if we don't understand what we are up against.
I like u/PTS_Dreaming's analysis. I couldn't find a single thing to disagree with. I do think there's something missing from their strategies section. What do liberals do to reduce their target cross section? Perhaps the author doesn't think our side has to change. Regardless, it shouldn't go unmentioned in such a strategy.
I think worrying about what our side needs to change to win over people isn't an inherently bad thing, but we also gotta be able to call a spade a spade. The broader culture has changed for worse over the years. We need to head that off and work to reverse it.
Yes, watching the maga inroads into our Canadian political space is disturbing and I appreciate having a pro-democracy community to learn from as I assess how best to put my energy into keeping them from gaining too much power.
Yes, we are due a restatement of our core values with rein-in of excesses. Probably have to be explicit over what earlier core values should be eliminated.
Historically, there has been a prob with Liberalism being too triumphal, which leads to complacency (I'm thinking of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the lead up to the World Wars, and gay marriage in the US as examples). Modern progressivism can be either too scolding and negative (moral convictions too particular an unyielding), or too weak and permissive (lacking strong moral convictions). We need a movement that splits the difference and has real teeth. We can build a better society, we absolutely need to, and we need to hold the line on those expectations.
I think the main problem in the liberal order is intolerance. They were impatient with the slow progress on fighting racism, sexism, etc. so they decided to label, without trial, anyone that didn't meet their high standards as members of some sort of evil cabal and, therefore, to be shunned like the plague. This attitude makes enemies of everyone but a chosen elite and people don't like it. More to the ironic point, it engenders such a strong backlash (Trump) that it undoes much of the progress toward their goals.
I would disagree. To be clear, I am using Liberalism in the classic sense, not as another word to mean "left-leaning" or "progressive". The "cancel culture" of progressivism might have been annoying, but it was not that big a deal and was just as prevalent on the right. If anything, Trump has shown us that racism and sexism were in fact, wide-spread and tolerated by too many who know better. These are still really big issues and we need to deal with them as a culture, not shrug them off.
Didn't say "shrug them off". You are showing a little bit of the attitude that I was talking about. Racism and sexism are still widespread but it's a lot better than it used to be (I'm 73 so have seen a bit). There has been steady improvement until wokeness raised its ugly head. One way not to fight racism is to label entire groups of people as racist or sexist. It makes enemies of those who try to do better. All that crap about "colonialism" and "whiteness" serves only to set us back. They may have their place as academic observations but not in public policy, social settings, or polite society.
To some extent I agree but don't under-estimate how much of Trump's win in 2016 was a direct result of the backlash to the "left self-righteousness" - I am appalled of ANY reason to have voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024, but I understand to some extent why he got the vote in 2016.
Where it goes wrong on the liberal side is that they chose to fight sexual and racial intolerance with intolerance. The Tolerance Party is intolerant. Unlike the Right's intolerance, this is self-harm.
It happened at all levels, from reactions to social media posts to losing one's job because of disagreement with the university's or company's definition of racism. It probably happens less now due to the backlash and the scare tactics of the Trump administration, which I am not endorsing at all, but the attitudes are very much still there. Even now, say the wrong thing on Bluesky where I hang out and you get accused of being a racist or a white supremacist. Of course, they don't know me so it is easy for me to dismiss and ignore but it tells me there are still a lot of progressives who think the way to fight racism is to quickly identify what group someone belongs to and then declare you as an irredeemable racist.
The problem of Reconstruction wasn't complacency by the Radical Republicans, it was being out bid as the people who made money from the war looked to make even more and invested in political influence and creating their own future.
It wasn't complacency initially, but as time went on and the public's focused changed, elected officials for increasingly weary of whack-a-moling Jim Crow laws. The next generation was complacent, not the original. And of course, there were plenty who still tried to advocate for change!
Sorry, Holmes, but your historical timeline is a little off here. The Reconstruction period ends with the presidential election of 1876 where a deal was struck that got the federal troops out of the South and out of their laws. It was after the feds left that the Jim Crow laws were established.
They need to pierce the epistemic bubble in low population density counties. All of the redistricting stuff, the Republican advantage in the Senate, all of it stems from Trump and the Red team putting up Saddam Hussein numbers in rural counties. The blue team's position will be tenuous at best and continually vulnerable to gerrymandering and the fillibuster if it remains a team of only urban enclaves.
I live in one of those red rural midwestern areas. If you do not fix the cultural aversion to liberalism, you have no hope of competing in rural areas.
It's like trying to convince Cleveland Browns fans that they should root for and send money to the Pittsburgh Steelers instead. You can point out all you want that the Steelers have a better winning record, better offensive stats, and they are consistently ranked higher in the AFC North than the Browns. Also the Steelers have six Superbowl wins and the Browns have none. Logically it would be more beneficial as a fan to switch allegiance to the Steelers from the Browns.
However we all know that is not how fandom works. It is also not how culture works. The GOP isn't just a political party for white conservative Americans. It is a lifestyle brand.
100% agreement that the GOP is not a political party, it’s a lifestyle brand.
Some people are too far gone. My family, the one I grew up with, is too far gone. They’ll never vote for a Democrat, ever, no matter what.
We can’t endlessly obsess with how to bring them to our side. They’ll never flip.
What we need to decide, right now, is that we must win the next two national elections by at least one vote, then govern like we have the Mandate Of Heaven.
The biggest impediment to this won’t be voters, or even the GOP. The biggest impediment to this will be the Democratic leadership in Congress.
Agree with this. Here is my idea of how to fix the cultural aversion to liberalism: Liberals go on a LISTENING tour of red counties in their states. This is why I support Braver Angels. That is what they do. And Reds listen to Blues too. See braverangels.org.
Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild spent months listening to two right-wing communities, one in Louisiana bayou country, one of the most polluted areas in the US, and the other in Appalachia. She wrote a book about each: "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" and "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right." Any liberal who actually wants to fix the cultural aversion to liberalism should read one of both of these books.
MAGA is sort of a way of life for people and I don't think you can talk people out of something that is a profession of belief and part of their societal connections. As we are seeing, people will take jobs in those new projects and factories funded by Biden's programs and then decry the new people that come into their small spaces to take those jobs too. They will remain MAGA because they cannot change their identities. This is true of people in general...whether it's politics, religion, if it's part of who they are and their place in society they will cling to it.
This is sort of off topic, Scott, but for awhile now I've been wondering, which will come first - a woman President, or the Browns going to the Super Bowl? (They don't have to win, but just be one of the teams). I don't think either will happen in my lifetime (I'm 57).
Yes, and the vise grip on Fox News has to be fought against as well. Trump has just started his "affordability tour" where he will tell lies about how well the economy is doing and claim all kinds of impossible future policies. Fox and all the others will faithfully echo his lies. If voters hear a counter-message at all, it is dismissed by Trump's faithful as mere opposition chatter or "fake news".
It’s a good point, but how do we fight Fox News addiction and its outsize influence? I’m afraid the only thing that will make their viewers turn away is their own lived experience, like being unable to afford their groceries or health insurance.
They are living inside the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
I tend to agree that the movable/swing/nonvoters are the ones we have the best chance of reaching.
Yes, it's a tough one. One hope I have is that, as each of their opinion people try to outdo each other in their ridiculous claims, eventually they are so ridiculous that the veil falls from their viewers eyes. Hasn't happened yet.
This may be in tension, though, if you support the Reddit poster's argument JVL cited today. If a Democrat campaigning in a rural area today was asked by a voter, "Do you support the expulsion of trans people from the military?" The moral clarity strategy would dictate that the campaigner answer, "No." Hopefully they would get a chance to explain why they said that, but still, do you think that answer would be a net positive in attracting rural voters?
It would obviously bother some rural voters but if they did get a chance to explain their position, most might find their arguments reasonable. I am no expert on trans issues, but my gut feeling is that some progressives go too far. For example, it makes no sense to have people at a school encouraging a kid to transition without getting the parents involved in the decision. I also suspect that some troubled kids might be encouraged to transition by people that don't have the kid's welfare at heart. Obviously, examples of trans people in political office or in the military help demonstrate that outlawing them is a hateful policy. As with all these social issues, the goal should be for "our" politicians to appear more reasonable than the MAGA ones to voters on the fence.
I have one disagreement: I'm not sure that the advice to turn confrontation against MAGA into a moral battle is a good one.
I don't necessarily have a good alternative to that idea, but it makes me uneasy. One of the things that has disappointed me most about the last decade or so of liberal/progressive/left politics is how, despite often being avowedly secular, there often feels like there's a dogma that people are expected to adhere to. Question, even in a productive way, certain shibboleths and there were plenty of people ready to excommunicate you.
I don't think this was necessarily the intent of PTS_Dreaming's idea, but I would suggest shying away from any method of political combat that risks the creation and/or maintenance of any kind of fundamentalist viewpoint.
It's not wrong to point out that anti-DEI is just racism and misogyny. That's the point. Most Americans are not comfortable with gutter racism and open misogyny. They never have been. That discomfort over the immorality and brutality of racism is what the Abolitionist movement used to combat the institution of slavery.
The MAGA movement leaders are leaning into racism. We need to battle that and it is a moral issue and one that is moral irrespective of religion.
Certainly MLK fought segregation from a moral perspective. The civil rights movement was led by MLK's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Gospel teachings were the core of their movement but he never went around quoting the Bible.
And he didn't fight a traditional battle against segregation. They were a minority and had no physical weapons. Their weapon was Gandhi's nonviolent civil disobedience. That's why they succeeded. That's what needs to be our weapon in our moral battle.
Right/wrong is not the only axis we should be evaluating strategies on. The consequences of failure are too great to operate that way, and when you adopt strategies that are based on the idea of moral crusade you run the risk of driving yourself into a cul-de-sac of because the fact that something is ineffective or counterproductive can't withstand the moral valence of being declared "right."
We're already doing it, starting with the massively attended, peaceful and diverse No Kings demonstrations. Then the large margin of Democratic wins on Nov. 4th. Now Trump's approval is 36% (Gallup), the lowest of this term; it's only 2 points above his all-time career low point of 34% after Jan 6th. The odds that the Dems will take the House have improved and I'm even seeing discussion that they'll take the Senate too.
Further, the Trump coalition is splitting: " . . . more than a third (of 2024 Trump voters) do not consider themselves to be MAGA Republicans . . . some of them have already begun to turn on him . . . much more likely to blame Trump for the state of the economy, say he has too much power and be pessimistic about the future" (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/28/maga-trump-voters-divide-00670647).
I think all of this tells us that their influence is declining.
As I said above, I don't have a good alternative right now. If I knew a way to tackle MAGA and also solve the infatuation of certain segments of the liberal/progressive space with dopamine hits from moral certitude at the expense of efficacy, I'd probably be working in politics instead of software engineering.
I stand by what I said before. Everywhere I look in the Republican Party I see the same thing: A group of people singularly obsessed with one thing. They are obsessed with social order, hierarchy, and rigid enforcement of a caste system. If you look at what they’re saying and doing everything comes back to this. MAGA itself is a shorthand for this: I will restore you to your “rightful” place in the firmament of American life. Your place has been taken from you by the [Insert Boogeyman Here]. (The liberals, Jews, gays, Leftists, Progressives, etc. It can be anyone who isn’t you, really.)
They ultimately believe that there must be a rigid hierarchy of the social order, and that the law can (and must) be used to enforce that order. In order for them to be at the top of that order (as the Lord intended, or whatever) somebody must be at the bottom. Those are all of your out groups. They believe this order is not only natural but good. If you look around you can see this everywhere. Nothing else really matters to them. The cultural obsessions, societal commentary, policing of family life, etc. all comes back to this: We know what the proper order is. Every American’s life should be ordered according to our constructed hierarchy. We will use force of law to ensure the order is maintained as it should be. That’s what Republicans mean when they talk about “Law & Order.” We will use the law to enforce *our* order. People that step out of line or attempt to disrupt our order by giving freedom and equality to Americans in the out groups cannot be tolerated. Equality and equity cannot be borne because they inevitably lead to the breakdown of our rigid order and caste system. This cannot and will not be accepted. This eventually leads to domination, as you wrote about recently JVL. But it’s domination with a purpose. That purpose is ensuring the perpetuation of the order that exclusively benefits those they perceive to be “Real Americans.”
Some twenty years ago I saw a book in a used bookstore, published in the early fifties, that outlined core "conservative" principles (it wasn't a John Birch publication, more of a "this is what we believe" thing). One of the principles, stated explicitly, was that humans are ordered in a hierarchy that's the natural and desired order of things. It's hardly surprising, then, that this anti-democratic belief system has metastasized into Trump and MAGA.
I think if you look throughout human history, this tendency would almost always be there in one form or another, and has been magnified by the wealth, power, and privilege of civilization. A number of years ago a thought emerged for me that reactionary conservatives are in some fundamental way socio-cultural evolutionary throwbacks. In terms of biological evolution, the five hundred years since the dawn of the Enlightenment is an eyeblink, and studies identifying the core elements of the "conservative" worldview have been clear about fear as the defining emotional response to change. This is important because this means being open to or desiring the reduction of anxiety provided by a strong hierarchy and father figure, real or imagined, is not an anomaly, it's human. (I'm not addressing here the evils of power, privilege, amorality, venality, etc.).
Democracy is anxiety inducing hard work, and some personalities and emotional matrices respond to this with, say, manageable anxiousness or even excitement. For many, perhaps intrinsically around 20-30% or more, the unknowns of social change or even of the universe trigger the survival response of fear, which evolutionarily was a successful survival strategy and which seeks reduction of the associated anxiety through predictable, inflexible systems.
I'm not excusing the points you make; you're spot on. But I do think the human has to undergo some serious socio-cultural evolution, and even some biological evolution (maybe through Mendelian selection, epigenetics, etc.), in order to reduce the poor fit of our DNA with the demands of fully realized liberal democracy. To return to JVL's post, identifying what you describe above as unacceptable to a sustainable democratic republic might be part of the next gen moral paradigm.
Agree with all of this, Steven. You might find the work of political psychologist Karen Stenner informative (karenstenner.com). She studies the authoritarian disposition which makes up about a third of any human community. It's an enduring personality type meaning it can't be changed, so I don't think looking to MAGA evolving is what's needed. This is what Stenner says about where we go from here as we understand that liberal democracy has now exceeded many people’s capacity to tolerate it: We need to help our fellow citizens with the authoritarian disposition to be their best selves.
"The first recommendation is really for all of us: the world is too complex for a large portion of the population to navigate without experiencing exhaustion or alarm, and this is only accelerating. In every domain of life – social, political and economic – people actually need less information, fewer choices, and greater support to make decisions that are in their interest.
"Some people have a deep need for oneness and sameness. They can no more change this than we can change our own love of diversity and complexity. Forcing their exposure to more diversity than they’re innately equipped to handle actually pushes them not to the limits of their tolerance but to their intolerant extremes.
"A true democracy ought to be able to accommodate this. We have to provide authoritarians the assistance they require to live in peace and comfort with the rest of us. This will likely require significant re-design of social and political processes to reduce what I earlier described as the 'cacophony of modern liberal democracy'.
"Society could certainly benefit from a greater abundance of unifying institutions and rituals. And we don’t need to be always loudly celebrating multiculturalism and amplifying complexity and diversity. This will surely sound like a backwards step. But liberal democracy is most secure, and tolerance is maximised, when we design systems to accommodate how people actually are. And some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy.
"We must recognise that authoritarians are not inherently evil – it’s just a different way of being human. We must tolerate diversity of personalities just like we tolerate all other kinds of difference. We cannot enemify or exclude a third of the population. At least, we can’t do these things while claiming to be a democracy. We can’t do these things and be a well-functioning society either. Human communities require some folks that seek out novelty, diversity and complexity, and others who will monitor and guard against strange and foreign and unfamiliar things. It’s the balance between us that strengthens the whole.
"It is worth remembering that no outcome can be guaranteed by freedom, including freedom. If people are free to choose, they’re free to choose un-freedom. The needs and preferences of authoritarians are of equal weight to our own and must be attended to and appropriately accommodated. They’re owed this much just as citizens in a democracy, but it’s also in our own interests to help them live in peace with everyone else" (https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism).
It is WE who have evolved to value liberal democracy and "all men are created equal" who need to learn how to accommodate our fellow, authoritarian citizens.
That's good stuff. I'm copying and pasting myself here:
"... it means understanding the fundamental importance of the idea, I think much better understood by conservatives, that “people need to be led,” and that this is not a pejorative but an understandable reality that deserves respect and appropriate response, and which goes to the core of a critical weakness in modern American liberalism: the inability or unwillingness to freely exercise power, and the aversion to demonstrations of strength.
It’s also not the case that cultural/political liberalism is immune to the fear of change (or difference); the intense tribalism and orthodoxy enforcement of many American political ‘liberals’ amounts to a different iteration of the same phenomenon. Mao’s Red Guard and Stalin’s purges were hardly liberally minded exercises, regardless of lazy political assignment. But the human race, and by extension the planet, are in a time of rapid, unavoidable, and massive change; the mostly unconscious anxiety induced by this cannot be overstated, and it’s no surprise that the reactive survival instinct is being triggered, big time. It’s my contention that in order to successfully navigate the rough waters we’re in, and the much rougher waters ahead, those who believe that an Enlightenment based liberal world order is the best ship must understand the reality of the human that is not wired for this, and act accordingly."
Glad you found it to be good. However, only SOME human minds are not wired for liberal democracy. That is Stenner's point.
And our history shows it as well. We've had 236 years of a constitutional democratic republic, and the majority of Americans were fine with it. Even though the illiberal Trump won the presidency twice, I still think the majority of Americans value "all men are created equal." Here is some research on that: "Sixty-three percent of respondents aligned with the statement that we are united 'not by a shared religion or ancestry or history, but by our shared commitment to a set of American founding ideals: that we all have inherent and equal rights to live, to not be tyrannized, and to pursue happiness as we each understand it'” (https://colinwoodard.com/nationhood-lab-research-finds-most-americans-share-a-common-vision-for-the-united-states/).
All well said and I agree completely. "All men are created equal" is what divides Americans. If you hold that value, your America is a liberal democracy. If you don't, you are illiberal and your America is an authoritarian regime who imposes a rigid hierarchy of the social order. As Laura Loomer put it after the former Afghan fighter killed a member of the National Guard, "That's it. I want a king."
Republicans fundamentally don't believe that all men are created equal. Maybe they never did. But they certainly don't now. They believe we are not equal and they like it that way. If you drill down on all the Real America bullshit you'll find this at its core.
JVL I would love for you and Sarah to pay attention to the parenting styles taking hold of mainstream America. Parents of young children are leading the anti-authoritarian revolution. The liberal order is in free fall right now, Trumpism is just the start. Young millennials and older Gen Z are raising fiercely anti-authoritarian generations whether they realize it or not, and a new era of democracy is coming. Things are going to get worse even post-Trump until the new era of liberalism and democracy is ushered in.
Fair 😂 Watch how ramped up the anti-authoritarianism of parenting gets with the Bulwark Babies!! The speed with which American parenting styles are evolving/changing is incredible.
Hellionsare a necessary ingredient for social creativity in culturally turbulent times as long as this is embedded in a pro-social contract. If not we get Steve Bannon nihilism.
Not only necessary for cultural creativity, but as a constant and critical force against anti-social/authoritarian behavior. Steve Bannon was raised in an authoritarian household, he is not the hellion of which we speak. What parents of very young children in modern America are finding is that the hellions are contrarian by nature and for good reason! They are finding that the hellions are deeply emotional, naturally empathetic and worthy of respect and appropriate levels of autonomy. The hellions overwhelmingly connect with the world around them which does not feel very nihilistic.
Maureen - I believe that to be exactly what has blossomed and taken hold of mainstream American society. It was counter-culture before, now it is exponentially growing as the status quo.
There is a shadow side to counter cultures. They make space for extreme individualism that without social norms and mutual agreements can become Bannon/miller nihilism. The balance between liberty and responsibility takes social wisdom. The mistake we person centered/existentilists made was to see moral reasoning as inherent rather than contextual and relational. Morality is a social result learned from community patterns of knowledge that must be shared by elders as well as created anew with each generation.
Yep that seems to be the theme across America right now. Gens Alpha and Beta are going to see LARGE numbers of anti-authoritarians who have been raised that way from birth.
Way back in the before times, Sen. WIlliam Proxmire (D-WI) used to deliver himself monthly of his "Golden Fleece Award." The "fleece" referred to government expenditures so daft as to, in his view, "fleece" taxpayers out of their monies. As a vehicle to demonstrate to the public the utter depravity and corruption of our current ruling clique, Dems should relaunch Proxmire's initiative notwithstanding the +/- 40 year hiatus. The environment is target rich. It will be hard to whittle things down. to one per month.
I would say hammer corruption and incompetence, and to that I would add unfairness. Unfairness pervades our economic and political system. It is present in everything from campaign finance to tax policy to healthcare to gerrymandering. It is a neutral concept that a vast majority of Americans support, and it can be emphasized without explicit references to redistribution, which invite shrieks of "socialism." Fairness overlaps perfectly with corruption, as corruption is nothing but unfair, but it goes much further because it encompasses a broad view of how our country and our economy should be run. In short, it should be run for the huge majority of Americans, all of whom rightly feel that it is definitely not run for them. This sentiment is shared on the right and the left. The Trump administration operates in contravention of basic values like fairness, honesty, empathy, intelligence, and basic decency. This is not hard to demonstrate. Running on the restoration of these values should be easy and effective.
Agree with this. In February, Jonathan Rauch wrote about Trump's corruption and said the Dems should run on it:
"They should pursue a relentless, strategic, and thematic campaign branding Trump as America’s most corrupt president. Almost every development could provide fodder for such attacks, which would connect corruption not with generalities like the rule of law but with kitchen-table issues. Higher prices? Crony capitalism! Cuts to popular programs? Payoffs for Trump’s fat-cat clients! Tax cuts? A greedy raid on Social Security!
"The best objection to this approach (perhaps the only objection, at this point) is that the corruption charge won’t stick against Trump. After all, the public has been hearing about his corruption for years and has priced it in or just doesn’t care. Besides, the public believes that all politicians are corrupt anyway.
"But driving a strategic, coordinated message against Trump’s corruption is exactly what the opposition has not done. Instead, it has reacted to whatever is in the day’s news. By responding to daily fire drills and running in circles, it has failed to drive any message at all" (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/).
Whilst factually correct re corruption i fear even a coordinated approach won't stick. It's something 'over there' and its not personal. Now 'betrayed' is something that is personal. Whatever you think of James carville, he brought this up straight after nov2024 election Harris defeat.
Didn't he say "connect corruption not with generalities like the rule of law but with kitchen-table issues. Higher prices? Crony capitalism! Cuts to popular programs? Payoffs for Trump’s fat-cat clients! Tax cuts? A greedy raid on Social Security!"? That's personal.
Not sure why you're suggesting I think little of James Carville. I am a huge fan of his analysis of the Dems. He was early to call for Biden to step down, and he was early to call out, soon after the election, the damage the progressive "intersectionalists" have done to the party brand.
His interview with the zombie-looking Peter Thiel was something. Douhat was trying to play reasonable but it came across smug and self-righteous. Very uncomfortable.
No the point is that people should not give a damn about what Douthat says but in reality, lots of people listen to his ideas. He is very commercially viable.
Right, he’s a contradiction in terms and no one should care; which is what I got from this. JVL said:
“The Liberal Order Can’t Heal Itself,” complains the man who has spent most of his career trying to strangle the liberal order….what a fucking joke!”
My takeaway, he’s a guy who claims to be the protector of the liberal order, by spending his life destroying the liberal order!
This should sound familiar; Trump claims to be the defender of democracy, and is at the same time, is destroying our democracy; if he hasn’t done so already….:)
I think you should hire PTS_Dreaming as a regular commentator. Whomever wrote this is very clear thinking and diligent in their research and conclusions. Everything they say shouts "THIS!" that most of us have struggled to get into coherent thoughts.
I've been glued to politics since I was a tween, and I can say confidently that there is no media company that provides what the Bulwark does. This is a community, full stop. It reminds me of my very best experiences in college - meaningful, respectful debate, with intelligent people, who have good intentions and a sense of humor. It's been a true lifeline through the Trump era - forever grateful for y'all ❤️
I’m going to add to that thought by saying that the Bulwark is great even without the comments, but I would love to see some of the more articulate and interesting people here (not me) write an occasional piece that could be more widely circulated to people who do not often have time for the comments. Something perhaps like letters to the editor was once upon a time when I was in high school and we were in outraged to write in and one or two of my classmates actually got published.
I love this idea. I can think of several regular commenters who would knock it out of the park if they were asked to write an article or two.
Don’t some of those commentators already do that with their long essay style comments? I know who they are and look for them specifically…
They sure do, but you need to plumb the depths of the comments section to find them. JVL has highlighted and published at least one of these folks.
Yes. The problem is there are sometimes many hundreds of comments and I don't know of - maybe somebody can help me with this - a find/search feature.
Wonderful idea! There is such diversity of life *experience* in the community that informs perspective.
"Letters to the Editor?" What is this you speak of?
Just some silliness from the before times when this country had a serious press and a serious public.
Here in Santa Cruz, California, our local paper, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, (or The Senile, as some like to call it) has a robust letters to the editor section and is one of the main reasons I read it every day and sometimes (when the mood has struck me), I even read one of my own submissions. I love this idea and think it would be a hit. There are lots of smart, incisive commenters here on The Bulwark.
It’s an old fashioned concept!
Which one? Letters, editors or both? 😎
Does ANYONE send letters anymore? I haven’t received a hand written letter in eons.
How ‘bout emails to the editor?
but it helps. every little thing helps.
I would like the ability to star certain commenters so that I can make sure to always see their comments on posts.
I'm nowhere near being a techie, and I'm not sure this is what you're talking about, but if you hover over the circle beside a person's name a box will appear which contains a subscribe button. I think if you choose that you'll be notified when they make a comment.
I've never done this myself, but I've gotten notices that other folks have subscribed to me - and will then get a list of multiple "likes" from them all at once, from various content on which I've commented. You could always experiment and see what happens.
That's good to know. I assumed I'd be subscribing to their Substack feed, not specifically their comments in Bulwark content.
And you may be right. That's why I suggesting experimenting; you may get more than you want!
Now that you mention it, I have subscribed to a couple of responders I consistently interact with (or "Like" their comments). It doesn't seem to help with seeing their posts on individual stories.
I guess what I'd like is another option "View" option besides Newest or Most Liked that would be people I consistently want to see comments from.
Sorry, Barbara. Meant my comment to be 'general', not a non-helpful reply to your query.
yes I would like that too, although I am often surprised by the insight of people who say less as well.
Fully believe that magats will feast on endless economic crap-wiches to have their cultural grievances validated. As you mention, I cannot figure out how to effectively remedy this, as their self-awareness to recognize the truth seems non-existent. Any conversation (even in a calm, questioning manner) only seems to trigger defensive 'what-about-ism' and ignorant repetition of deep rabbit-hole BS.
I fully agree. I don’t need to hear the Bulwark parrot my ideas back at me. I do need the fire in the belly that they have for aggressive journalism.
The only problem is they are preaching to the choir. They need to get their message out into the political ether where it will be read and listened to by other reachable voters. This problem is shared by all anti-Trump media - they do not seem to have a plan or the tools to reach a wider audience. The Bulwark is essential to our well-being and motivates us to engage - but they are too important to keep stymied in their own bubble. I hope they have staff that are dedicated to figuring this out. The world needs them!
Certainly they are preaching to the choir but I can't tell you how often I have forwarded excerpts, used opinion statements, linked to their Youtube Takes, etc... to discuss and sometimes argue political and cultural points with my MAGA/Trump-supporting circle.
This is a cherished investment in both $$ and time - including the value I get from you all as commenters.
(sorry if I violate copyright but I have been and will always be a soft rogue in legal and social mores)
I do the same. The fact that many of the Bulwark "speak Republican" helps tremendously as a source to show to MAGAs.
But do the MAGAnuts read and, more importantly, understand and internalize what you show them, or just, as their hero does, ignore it as so much rabble and riff-raff mumblings?
Depends. I've converted a couple soft trump supporters in my family but not the die hards
Kudos!!🥂
Good differentiation. My Trump-supporting circle is reasonably smart and logical and they do listen and comment and sometimes do the "but Biden" response. The true MAGA-ites argue and really don't connect any dots. My Trump-supporting circle are now more or less anti-Trump, not necessarily due to me but I think having a broader view of his and his administration's actions outside of the Fox bubble has been an eye opener
I’m noticing a lot more anti-Trump commenters at the WSJ. Many of them are Republicans who can’t stand Trump.
You and Ian are doing great. I think some people can get doomy because you can't convert everyone, but every group has die-hards who will never waver. But the MAGA-fied Republican Party cannot win on the die-hards alone, many of whom aren't even particularly loyal to it as a whole, just to Trump. It's those "soft" supporters who won 2024 for him, and so if we can pick them away, we can win again.
Yeah, not a copyright violation. Go for it!
I have several like-minded friends who already spend a lot of time in cyberspace and don’t have the time to take the plunge into The Bulwark. I totally understand that—I spend entirely too much time listening, reading, and thinking about everything in cyberspace.
The newsletter audience is the choir, but the videos are not. I think that getting their message out into the political ether is exactly why they stepped up the video content.
Totally agree. So happy to see it. I would think they have big plans to reach even more folks in 2026.
Good point. I have been disappointed lately that there are so many podcasts and would have preferred more written articles. But I'm the "choir," so if it reaches many who are not (or not yet), all the better.
I'd be really happy to see them address this the next time they do a "state of the Bulwark" update - I feel like they might be reaching a wider audience than suspected, especially on YouTube.
I think their message is getting out. I find that more and more folks are looking at The Bulwark and finding value.
The Bulwark message is getting out, and hopefully more rapidly over time.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen it with friends. Annually, three of my college friends and I get together for a reunion weekend. Three years ago, one of them was aware of the Bulwark. Two years ago, two lightly followed the Bulwark’s articles. Last year, one friend now religiously follows everything Tim Miller does (except Snapchat - we’re early Gen X). A second regularly reads Bulwark articles, and the third is aware of much of what the Bulwark is producing. Granted, none of us are MAGA, but I find it heartening that pro small-L liberalism messages are permeating society. (…and channeling my inner-JVL pessimism, I just hope its not too late.)
They collaborate with other popular podcasters, and are on msnbc (msnow) a lot, plus others-I see Tim do an excellent job crushing the dimwits over on Piers Morgan, it's always a fun watch.
agree it's the best of the college community experience.
I agree. I was part of an experiment The Atlantic ran a few years ago where they invited members to subscribe at a certain price point. Part of that experience was a new conversation platform, hosted by Atlantic staff.
It was great for awhile. We had a book club and actually were able to have live online (text) conversations with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tara Westover, who wrote a memoir called "Educated" that knocked me out of the water.
The project didn't fulfill their (probably) financial goals, and they discontinued it. But a small group of regulars, including me, got permission to keep the group going privately.
It's mostly petered out now. I've moved on, reserving my commenting time for The Bulwark and other Substack sites I subscribe to.
I think the reason the community effort at The Bulwark worked and the one The Atlantic attempted didn't is because building community has been one of the founding principles at The Bulwark, not an afterthought to build subscriptions, as I suspect it was at The Atlantic.
A couple of weeks ago, for less than a day, there was a notice at the bottom of several Atlantic articles that they were soliciting ideas for starting a comments section, and a link you could click to submit said opinions. I eagerly recommended that they take their cues from TB, but couldn't get it to submit; it appeared that the option had already been disabled.
I submitted my experience to a place I found elsewhere on their website, but never got a response. Do you know anything about this?
I don't. They've had a policy of not enabling online comments because of the issues with content management. Thus the Discord group, which required a $100 or so commitment to get access to.
And that group was gone after about a year. I'm not sure they see community engagement as an important part of what they do.
You said it absolutely perfectly.
Ditto, but said much better than I could have. Thank you.
I completely agree…the Bulwark is a guiding light for me in these dark times. I so appreciate being a part of this community. I feel like JVL, Sarah & Tim are my personal friends. Thank you for all you do my Bulwark peeps!! 🩷
I remember being a regular on some news media sites in the late 2000s and early 2010s that had generated some real communities in the comments sections (the Gawker sites, particularly Jezebel, come to mind) but it felt like the companies running them were completely hostile to those communities. They were constantly making changes to undermine and fragment the existing network of regulars and friends, preferring low-quality fly-by commenters for some reason. What's great about The Bulwark is they understand that the community here is key to their success and longevity, and they foster it instead.
I'll do you one even earlier -- UseNet in the 1990s. In my case, alt.support.divorce and alt.support.marriage.
Until Google acquired it, anyway. That's when I first heard the term "trolls" applied to the people who overwhelmed the discussions with garbage and worse. But I met people on those sites that became friends, including a few that carried over into real life. I'm still Facebook friends with a number of them.
Well, while I might have been too young for Usenet, I've found plenty of community and long-lasting friendships on its latter-day equivalents, like Internet forums in the 2000s and now Discord servers.
But I believe the subject was specifically the idea of news websites like The Bulwark creating that kind of community, and how genuinely rare it is for the people running those sites to value that enough to foster it rather than shut it down. Not the idea of Internet communities in general, which of course have always been around.
Is this a record for the likes???
Top tier JVL moment in this piece. “My biggest fear is someday turning into this:”
*Crash cut to Ross Douthat*
Chefs kiss 😂
“I’m going to use a lot of 20 dollar words to obscure the fact that I’m sexually aroused by MAGA.”
Ross Douthat
Glad I work from home because this just made LOL at my desk. Oh my God. 😂
More like barf.
Fair.
I LOLd too
NY Times Pitchbot!
Cue the SNL sketch of Ross' fever dream of humping JD's couch
Bwahahahaha!!!
EWWW ! !
exactly
Douthat is such a fraud and it says everything that's needed to know about Times executive management that they keep this intellectually and morally bankrupt fool around.
It doesn't give them "conservative" cred. It just shows them for the out of touch elites they are (and I hate using the over- and mis-used word "elite").
I hypothesized years ago that the Times hired Douthat to make American conservatism look silly.
I watched everything I thought was good about the good ol' USA melt and then then twist into something unrecognizable under Reagan, and believed he was the worst of my lifetime. I guess I lived too long.
I am in that coffin as well.
And they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
A really good hypothesis!
No, by all means, use "out of touch elites" for the Times all you want. The Times has one overriding prerogative: to conserve and entrench their own status, power, and privilege (especially as as king makers and breakers).
yes, that is all the NYT cares about.
I stopped bothering to read anything that clown writes ever since that piece last year where he sounded like he'd eaten way too many edibles.
It's amazing how turgid and....bad 'intellectual' movement conservative writing is. Buckley wrote like an oblivious, overconfident, untalented college freshman; Will's missives sound like a dictionary in search of an editor; and they all cram in as many multi-syllabic words as possible to demonstrate how intellectually serious they are and therefore must be taken as, regardless of their bankruptcy of ideas. It's a style, really a norm I've seen repeated over and over.
Contrast that with the writing here, which is just fun to read. Is there a connection between having a truly moral center and good writing? You make the call.
Say what you will about the tenets of George Wills’ baseball ecomiums, at least it’s an ethos.
True. I'm exaggerating a bit, some of his writing is pretty good.
If only Will knew slightly more than jack diddly squat about ⚾️.
You go, Walter!
Will is better than Douthat.
Elizabeth Bruenig is the one who always reads to me like when one of my college students is really realllllly stretching to pad out their essays with fancy but meaningless words. Like a thesaurus threw up, but the content is completely hollow.
"That piece last year where he sounded like he'd eaten way too many edibles." You're describing every one of his columns lol.
The Times' conservative crew-- Douthat, Brooks, Stephens-- what a laughing stock they are.
I read a Dothout column years ago, understood where he and the NYTs was coming from and never, other than reading the headline as I scroll by, read another. There was a time when I'd watch a few minutes of FOX to see what the others were thinking and talking about. You don't have to keep drinking from the ocean to know it's salty.
... You're going to have to be more specific. :-)
No fear, JVL. You can adjust your views when you see things you didn't see before (like the racism on the Right), question that your take might not be right, and respond to your readers' criticisms ("Why don't you tell us what to do about the horrors you see coming around the corner?"). I don't think Douthat does any of that.
So much opposition to immigration is really racism.
Hi Frau. Political psychologist Karen Stenner, who studies the authoritarian disposition, thinks racism is really “differentism”. Those with that disposition, about a third of any society, value what she calls “oneness and sameness” and are troubled by too much diversity. She says "some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy."
In this article, she explains all of that. It ends with “Where Do We Go From Here?" and spells out what a liberal democracy needs to do to accommodate that third of Americans. https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism
The problem with tolerance as a normative value is that living it necessitates putting up with all kinds of people who offend nature and decency simply by breathing. Including that guy in the mirror. No wonder it doesn't win elections.
Thanks, I’ll check that out.
Great. Let me know what you think of it.
I seem to recall at The Bulwark earlier this year identifying the authoritarian personality as being typically MAGA. I can’t remember the name of the article.
It all fits in my experience.
Whatever he might suggest, I would definitely go in the opposite direction. Nerd is as Nerd does.
Mr. Douthat is, in his eyes, the almighty, the all seeing, the all knowing Mr. Douthat.
The rest of us, in his knowingallgloriousness, can go pound sand.
The most myopic people, without exception, are the ones who insist they know everything.
AGREED!
I laughed out loud when I read that. JVL has a way of making his points. :)
The Match-Throwing Club is one of your best pieces of work, JVL. It's an excellent parable.
As for NATO, let's be clear; we could push Russia out of Ukraine in half a year without endangering a single American life, if we were willing to fulfill our old role as the arsenal of democracy. The problem is, the left doesn't like the 'arsenal' part, and the right doesn't like the 'democracy' part
The really important part of this Triad is part 2. It is correct. The focus on 'kitchen table issues' is trying to bribe people out of a moral crisis. Trying to bribe people out of a moral crisis is, you know, doomed to failure from the start. It's like trying to create dry water.
Where did you come up with the idea that “the left doesn’t like the arsenal part”? Since the invasion, the Democrats have pushing to arm Ukraine over Republican objections. Biden did everything he could told to supply arm, with the Republican congress fighting him every step of the way. Please give an example of Democrats objecting to arms for Ukraine. Just one, please.
Biden armed Ukraine, but only enough to bleed Russia, not enough to push them back.
The Republicans objected, of course, which was inevitable due to the moral case as I frequently say - they quite like the idea of military powerful authoritarian states pushing around their Democratic neighbors - but ultimately I believe Biden was too cautious with the things he could have done, and I believe a big reason for that is the fact that a lot of DSA-aligned individuals were talking about how terrible it was that we were willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
I think some of that perception that the left of the party insufficiently supports Ukraine is a very online one. I've seen it too (much of it, I believe, the result of active Russian disinformation - similar to the way Russian agents were going on sites like Tumblr in 2016 pretending to be BLM bloggers to convince left-leaning young people not to vote for Hillary Clinton) but I find that when I talk to DSA leftists outside of the internet, they're vociferously pro-Ukraine, just about to-a-man. At most, these's some squeamishness on the left about involving ourselves in foreign conflicts that comes out of leftover Bush-era sentiment (especially among Millennials who came of political age then), but rarely to the extent that anyone would vote or advocate against that. (To be clear, I disagree with that squeamishness; I think it's kneejerk and shallow and doesn't account for the idea that every conflict is different. But I also find the people who feel that vague squeamishness aren't hard to talk out of it.) The people who are outright anti-supporting-Ukraine are turbo-online and they don't vote, and so are irrelevant, even if they can be extremely loud.
As someone who is probably to the left of the average Bulwark reader/commenter and has spent a lot of time in leftist communities both on- and offline, consistently one of the biggest divides in the left has always been between the people who actually Do Stuff (vote, volunteer in their communities, organize, protest) and the people who do nothing but whine (because as long as they don't have the power, they can always be the ones complaining about and "critiquing" power; they never have to give up the moral high ground). Unsurprisingly, the people in the former group tend to have less extreme beliefs and more realistic goals, because they have to engage with reality as it actually exists. But of course the Internet is going to favor the "spends all their time complaining" faction over the people who are too busy organizing marches and distributing free meals to the homeless and holding anti-fascist book club meetings.
From what I've heard of DSAs (I've never been all that active or interested in them myself), there's a similar disconnect between the rhetoric and the policy platforms vs. the people you meet at actual, in-person meetings for local chapters.
Thank you for your instructive observations and analyses of the Left/DSA. Forty + years I was involved with the latter as graduate student at a California public university but have not been since and only know what I read online. I fully support providing Ukraine with the resources to defend itself. I am also vehemently in opposition to what the Israeli government and military has done to Gaza. Now that I am retired (32 years as a high school teacher in California and of primarily farmworker students), I need to better understand the potential movement that lies in it embryonic stage. I do participate in the local protests but more must be done. I know better.
Biden seemed to afraid of provoking Russia. Putin is extremely good at pushing people’s buttons.
Russia under Putin is currently weak, far more so than the USSR. But trying to sell Communism failed in the end.
They’ve reinvented themselves as protector of Christianity and white people. They’re also anti-LGBT.
MAGA eats it up.
Thought the same. Long time lib here who (and everyone I know) were IMMEDIATELY pushing our representatives to arm Ukraine.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/backlash-house-progressives-retract-letter-biden-ukraine-strategy/story?id=92063699
I agree. People know the difference between right and wrong; it really is not that difficult to ascertain. That’s why people, even Republican voters, are upset about the way the Trump regime is treating immigrants. Same with corruption. People say “oh, they all do it,” but that’s not true. In addition, the scale of corruption right now is almost incomprehensible. Yet, there are plenty of examples to help people understand how the ultra rich and ultra powerful are taking advantage of our democratic systems and our citizenry.
Yes, we all know the difference between right and wrong. Specifically: I know I am right, and those others are wrong.
As a certified commie pinko socialist, I'm all for the "arsenal of democracy" bit. And yes, Dems and liberals need to step up to the moral fight - state what you stand for, call out amorality and immorality for what it is, and make it clear that only one can remain standing. What's essential is to make it absolutely clear that morality is what you do - it's behavior, not people. If someone wants to hold (to me) reprehensible ideas, fine. If you instantiate those ideas, we have a problem. Of course some humans are so corrupted they equate to "evil." But as a general rule focusing on unacceptable behavior is on many dimensions the road to success.
Bill Kristol, you may have thought you were done with war, but war wasn't done with you. There's one more regime it's time to change.
Rather, the problem is that the Right has been totally captured by curiously Russian-flavoured paleoconservative foreign policy ideas.
They want Russia to have a freehand to murder Eastern Europeans and Asians, so that the USA can have a freehand to murder North and South Americans.
They'll disguise their beliefs sure - see 'spheres of influence' and 'regional powers' - but at the end of the day, this comes down to wanting to write new pages of history with the blood of innocents.
Tucker Carlson is a prime example.
But Russia is now enthralled to the Alexander Dugin Mother Russia fascism. Snyder and Masha Gessen (“The Future Is History”) have excellent studies of it. So it fits the paleo-Right narrative.
I really loved Adam Kinzinger's suggestion of Europe and America using all frozen sanctioned Russian money/assets to send to fund Ukraine for their weapons and other war-time needs. Russia paying for Ukraine to fight themselvs-i think it's an excellent, smart strategy. I'm so frustrated we can't just do this immediately!
For an excellent explanation of the role of the US in preventing world wars in the post WWII world, see https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/conversation/robert-kagan-on-trumps-foreign-policy-and-the-new-world-disorder/
Yes, great! I listened to that yesterday and discussed it with my high school senior. This is the world he’s entering, sadly, but he has to know the how we got here.
Obama had no problem with the "arsenal" part. Now, does Obama count as "Left"? Well, maybe not in the eye of centrists.
Maybe it is weird and also too in the feelings, but whenever we get these State of The Bulwark updates, I feel like I'm on the team, too. I've subscribed to lots of publications - some I really enjoyed - and have never once felt that before. I think I'm really just echoing your concept of community, but I wanted to say it anyway.
I’m glad you feel it to. Makes me feel less like a weirdo.
I have never felt like part of an online community - much less one that is about the state of our state - I am so grateful the Bulwark is this for so many of us!
Less of a weirdo, but still weird which is a GOOD thing. Weirdos ask awkward questions. Weirdos challenge assumptions. Weirdos look for different paths.
The Bulwark community is a home for weirdos who reject this failing era's binary thinking. We want to build something new and better and are here to listen, talk, challenge assumptions, and forge a new paradigm that moves beyond the stale, used futures visions animating the old paradigm's competing sides. We love you and the Bulwark *because* you are weirdos like us.
When I'm retired in my rocking chair and see where all the OG bulwarkers ended up in prominent areas of public life and service like under a new democratic ( lower case) administration full of the wise and young, i will feel immensely proud to have been a small part of restoring liberalism ( when its not a dirty word anymore). All the way from Australia we support you
I’m supporting from Canada. We’re a lot closer to the problem. For the time being, we haven’t become the 51st state. The tariffs have really hammered us, though.
That's why it's a community. You are always welcome to express yourself, and we listen and respond. ☺️
Me too 🥹
“As I said yesterday: Even if America woke up in 2028 and came entirely to its senses, the damage that has already been done cannot be undone except over the course of decades.”
Agreed JVL, not just here, but abroad. In fact, Trump released his National Security Strategy yesterday, and it proves that these nefarious actors are trying to destroy the EU specifically because they are too democratic.
He claims to be the defender of democracy, while simultaneously trying to destroy Europe’s and our own. How quaint!
They see the EU as the obstacle or impediment to peace with their guardrails and law based democracies. It claims that US hegemony relies on the US controlling or having undo influence over the region, but also we will no longer support our European allies and move towards a world with three spheres of influence; aligning our long term interests with Russia and right-wing parties across the globe.
Clearly, Trump and his minions no longer believe they can lose elections, because democrats would never agree to this if they ever regain power; Yet, here we are!
If anyone still has any doubts as to whether these people would ever give up power readily or willingly, then may I suggest a good therapist, because that ship has sailed! IMHO…:)
Yes to this. And I want to hear what the Bulwark has to say about that National Security Strategy. It's a loud alarm for me!
that national security strategy is one of the most disgusting anti-american documents a us government has ever produced. it is utterly insane.
Good summary. Depressing, isn’t it?
Thank you, agree, it’s happening before our eyes, no one is talking about it, and they’re not even hiding their intentions anymore; as though it’s a fait accompli!…:)
the number one thing trump taught the already fascist-friendly gop is you can lie your way through anything, which has removed any sense of hesitation about extremist policies.
"This brings us back to George Packer. Many on the left hesitate to say plainly that MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance because:.."
I dissent partially. There are plenty of liberals and lefties that do this constantly. There are liberals-left people like you described and some/many of these people are well known/elite. Part of it is a kind of weird red-brown alliance because there is a certain kind of lefty that sees the Democratic Party as the real barrier to true socialism/revolution (TM). See also "after Hitler, us" or the "Social Democrats are the Real Social Fascists."
Part of it is elected politicians concerned about alienating soft Trumpists that they think they can convince sides.
But "MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance..." is the belief of many many Democracts
I think the important parts for liberals and anti-Trumpers to remember here is that *MAGA* is racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic, but that Trump voters as a whole are not. MAGA is the core, but they are not a large enough voting block on their own to put Trump into the office and they relied on low-info/low-attention swing voters to put them over the top in a national election. Liberals/anti-Trumpers need to remember that these low-info/low-attention swing voters are a moveable block and are separate from the MAGA movement. They cannot go around saying "Trump voters are racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic," they need to focus on singling out the MAGA movement from that equation so that those swing Trump voters don't think you're lumping them in there with the rest and feel insulted personally as a result. "People don't remember what you say, but they remember how you treat them."
There is also a group of libertarians within MAGA, not just the SV tech guys, often the small business owners that would have been “country club” GOP in the before times. Some might be on board for the cultural aspects, mostly they just hate people telling them what they should do. I keep waiting for some of these to drop out as big government Trumpism reveals itself. Sean Duffy’s sermons instructing us to dress up to fly is going to backfire with this group…..it’s a very woke approach.
Libertarians don't care about big government telling *people* what to do, they care about big government telling *them* what to do. If the government isn't affecting their personal life choices directly they will let it trample those of others with no fucks given. It's never been about how big government gets or what it does, it's about *who* it's doing those things to for the libtardians.
Reminds me of VP candidate Palin who said "people just want the government out of their lives!" Um no. They very much want the government fucking with other people's lives, just not theirs.
"You betcha!"
Well said, Travis (and good to see you back!).
I took some time off in Oct/Nov on account of certain appropriations bills not getting signed ;-)
Sorry you went through the shutdown nightmare. Me too - terribly stressful. Hope all is well for you now (or as well as anything can be anymore). Take care.
Oh, yes, you're a federal government employee. I'm sure it was a bumpy two months.
You're right about many self-identified libertarians, perhaps more than would like to admit it.
But I also know people distributing red cards *because* they're libertarians, and *horrified* by what is happening to the rights of people besides themselves.
https://www.ilrc.org/redcards
Ahh yes, the libertarian versions of pre-2015 Bulwark staff who thought that everyone else inside of their tent was also there for the raw ideology rather than the desired outcomes.
You can't *be* a libertarian for any length of time without noticing the label attracts a variety of kooks, cranks, and contrarians. Idealism merely requires insisting that ideals should matter more than that, and avoiding the too-clever-by half reasoning games that those who think themselves clever enough to pull off contrarianism are prone to, the Thielish sort of "here's why smart libertarians should be fascists" reasoning.
A healthy culture of inquiry does make room for contrarians, since the off chance they might be right is an important corrective, and for the mainstream's own epistemic hygiene. But this role for contrarians is a subordinate role, serving a mainstream that will more usually be right – not a role that self-styled "masters of the universe" like.
Too many tech- and finance-bros adopt contrarian politics as a love affair with their own cleverness and power. Even when that puts them on the right side of particular issues, it's a habit generally corrosive to clear, honest thinking.
I'll take your word for it, but libertarians being concerned about the rights of people besides themselves surprises me. To me, that makes them classical liberals. When I think of libertarians, who are considered part of the Right, I think of Ayn Rand types - "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute" (Wikipedia).
Libertarians will insist they are not "part of the right." But I think most are more right than left. When a Libertarian doesn't have a Libertarian to vote for, 90% of the time he or she votes for the Republican. Okay, maybe 80%.
Funnily, Ayn Rand hated libertarians – though that says more about her and the control she wanted to exert over her followers than about anything else.
Not everyone likes to use the label "classical liberal" (and, confoundingly, some who do are, for some reason Trump apologists – go figure!). Cato Institute folks and journalists who have Reason Magazine somewhere on their resume often fit your idea of "classical liberal", even if they'd call themselves "libertarian". Radley Balko, Cathy Young (now at The Bulwark)...
It's paywalled as archived material now, but Matt McManus published a wonderful essay a few years back on why self-styled libertarians have been pulled apart into a faction which would fit within Cass Sunstein's big-tent liberalism and another faction (more interested in hierarchy than equal liberty, it turns out) who broke bad. Lacking that link, I'll link to Cass Sunstein instead:
https://casssunstein.substack.com/p/on-classical-liberalism
Perhaps a public reminder of what small-l "libertarian" actually means, because what you describe certainly isn't that, at least where government power is concerned.
People like Thiel are not libertarians in my opinion. They genuinely seem to want authoritarianism so long as they’re in charge. Democracy has given them the world and they’ll burn it down just to have a little bit more power.
Agree. One of my favorite quips about authoritarians: Q: What do you think of tyranny? A: Depends who the tyrant is.
Well, that's the funny thing about labels. They can be self-applied or externally-applied whether or not the people actually match the definition of the label.
I'm an atheist who generally hates religion, but do you think that would have stopped the racists from labeling me a jew when they find out that I have a jewish mother even though religion is an ideology and not a genetic component? See where I'm going with this?
When they couldn’t get their freedom island concept going, their fallback was buying someone they (think?) they can control.
The country club ones are there for the tax cuts.
I never understood why some Libertarians have flocked to MAGA. No President has defecated on our Constitution more than Donald Trump. I thought Libertarians cared about the Constitution.
Hating being told what to do is what motivated the hostility to what the federal government was telling people to do during the pandemic. I find that very immature. "You are not the boss of me!" A mature person recognizes that no man is an island and lives in a society where his or her actions can affect others. That's why you don't run a red light. That is certainly what public health is about. These ignorant, immature individuals have no concept of how they play a part in public health.
Yes yes yes. Also, focusing on the idea of "MAGA" as a specific and specifically unacceptable set of behaviors - not people - allows room for many who will not listen if they feel judged. Here is also where the leftist cultural warriors will have to take a back seat while pragmatists work on areas of agreement. But it starts with making it crystal clear that racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic behaviors are unacceptable in a modern liberal democratic republic.
Yes to this, Steve! "the leftist cultural warriors will have to take a back seat while pragmatists work on areas of agreement".
As to the unacceptable BEHAVIORS you cite, don't we already have a lot of laws against those that show they are not acceptable? However, racist/misogynist/xenophobic/homophobic THOUGHTS and SPEECH must be allowed, and they already are under the 1st Amendment. And challenged in public discourse.
I think you're looking at a distinction that has no practical difference. A Trump voter may be a person who thinks having an 'R' at the helm is of utmost importance and if they have to put up with Trump, they're able to accept it. But that doesn't make them better than the true believer, who loves the racism and the misogyny that Trump brings in his baggage, it makes them worse. Because they know they're supporting a bad guy and they still do. So, whether they are MAGA or just a Trump voter, they're responsible for what he's done and anything MAGA has done. And I'm not going to forgive them that.
I would consider the type of voter you're talking about to be *within* the MAGA movement--perhaps a degree removed from the straight up racists, but those aren't the people I'm talking about in that 5-10% who put that MAGA group over the top. I'm talking about the Trump-to-Biden-to-Trump voters who haven't had an "R" next to their name all of their lives. I'm talking about low-attention/low-info swing voters here.
Don't know if you haven't been around lately or if I've just missed your comments, but I'm glad to see you again!
Was on furlough during gov shutdown and since I usually hop on here at work when automated tools are running I'd been gone for a bit. Also been busier than usual with work even after coming back due to staffing reductions. But I get in here when I can. Fridays are typically slower than Mon-Thur like it is everywhere else.
“People don't remember what you say, but they remember how you treat them." Unless you are Hillary Clinton very specifically calling only a small portion of t**** supporters “deplorables”.
👏👏 Many of Trump’s voters are corporate or financial leaders who think Democrats believe spending more money on social welfare will fix everything. They are also the crowd who want fewer regulations.
Many of us Democrats do believe that MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance. The problem is that many of us Democrats get moral satisfaction out of hurling e̶p̶i̶t̶a̶p̶h̶s̶ epithets at MAGA without wanting to do the hard work of addressing the culture of grievance that the bad actors in the GOP are exploiting.
This is not a problem that you can throw government money at to fix. Biden tried and it failed spectacularly. You need to reframe the appeal of the Democratic Party so that white rural voters can feel like they are not violating their identity by voting for a Democrat.
Part of this, I think, is the Tim Walz model. Tim works in Minnesota. Tim would not work in Hoboken, NJ. The Dems need to figure out how to straddle Tim Walz and Zohran Mamdani.
As a non-joiner like JVL, I cannot understand why anyone’s identity would be so wrapped up in being part of a political party. Like Josh Brown once said, “I don’t see myself ever joining one of the political parties because the more I see of partisanship, the more I come to the conclusion that ‘membership’ in any organized group forces you into positions and postures that require the shutting down of your brain.”
I guess I am a joiner. In fact, I hold an elected leadership position in my local Democratic Party. I work hard every election to get out the vote for the Democrats on the ballot. Does that entail some compromise? Sure does.
But I have more of a say about our politic than if I didn't join. I get a voice in who our condidates are. They don't always align with my politics, but almost always decidely better than their opposition. Many of our candidates are truly wonderful and I am proud to support them.
Over the last two decades we have turned our historic village/rural town from a Republican stronghold to a purple community, including denying Trump a majority of votes.
If I lived in a metropolitan area, I might be more inclined to join a justice or environmental pressure group rather than the Democrats. But I want to be in the game, so I certainly would be a joiner.
Do you understand why people participate in organized religion?
Sandy, there are a multitude of reasons people participate in organized religion. My question is why do people allow membership in a political party to become so central to their identity that they could never see themselves voting for someone from a different party? I was a Republican in 2008 when I voted for Obama. It did not feel at all like I was violating my identity. I voted for the person I thought was the better candidate.
I’m drawing a parallel with Catholics(I was raised as one!). It’s a social identity especially for the Irish (like my family). It’s starting to change now with the younger generation, but when I was growing up, you would NEVER marry a Protestant, or, God forbid, a Jew. For some, politics has replaced religion. MAGA would NEVER vote fora Democrat!
Sandy, I totally get it. Raised a Protestant, I married a Catholic (of a different ethnicity) and eventually converted. In any case, I must be weird because I refuse to be pigeonholed by being a member of anything. It’s as though membership in a group relieves people of having to actually think.
epitaph (ep·i·taph) an inscription on or at a tomb or a grave in memory of the one buried there
epithet (ep·i·thet) a disparaging or abusive word or phrase
I am in favor of hurling an epitaph at MAGA, and it should include as many epithets as will fit.
🤣 Agree!!
Fingers got ahead of my brain. :( Thank you.
I don't know. I'm ok hurling epitaphs at MAGA.
And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are people in red states like mine who understand what needs to be done. It involves running for every office in every election in every county in the state, with people who live in and know those areas.
It means showing up to speak at community events and articulating what you see needs to be done. That leads to inspiring dispirited Democrats, especially those living in rural areas, to action.
This is what people like Jess Piper from Blue Missouri and David Pepper from Blue Ohio are trying to do. It's something the national and state Democratic parties have been especially poor at.
As someone from Ohio, it's like "Duh" -- to me -- about finding people that can best represent your party's principles and values AND also reflect the values of the communities they serve.
That includes acknowledging that DEI has caused real harm by taking all the money out of many institutes of higher education for expensive consultants, who engaged in discriminatory hiring. (I’ve seen it up close and personal, so don’t try to argue with me about it. )Nor should the outrage of women athletes forced to compete with men in some sort of transition be shrugged off.
Has to be a big tent approach. Tired of reading Never-Trumpers complaining about progressive Democrats not being the answer. 50 states with blue, red, and purple in most of them. Where I live, a centrist would not work, but in the San Joaquin Valley probably (but I despised the Blue Dogs—).
I'd go even further in the dissent. This idea within parts of the the left that "everything is racism" is ultimately unhelpful (as well as wrong). That's because it further entangles cultural issues with the result that the solution to (all) problems is to "fix" racism.
Even in marginal cases, this sort of thinking will lead to the wrong prescriptions. Consider, for example, "white resentment" (a form of soft racism). In contrast to a typical "hard" racist (e.g. one that thinks minorities are genetically inferior), white resentment is often driven by the feeling of a loss of standing, losing one's way in society. Many in this segment don't see themselves as racist. Rather, its about "others" being given unfair advantages and that sort of thing.
If should be easy to see that scolding these sorts about their awful racism is not going to work/help. Indeed, it probably makes things worse as it tacitly says 'yep, we are going to give these others an unfair advantage and too bad for you!'.
To be sure, systemic racism, is, of course, a real problem. However, there are many entanglements and nuances when it comes to the topic. If all you have is a hammer...
Absolutely scolding won’t work. In fact I doubt anything will work. But on this forum we can discuss it.
You see, I've never bought the idea that there are "soft Trumpists" any more than there were soft Peronists. Democrats are looking for something they're not going to find.
1 comment and 2 questions: 1. Do you have any examples of those Lefties who say, "After Hitler, us"? 2. The number of lefties that see the Democratic Party as the real barrier to true socialism/revolution is very small. These are the furthest left of the Far Left who themselves are about 12% of the Left (Dem/Lean Dem) (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/). 3. Does this weird red-brown alliance envision a world of true socialism without white people? Is that their racism?
I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%E2%80%93green%E2%80%93brown_alliance
Thx for the search. So this is a European phenomenon?
The term originated in France.
OK, but I still would like to know who are the American "weird red-brown alliance lefties that see the Democratic Party as the real barrier to true socialism/revolution" as DBR put it. The article didn't mention Americans who go by this.
But that's for DBR to answer.
Yep, i couldn’t help you there.
55 yo Dem here. We've known it was racism since the Tea Party days, and no one I know (anecdotal, but so) believes MAGA is about economics.
I'm inclined to agree … but, then, what do we DO about it? There isn't a way to address racial reactionism with economic policies, but if we call it what it is, we're "attacking" the reactionaries and "making everything about race." Getting so sick of this 😞.
Excellent question. I honestly don’t know if there’s anything that can be done about it.
My view is that MAGA is primarily about opposition to the liberal social changes - the Pill, the Civil Rights Act, women's rights and sexual minorities' rights and how they've changed the culture. But the economic changes - globalization and technology that have resulted in a hollowing out of the middle class if you don't have a college degree - have contributed to their sense of lost pride.
Yes, however, their "sense of lost pride" has been kindled and inflamed by the RW propaganda machine.
Citizens who consume agitation propaganda on a regular basis are... agitated.
JVL has spoken recently about the concept that people don't understand or accept that sometimes life isn't fair.
Add RW agit-prop to that lack of understanding and voila! we have a shit-barrel full of angry, misinformed voters. That's MAGA.
No argument here.
I'm afraid that, because of AI, those WITH a college degree may soon become ripe for the same kind of radicalization 😱. A lot of them stand to face unemployment, PLUS they have massive personal debt.
I largely agree with the insights put forward in Part 2 on its merits, but not with its recommendations. The merits of that argument apply to the *MAGA movement*, which is not the entirety of those who voted for Trump in 2024. If it were only the MAGA movement voting for Trump, then we would have President Harris in the White House as we speak. The truth is that the MAGA movement is some 35-40% of the country that relies on a combination of the electoral college system + gaining an extra 5-10% of low-attention voters to put them over the top. That means that we need to rely on making sure that the MAGA movement doesn't get enough low-attention voters to put them over the top, and low-attention voters broadly do not give a shit about moral imperatives and think that political parties are equally or semi-equally corrupt. These arguments will not sway them over into the team blue column. Instead, what they care about are mostly economic issues and *some* social/cultural issues--namely the affordability crisis, inflation, the left going too far on shit like trans rights and "wokeness", crime, and immigration/border security. These are not the *only* economic and social/cultural issues they care about, but it is broadly apparent that they care about these things a great deal more than they do about political corruption and moral imperatives.
If team blue wants to starve the MAGA movement of these crucial low-info/low-attention voters then they should instead be hammering home how the current admin is fucking them over on economic issues, paired with showing them that MAGA cares more about billionaires than it does the working class. Show them how the current admin is increasing their grocery costs with tariffs, increasing their electricity bills with AI data center buildouts run amok, increasing their healthcare insurance costs by letting the ACA credits expire, and is not doing anything about home affordability that also impacts rents. And after they've done that, show them the slide deck of Trump shucking it up with all the tech billionaires while he demolishes the white house to build a ballroom and takes Qatari jet and crypto bribes while letting Honduran drug dealers and Jan 6th rioters out of jail. Make the same "Kamala is for they/them, not you" connection that Trump used in 2024, but make "they/them" into tech billionaires instead of trans swimmers and show them how Trump has not only done nothing to help them with affordability, he's actually made things more expensive for them.
I really like your new "they/them" vs "you", the average voter. Have an ad campaign with those rich dudes taking selfies at the Mar-a-Lago Halloween Orgy. "You" can't afford to buy Halloween candy, but "they" get unlimited booze while watching half naked girls dance in the Gold Ballroom. The whole thing was/is obsene.
I think both of you are right. Short term get the low info voters on-side. That will put a pause on the ongoing dismantling of the US.
When the fickle swing voters helped Biden win the first time, everyone on team democracy let out a sigh of relief. It didn't last. Long term, we need to make the 35-40% of MAGA the 5-10%. If we can't we as a society are going to teeter on the edge of authoritarianism forever.
Unfortunately, I don't know if the corruption and moral reasoning would work with MAGA considering they seem to vote for the most corrupt and immoral candidates and policies.
I don't think we ever get MAGA down to a size of 5-10% of the national electorate. You can maybe get it down to 25-35% through generational attrition, but that's going to take a lot of time. Even if 3 years from now the economy has entered recession and Trump leaves office as a total failure, MAGA will dismiss the man in the same way that Bush/Cheney became people who were never spoken about positively in conservative politics post-2009, but they will not reject the grievance ideology. At best, Trump becomes the next Bush/Cheney for the conservative movement and they drop *some* of the ideology--probably things like tariffs--but the anti-immigration/anti-liberal stuff is going to stick with them for the long haul.
I agree with this comment too. We're not going to get MAGA down to 5 to 10% anytime soon. (It will happen eventually but that's several elections off.) What you have to do is get those 15% of voters who are voting for MAGA candidates, particularly Trump.
I can say this is a pretty accurate assessment for the Trump-supporting circle I travel in. Right now they are pissed at ICE (but very pro-border protection) and everything else they are unhappy about Trump's administration is economic things and how utterly stupid the cabinet people are starting to seem (to them).
Your solution seems to be pretty good too for the people I know. I can say with certainly, the minute the Democrats start pushing woke, DEI, trans type of things, these folks will shift more right again. Dems should stay away from most of the culture stuff, for now.
Sarah Longwell and James Carville have been trying to sell dems this message for years now lol. Elected dems are *starting* to come around to it.
I sometimes wonder if Kamala running in 2024 fell in line with these voters' impressions of dems always trying to be "woke" and elect a "first" into the White House (a first woman of color president) rather than caring about the things they cared about. Like, I wonder what the outcome would have been if it were Trump vs Andy Beshear in 2024. Then again, the Biden presidency might have been a big enough disaster--in the minds of these voters--that no dem would have won that cycle regardless of who it was.
I would be curious about their thoughts on the Trump cabinet. Are they starting to blame Trump though for what is going on?
My sister who was a strong Trump supporter told me she made a mistake and not to tell her husband she said that :-)
The general consensus is one of caution leaning towards that Trump is mentally off and his cabinet is a joke. That sentiment goes back and forth.
I can say that the 6-Dem video on illegal orders didn't help except to unite them - not necessarily more towards Trumpism but against Dems. That is starting to loosen again.
It's a rollercoaster
That is interesting the 6 Dems video didn’t go over very well. I guess it means they are still connected to the right wing media, but not happy with the results the administration is giving them. Do you think they would go back to an old school Republican or are they past that.
Hard to say. The majority liked what Trump promised - cost of living improvement, removal of violent/criminal illegal immigrants, reduction of the bureaucratic overload, toning down the uber-liberal culture (woke), and oddly enough getting past the Biden corruption (beats me). Yes they are still in the Fox bubble but not necessarily other right-wing media (at least those closest to me like family, friends).
I think they would go to a candidate that promised what Trump did but actually not lie about it or have a different agenda AND be more "normal". Oddly enough a lot of them like Florida Governor whats-his-name. Not particularly keen on Vance.
We'll see as this unfolds.
I think the Biden corruption was pushed by Fox pretty regularly which is probably why they feel that way. So they like DeSantis who didn’t get much traction in his bid last time around. I haven’t heard much of him lately, but maybe he still has currency. I wonder if, by the time Trump’s presidency is done, anyone from the inner circle will stand a chance at succeeding Donald.
But “pushing” for MAGAs is simply bringing it up, talking about it. They are all real human stories embedded and not to find a way to talk about related issues disappears those individuals.
Exactly the point I was making above
"The truth is that the MAGA movement is some 35-40% of the country that relies on a combination of the electoral college system + gaining an extra 5-10% of low-attention voters to put them over the top. That means that we need to rely on making sure that the MAGA movement doesn't get enough low-attention voters to put them over the top, and low-attention voters broadly do not give a shit about moral imperatives and think that political parties are equally or semi-equally corrupt."
This is terrific political analysis. I would put the ceiling of MAGA at no more than 35%. MAGA relies on those other voters, usually low information, who assumes both parties are corrupt and are against democracy and are voting on things like economics and some social issues. MAGA can't win general elections on its own. MAGA has to win general elections to continue to survive as a political movement post-Trump. And that ain't happening.
It's basically the same political analysis that Sarah Longwell has been saying for a long time now. The ongoing Secret Pod format in a nutshell:
Longwell: "JVL, defeating Trumpism is about moving 10% of the electorate who are low-info/low-attention swing voters back into the pro-democracy column by fielding likable/moderate candidates who run on the economic and cultural issues the swing voters consistently tell us they care about in the focus groups."
JVL: "All voters who aren't anti-Trumpers are decadent shitlings who want America to burn because they are fat/happy/bored in an economy where *everyone* is buying pleasure boats at record levels and our downfall is inevitable and we deserve this."
THEY LITERALLY JUST DID THIS ARGUMENT (AGAIN) ON TODAY'S SECRET POD AT LIKE 38:30/44:50/47:40 IN AND I'M DYING NOW LOL
Of the Bulwarkers, Sarah is the best when it comes to political analysis. JVL is good also, but sometimes he lets his extreme pessimism cloud his objectivity. Tim would be my choice when it comes to political communication and strategy.
Sarah stole that analysis from me. Okay, she doesn't know me from a hill of beans, but I have been saying that for a long time. I've done a lot of political analysis over the years. Taught poli sci for 25 years but I don't think I could teach it today because the game has changes so much.
Sarah is always right 👍
Oh, the beloved focus group.
The analysis is probably right but what good does it do us? Biden's election was based on the same analysis and he delivered as best he could. They turned on him anyway because they are low info and fickle. Eventually even a perfect Dem President will lose them because the economic environment is not controlled by the President.
The fascists don't need to win every election if no one is going to roll back their power when they loose. They just need to turn the ratchet each time they win and eventually they'll win the war. So any strategy predicated on ignoring fighting the moral battle while depending on a fickle section of the electorate to deliver occasional victories is just slow suicide.
We need a strategy that will deliver a durable 40-45% core of our own which wants to fight the moral battle when they win, otherwise there is no point. Don't bother courting the fickle swing voters with actual policy. Give them charismatic flattery and pandering to try to get their vote but nothing more. When they happen to go our way because the fascists don't deliver, use the cycle or two before they abandon us again to play as many power games as possible. Attempt to win the field position battle against the fascists before the swing voters inevitably turn again.
Could we say instead that the administration which invented MAGA only cares about billionaires and none of them respect voters/rubes.
Did the administration "invent" MAGA or simply find something that was already there?
My 92-year-old mom is one of the low information voters of whom you speak. She really misses her daily Atlanta Journal Constitution, but refuses to learn to go online to read the paper.
She is also very Southern, and about 20 years ago, told me that she just can't vote for a black person. (I was horrified.)
She told me a year ago that she voted for Kamala, saying that she couldn't understand why anyone would vote for "that dreadful Trump person."
"Momma, you voted for a black woman!" I exclaimed.
"What?" she replied, looking very confused. "No she's not!"
lol
Wow! Bravo in so many respects. JVL, you are an excellent writer. I look forward to reading your every post and how you challenge my thinking. Regarding your growing company, perfect guideposts, powerful yet simple structural ethos. Your success is no surprise. I could not be happier with my longtime subscription. And wow again to u/PTS_Dreaming. You nailed it! Thanks for the contribution!
Okay, are we sure that "Peter dePenaloza" is not JVL's pseudonym? This sounds like when Trump used to call reporters pretending to be "John Miller" in order to praise himself.
I thought it was John Barron?
Funny!!
I can't believe I'm typing this, but that Reddit comment is absolutely right. None of this is about economics, its about a particular type of white, predominantly male culture that does not like seeing the world change. I also agree with the dual approach, and we need to be tying in stuff like AI, internet "bro" culture becoming increasingly open about seeing women (and girls) as objects to be used, and a bunch of obscenely wealthy people who know the law doesn't really apply to them. Education is going to need a lot of work to fix as well. We should expect the best for and from our people, and do whatever is needed to help them, but the Liberal Order can't just sit back and assume the society will just passively get better and remain conductive for liberal values.
I do think there is one thing missing: there should be a gentle cutting off of red states around non-critical things. Democrats shouldn't be doing anything about reducing their education or healthcare funding, but if Democrats at the federal level are planning some big infrastructure projects, bending over backwards to throw bones to the people calling them "godless socialists" shouldn't be priority. They don't want that help, don't give it to them while continuing to protect and help the people in those states that really need it.
I just finished Heather Cox Richardson's "How the South Won the Civil War." It is a 200 page expansion on the Reddit comment. I highly recommend it!
I had an American History professor who made the point that while the Union absolutely won the Civil War, the Confederacy won Reconstruction and the intervening period. With Trump and the MAGA movement, they appear to have won again. We can't hope to win against them if we don't understand what we are up against.
Yes, I was going to say the response that JVL highlights 1) reads like HCR 2) reads like an academic wrote it.
I like u/PTS_Dreaming's analysis. I couldn't find a single thing to disagree with. I do think there's something missing from their strategies section. What do liberals do to reduce their target cross section? Perhaps the author doesn't think our side has to change. Regardless, it shouldn't go unmentioned in such a strategy.
I think worrying about what our side needs to change to win over people isn't an inherently bad thing, but we also gotta be able to call a spade a spade. The broader culture has changed for worse over the years. We need to head that off and work to reverse it.
Yes, watching the maga inroads into our Canadian political space is disturbing and I appreciate having a pro-democracy community to learn from as I assess how best to put my energy into keeping them from gaining too much power.
Alberta is going right off the deep end!
Smith and the UPC are for sure.
Yes, we are due a restatement of our core values with rein-in of excesses. Probably have to be explicit over what earlier core values should be eliminated.
Historically, there has been a prob with Liberalism being too triumphal, which leads to complacency (I'm thinking of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the lead up to the World Wars, and gay marriage in the US as examples). Modern progressivism can be either too scolding and negative (moral convictions too particular an unyielding), or too weak and permissive (lacking strong moral convictions). We need a movement that splits the difference and has real teeth. We can build a better society, we absolutely need to, and we need to hold the line on those expectations.
I think the main problem in the liberal order is intolerance. They were impatient with the slow progress on fighting racism, sexism, etc. so they decided to label, without trial, anyone that didn't meet their high standards as members of some sort of evil cabal and, therefore, to be shunned like the plague. This attitude makes enemies of everyone but a chosen elite and people don't like it. More to the ironic point, it engenders such a strong backlash (Trump) that it undoes much of the progress toward their goals.
I would disagree. To be clear, I am using Liberalism in the classic sense, not as another word to mean "left-leaning" or "progressive". The "cancel culture" of progressivism might have been annoying, but it was not that big a deal and was just as prevalent on the right. If anything, Trump has shown us that racism and sexism were in fact, wide-spread and tolerated by too many who know better. These are still really big issues and we need to deal with them as a culture, not shrug them off.
Didn't say "shrug them off". You are showing a little bit of the attitude that I was talking about. Racism and sexism are still widespread but it's a lot better than it used to be (I'm 73 so have seen a bit). There has been steady improvement until wokeness raised its ugly head. One way not to fight racism is to label entire groups of people as racist or sexist. It makes enemies of those who try to do better. All that crap about "colonialism" and "whiteness" serves only to set us back. They may have their place as academic observations but not in public policy, social settings, or polite society.
To some extent I agree but don't under-estimate how much of Trump's win in 2016 was a direct result of the backlash to the "left self-righteousness" - I am appalled of ANY reason to have voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024, but I understand to some extent why he got the vote in 2016.
Isn't that the case on both ends of the spectrum? We are talking about humans after all.
Where it goes wrong on the liberal side is that they chose to fight sexual and racial intolerance with intolerance. The Tolerance Party is intolerant. Unlike the Right's intolerance, this is self-harm.
I must be terribly uninformed. Who did that ("label, without trial, anyone that didn't meet their high standards)?
It happened at all levels, from reactions to social media posts to losing one's job because of disagreement with the university's or company's definition of racism. It probably happens less now due to the backlash and the scare tactics of the Trump administration, which I am not endorsing at all, but the attitudes are very much still there. Even now, say the wrong thing on Bluesky where I hang out and you get accused of being a racist or a white supremacist. Of course, they don't know me so it is easy for me to dismiss and ignore but it tells me there are still a lot of progressives who think the way to fight racism is to quickly identify what group someone belongs to and then declare you as an irredeemable racist.
The problem of Reconstruction wasn't complacency by the Radical Republicans, it was being out bid as the people who made money from the war looked to make even more and invested in political influence and creating their own future.
Add Supreme Court rulings and white Americans as a whole were not interested in extending equal rights to blacks.
It wasn't complacency initially, but as time went on and the public's focused changed, elected officials for increasingly weary of whack-a-moling Jim Crow laws. The next generation was complacent, not the original. And of course, there were plenty who still tried to advocate for change!
Sorry, Holmes, but your historical timeline is a little off here. The Reconstruction period ends with the presidential election of 1876 where a deal was struck that got the federal troops out of the South and out of their laws. It was after the feds left that the Jim Crow laws were established.
They need to pierce the epistemic bubble in low population density counties. All of the redistricting stuff, the Republican advantage in the Senate, all of it stems from Trump and the Red team putting up Saddam Hussein numbers in rural counties. The blue team's position will be tenuous at best and continually vulnerable to gerrymandering and the fillibuster if it remains a team of only urban enclaves.
I live in one of those red rural midwestern areas. If you do not fix the cultural aversion to liberalism, you have no hope of competing in rural areas.
It's like trying to convince Cleveland Browns fans that they should root for and send money to the Pittsburgh Steelers instead. You can point out all you want that the Steelers have a better winning record, better offensive stats, and they are consistently ranked higher in the AFC North than the Browns. Also the Steelers have six Superbowl wins and the Browns have none. Logically it would be more beneficial as a fan to switch allegiance to the Steelers from the Browns.
However we all know that is not how fandom works. It is also not how culture works. The GOP isn't just a political party for white conservative Americans. It is a lifestyle brand.
100% agreement that the GOP is not a political party, it’s a lifestyle brand.
Some people are too far gone. My family, the one I grew up with, is too far gone. They’ll never vote for a Democrat, ever, no matter what.
We can’t endlessly obsess with how to bring them to our side. They’ll never flip.
What we need to decide, right now, is that we must win the next two national elections by at least one vote, then govern like we have the Mandate Of Heaven.
The biggest impediment to this won’t be voters, or even the GOP. The biggest impediment to this will be the Democratic leadership in Congress.
Agree with this. Here is my idea of how to fix the cultural aversion to liberalism: Liberals go on a LISTENING tour of red counties in their states. This is why I support Braver Angels. That is what they do. And Reds listen to Blues too. See braverangels.org.
Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild spent months listening to two right-wing communities, one in Louisiana bayou country, one of the most polluted areas in the US, and the other in Appalachia. She wrote a book about each: "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" and "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right." Any liberal who actually wants to fix the cultural aversion to liberalism should read one of both of these books.
Brilliant, Scott.
MAGA is sort of a way of life for people and I don't think you can talk people out of something that is a profession of belief and part of their societal connections. As we are seeing, people will take jobs in those new projects and factories funded by Biden's programs and then decry the new people that come into their small spaces to take those jobs too. They will remain MAGA because they cannot change their identities. This is true of people in general...whether it's politics, religion, if it's part of who they are and their place in society they will cling to it.
This is sort of off topic, Scott, but for awhile now I've been wondering, which will come first - a woman President, or the Browns going to the Super Bowl? (They don't have to win, but just be one of the teams). I don't think either will happen in my lifetime (I'm 57).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I vividly remember watching the Broncos end that dream as a kid!
Ah, yes. The Fumble. Sigh.
And The Drive.
Yes, and the vise grip on Fox News has to be fought against as well. Trump has just started his "affordability tour" where he will tell lies about how well the economy is doing and claim all kinds of impossible future policies. Fox and all the others will faithfully echo his lies. If voters hear a counter-message at all, it is dismissed by Trump's faithful as mere opposition chatter or "fake news".
It’s a good point, but how do we fight Fox News addiction and its outsize influence? I’m afraid the only thing that will make their viewers turn away is their own lived experience, like being unable to afford their groceries or health insurance.
They are living inside the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
I tend to agree that the movable/swing/nonvoters are the ones we have the best chance of reaching.
Yes, it's a tough one. One hope I have is that, as each of their opinion people try to outdo each other in their ridiculous claims, eventually they are so ridiculous that the veil falls from their viewers eyes. Hasn't happened yet.
This may be in tension, though, if you support the Reddit poster's argument JVL cited today. If a Democrat campaigning in a rural area today was asked by a voter, "Do you support the expulsion of trans people from the military?" The moral clarity strategy would dictate that the campaigner answer, "No." Hopefully they would get a chance to explain why they said that, but still, do you think that answer would be a net positive in attracting rural voters?
It would obviously bother some rural voters but if they did get a chance to explain their position, most might find their arguments reasonable. I am no expert on trans issues, but my gut feeling is that some progressives go too far. For example, it makes no sense to have people at a school encouraging a kid to transition without getting the parents involved in the decision. I also suspect that some troubled kids might be encouraged to transition by people that don't have the kid's welfare at heart. Obviously, examples of trans people in political office or in the military help demonstrate that outlawing them is a hateful policy. As with all these social issues, the goal should be for "our" politicians to appear more reasonable than the MAGA ones to voters on the fence.
I have one disagreement: I'm not sure that the advice to turn confrontation against MAGA into a moral battle is a good one.
I don't necessarily have a good alternative to that idea, but it makes me uneasy. One of the things that has disappointed me most about the last decade or so of liberal/progressive/left politics is how, despite often being avowedly secular, there often feels like there's a dogma that people are expected to adhere to. Question, even in a productive way, certain shibboleths and there were plenty of people ready to excommunicate you.
I don't think this was necessarily the intent of PTS_Dreaming's idea, but I would suggest shying away from any method of political combat that risks the creation and/or maintenance of any kind of fundamentalist viewpoint.
It's not wrong to point out that anti-DEI is just racism and misogyny. That's the point. Most Americans are not comfortable with gutter racism and open misogyny. They never have been. That discomfort over the immorality and brutality of racism is what the Abolitionist movement used to combat the institution of slavery.
The MAGA movement leaders are leaning into racism. We need to battle that and it is a moral issue and one that is moral irrespective of religion.
Certainly MLK fought segregation from a moral perspective. The civil rights movement was led by MLK's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Gospel teachings were the core of their movement but he never went around quoting the Bible.
And he didn't fight a traditional battle against segregation. They were a minority and had no physical weapons. Their weapon was Gandhi's nonviolent civil disobedience. That's why they succeeded. That's what needs to be our weapon in our moral battle.
Right/wrong is not the only axis we should be evaluating strategies on. The consequences of failure are too great to operate that way, and when you adopt strategies that are based on the idea of moral crusade you run the risk of driving yourself into a cul-de-sac of because the fact that something is ineffective or counterproductive can't withstand the moral valence of being declared "right."
So what do you propose to do in order to try and break the growing influence of the racist/misogynist influencers on the right?
We're already doing it, starting with the massively attended, peaceful and diverse No Kings demonstrations. Then the large margin of Democratic wins on Nov. 4th. Now Trump's approval is 36% (Gallup), the lowest of this term; it's only 2 points above his all-time career low point of 34% after Jan 6th. The odds that the Dems will take the House have improved and I'm even seeing discussion that they'll take the Senate too.
Further, the Trump coalition is splitting: " . . . more than a third (of 2024 Trump voters) do not consider themselves to be MAGA Republicans . . . some of them have already begun to turn on him . . . much more likely to blame Trump for the state of the economy, say he has too much power and be pessimistic about the future" (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/28/maga-trump-voters-divide-00670647).
I think all of this tells us that their influence is declining.
As I said above, I don't have a good alternative right now. If I knew a way to tackle MAGA and also solve the infatuation of certain segments of the liberal/progressive space with dopamine hits from moral certitude at the expense of efficacy, I'd probably be working in politics instead of software engineering.
There’s nothing you can do. Scolding them will make it worse. If you have any ideas let me know.
Agree with this, Hilary. I made a similar comment here: https://substack.com/@sandygsm/note/c-184621247?r=1dlvn&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
our side has to change is a very good point with which I agree. see Sarah McBride on a politics of grace - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zw4rAm-GsU.
I stand by what I said before. Everywhere I look in the Republican Party I see the same thing: A group of people singularly obsessed with one thing. They are obsessed with social order, hierarchy, and rigid enforcement of a caste system. If you look at what they’re saying and doing everything comes back to this. MAGA itself is a shorthand for this: I will restore you to your “rightful” place in the firmament of American life. Your place has been taken from you by the [Insert Boogeyman Here]. (The liberals, Jews, gays, Leftists, Progressives, etc. It can be anyone who isn’t you, really.)
They ultimately believe that there must be a rigid hierarchy of the social order, and that the law can (and must) be used to enforce that order. In order for them to be at the top of that order (as the Lord intended, or whatever) somebody must be at the bottom. Those are all of your out groups. They believe this order is not only natural but good. If you look around you can see this everywhere. Nothing else really matters to them. The cultural obsessions, societal commentary, policing of family life, etc. all comes back to this: We know what the proper order is. Every American’s life should be ordered according to our constructed hierarchy. We will use force of law to ensure the order is maintained as it should be. That’s what Republicans mean when they talk about “Law & Order.” We will use the law to enforce *our* order. People that step out of line or attempt to disrupt our order by giving freedom and equality to Americans in the out groups cannot be tolerated. Equality and equity cannot be borne because they inevitably lead to the breakdown of our rigid order and caste system. This cannot and will not be accepted. This eventually leads to domination, as you wrote about recently JVL. But it’s domination with a purpose. That purpose is ensuring the perpetuation of the order that exclusively benefits those they perceive to be “Real Americans.”
Some twenty years ago I saw a book in a used bookstore, published in the early fifties, that outlined core "conservative" principles (it wasn't a John Birch publication, more of a "this is what we believe" thing). One of the principles, stated explicitly, was that humans are ordered in a hierarchy that's the natural and desired order of things. It's hardly surprising, then, that this anti-democratic belief system has metastasized into Trump and MAGA.
I think if you look throughout human history, this tendency would almost always be there in one form or another, and has been magnified by the wealth, power, and privilege of civilization. A number of years ago a thought emerged for me that reactionary conservatives are in some fundamental way socio-cultural evolutionary throwbacks. In terms of biological evolution, the five hundred years since the dawn of the Enlightenment is an eyeblink, and studies identifying the core elements of the "conservative" worldview have been clear about fear as the defining emotional response to change. This is important because this means being open to or desiring the reduction of anxiety provided by a strong hierarchy and father figure, real or imagined, is not an anomaly, it's human. (I'm not addressing here the evils of power, privilege, amorality, venality, etc.).
Democracy is anxiety inducing hard work, and some personalities and emotional matrices respond to this with, say, manageable anxiousness or even excitement. For many, perhaps intrinsically around 20-30% or more, the unknowns of social change or even of the universe trigger the survival response of fear, which evolutionarily was a successful survival strategy and which seeks reduction of the associated anxiety through predictable, inflexible systems.
I'm not excusing the points you make; you're spot on. But I do think the human has to undergo some serious socio-cultural evolution, and even some biological evolution (maybe through Mendelian selection, epigenetics, etc.), in order to reduce the poor fit of our DNA with the demands of fully realized liberal democracy. To return to JVL's post, identifying what you describe above as unacceptable to a sustainable democratic republic might be part of the next gen moral paradigm.
Agree with all of this, Steven. You might find the work of political psychologist Karen Stenner informative (karenstenner.com). She studies the authoritarian disposition which makes up about a third of any human community. It's an enduring personality type meaning it can't be changed, so I don't think looking to MAGA evolving is what's needed. This is what Stenner says about where we go from here as we understand that liberal democracy has now exceeded many people’s capacity to tolerate it: We need to help our fellow citizens with the authoritarian disposition to be their best selves.
"The first recommendation is really for all of us: the world is too complex for a large portion of the population to navigate without experiencing exhaustion or alarm, and this is only accelerating. In every domain of life – social, political and economic – people actually need less information, fewer choices, and greater support to make decisions that are in their interest.
"Some people have a deep need for oneness and sameness. They can no more change this than we can change our own love of diversity and complexity. Forcing their exposure to more diversity than they’re innately equipped to handle actually pushes them not to the limits of their tolerance but to their intolerant extremes.
"A true democracy ought to be able to accommodate this. We have to provide authoritarians the assistance they require to live in peace and comfort with the rest of us. This will likely require significant re-design of social and political processes to reduce what I earlier described as the 'cacophony of modern liberal democracy'.
"Society could certainly benefit from a greater abundance of unifying institutions and rituals. And we don’t need to be always loudly celebrating multiculturalism and amplifying complexity and diversity. This will surely sound like a backwards step. But liberal democracy is most secure, and tolerance is maximised, when we design systems to accommodate how people actually are. And some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy.
"We must recognise that authoritarians are not inherently evil – it’s just a different way of being human. We must tolerate diversity of personalities just like we tolerate all other kinds of difference. We cannot enemify or exclude a third of the population. At least, we can’t do these things while claiming to be a democracy. We can’t do these things and be a well-functioning society either. Human communities require some folks that seek out novelty, diversity and complexity, and others who will monitor and guard against strange and foreign and unfamiliar things. It’s the balance between us that strengthens the whole.
"It is worth remembering that no outcome can be guaranteed by freedom, including freedom. If people are free to choose, they’re free to choose un-freedom. The needs and preferences of authoritarians are of equal weight to our own and must be attended to and appropriately accommodated. They’re owed this much just as citizens in a democracy, but it’s also in our own interests to help them live in peace with everyone else" (https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism).
It is WE who have evolved to value liberal democracy and "all men are created equal" who need to learn how to accommodate our fellow, authoritarian citizens.
That's good stuff. I'm copying and pasting myself here:
"... it means understanding the fundamental importance of the idea, I think much better understood by conservatives, that “people need to be led,” and that this is not a pejorative but an understandable reality that deserves respect and appropriate response, and which goes to the core of a critical weakness in modern American liberalism: the inability or unwillingness to freely exercise power, and the aversion to demonstrations of strength.
It’s also not the case that cultural/political liberalism is immune to the fear of change (or difference); the intense tribalism and orthodoxy enforcement of many American political ‘liberals’ amounts to a different iteration of the same phenomenon. Mao’s Red Guard and Stalin’s purges were hardly liberally minded exercises, regardless of lazy political assignment. But the human race, and by extension the planet, are in a time of rapid, unavoidable, and massive change; the mostly unconscious anxiety induced by this cannot be overstated, and it’s no surprise that the reactive survival instinct is being triggered, big time. It’s my contention that in order to successfully navigate the rough waters we’re in, and the much rougher waters ahead, those who believe that an Enlightenment based liberal world order is the best ship must understand the reality of the human that is not wired for this, and act accordingly."
Glad you found it to be good. However, only SOME human minds are not wired for liberal democracy. That is Stenner's point.
And our history shows it as well. We've had 236 years of a constitutional democratic republic, and the majority of Americans were fine with it. Even though the illiberal Trump won the presidency twice, I still think the majority of Americans value "all men are created equal." Here is some research on that: "Sixty-three percent of respondents aligned with the statement that we are united 'not by a shared religion or ancestry or history, but by our shared commitment to a set of American founding ideals: that we all have inherent and equal rights to live, to not be tyrannized, and to pursue happiness as we each understand it'” (https://colinwoodard.com/nationhood-lab-research-finds-most-americans-share-a-common-vision-for-the-united-states/).
All well said and I agree completely. "All men are created equal" is what divides Americans. If you hold that value, your America is a liberal democracy. If you don't, you are illiberal and your America is an authoritarian regime who imposes a rigid hierarchy of the social order. As Laura Loomer put it after the former Afghan fighter killed a member of the National Guard, "That's it. I want a king."
Republicans fundamentally don't believe that all men are created equal. Maybe they never did. But they certainly don't now. They believe we are not equal and they like it that way. If you drill down on all the Real America bullshit you'll find this at its core.
Agree. According to this research, they are a minority of Americans: https://colinwoodard.com/nationhood-lab-research-finds-most-americans-share-a-common-vision-for-the-united-states/. That is a good thing and gives me confidence that the nation can survive Trump's assault.
JVL I would love for you and Sarah to pay attention to the parenting styles taking hold of mainstream America. Parents of young children are leading the anti-authoritarian revolution. The liberal order is in free fall right now, Trumpism is just the start. Young millennials and older Gen Z are raising fiercely anti-authoritarian generations whether they realize it or not, and a new era of democracy is coming. Things are going to get worse even post-Trump until the new era of liberalism and democracy is ushered in.
Pay attention to it? We’re doing it!
Fair 😂 Watch how ramped up the anti-authoritarianism of parenting gets with the Bulwark Babies!! The speed with which American parenting styles are evolving/changing is incredible.
Ah, Bulwark Babies. Love it! I just wish I could have one.
I'm raising hellions sort of on purpose. I don't want compliant, obedient kids who turn into compliant, obedient adults.
Hellionsare a necessary ingredient for social creativity in culturally turbulent times as long as this is embedded in a pro-social contract. If not we get Steve Bannon nihilism.
Not only necessary for cultural creativity, but as a constant and critical force against anti-social/authoritarian behavior. Steve Bannon was raised in an authoritarian household, he is not the hellion of which we speak. What parents of very young children in modern America are finding is that the hellions are contrarian by nature and for good reason! They are finding that the hellions are deeply emotional, naturally empathetic and worthy of respect and appropriate levels of autonomy. The hellions overwhelmingly connect with the world around them which does not feel very nihilistic.
How is this different from counter-culture parenting in the 60s e and 70s. See Cařl Roger’s’ Freedom to Learn .
Maureen - I believe that to be exactly what has blossomed and taken hold of mainstream American society. It was counter-culture before, now it is exponentially growing as the status quo.
There is a shadow side to counter cultures. They make space for extreme individualism that without social norms and mutual agreements can become Bannon/miller nihilism. The balance between liberty and responsibility takes social wisdom. The mistake we person centered/existentilists made was to see moral reasoning as inherent rather than contextual and relational. Morality is a social result learned from community patterns of knowledge that must be shared by elders as well as created anew with each generation.
Yep that seems to be the theme across America right now. Gens Alpha and Beta are going to see LARGE numbers of anti-authoritarians who have been raised that way from birth.
https://open.substack.com/pub/galliaanonimia674911/p/american-parenting-as-a-leading-charge?r=ca4qn&utm_medium=ios
Way back in the before times, Sen. WIlliam Proxmire (D-WI) used to deliver himself monthly of his "Golden Fleece Award." The "fleece" referred to government expenditures so daft as to, in his view, "fleece" taxpayers out of their monies. As a vehicle to demonstrate to the public the utter depravity and corruption of our current ruling clique, Dems should relaunch Proxmire's initiative notwithstanding the +/- 40 year hiatus. The environment is target rich. It will be hard to whittle things down. to one per month.
Excellent!
I would say hammer corruption and incompetence, and to that I would add unfairness. Unfairness pervades our economic and political system. It is present in everything from campaign finance to tax policy to healthcare to gerrymandering. It is a neutral concept that a vast majority of Americans support, and it can be emphasized without explicit references to redistribution, which invite shrieks of "socialism." Fairness overlaps perfectly with corruption, as corruption is nothing but unfair, but it goes much further because it encompasses a broad view of how our country and our economy should be run. In short, it should be run for the huge majority of Americans, all of whom rightly feel that it is definitely not run for them. This sentiment is shared on the right and the left. The Trump administration operates in contravention of basic values like fairness, honesty, empathy, intelligence, and basic decency. This is not hard to demonstrate. Running on the restoration of these values should be easy and effective.
Agree with this. In February, Jonathan Rauch wrote about Trump's corruption and said the Dems should run on it:
"They should pursue a relentless, strategic, and thematic campaign branding Trump as America’s most corrupt president. Almost every development could provide fodder for such attacks, which would connect corruption not with generalities like the rule of law but with kitchen-table issues. Higher prices? Crony capitalism! Cuts to popular programs? Payoffs for Trump’s fat-cat clients! Tax cuts? A greedy raid on Social Security!
"The best objection to this approach (perhaps the only objection, at this point) is that the corruption charge won’t stick against Trump. After all, the public has been hearing about his corruption for years and has priced it in or just doesn’t care. Besides, the public believes that all politicians are corrupt anyway.
"But driving a strategic, coordinated message against Trump’s corruption is exactly what the opposition has not done. Instead, it has reacted to whatever is in the day’s news. By responding to daily fire drills and running in circles, it has failed to drive any message at all" (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/).
Whilst factually correct re corruption i fear even a coordinated approach won't stick. It's something 'over there' and its not personal. Now 'betrayed' is something that is personal. Whatever you think of James carville, he brought this up straight after nov2024 election Harris defeat.
Didn't he say "connect corruption not with generalities like the rule of law but with kitchen-table issues. Higher prices? Crony capitalism! Cuts to popular programs? Payoffs for Trump’s fat-cat clients! Tax cuts? A greedy raid on Social Security!"? That's personal.
Not sure why you're suggesting I think little of James Carville. I am a huge fan of his analysis of the Dems. He was early to call for Biden to step down, and he was early to call out, soon after the election, the damage the progressive "intersectionalists" have done to the party brand.
Please explain why anyone would give a flying rat’s ass about what Russ Douhat has to say.
Not sure anyone does, Douthat serves mainly as a conduit through which to launder right-wing authoritarianism.
He uses a lot of big words which makes him palatable to The NY Times.
His interview with the zombie-looking Peter Thiel was something. Douhat was trying to play reasonable but it came across smug and self-righteous. Very uncomfortable.
That interview, & Medhi Hasan’s Jubilee, really got to me. I felt like I was being slapped in the face with a fetid fish born of the darkest 👿
I think that was the entire point….:)
No the point is that people should not give a damn about what Douthat says but in reality, lots of people listen to his ideas. He is very commercially viable.
Right, he’s a contradiction in terms and no one should care; which is what I got from this. JVL said:
“The Liberal Order Can’t Heal Itself,” complains the man who has spent most of his career trying to strangle the liberal order….what a fucking joke!”
My takeaway, he’s a guy who claims to be the protector of the liberal order, by spending his life destroying the liberal order!
This should sound familiar; Trump claims to be the defender of democracy, and is at the same time, is destroying our democracy; if he hasn’t done so already….:)
Both points are true: He is a conduit through which to launder right-wing authoritarianism, and he is very commercially viable.
I think you should hire PTS_Dreaming as a regular commentator. Whomever wrote this is very clear thinking and diligent in their research and conclusions. Everything they say shouts "THIS!" that most of us have struggled to get into coherent thoughts.