Two January 6s
Heather Cox Richardson writes about January 6, the 2021 and 2025 varieties.
What’s in Livelsberger’s letters
The most incendiary point, which has not been widely reported: a call for “military and vets” and militias to seal off Washington, D.C. and “get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary.”
Domestic comedy
“Matt Gaetz is going to be the attorney general!” Reality trumps satire.
Recently updated
I’ve added Adam Kinzinger.
Other thoughts on the election
From Noah Berlatsky, Mona Charen, Mark Hurst, Bess Kalb, Adam Kinzinger, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, Margaret Sullivan.
What now?
American voters have chosen an aspiring autocrat who has promised to weak our alliances, the prosecute his political enemies, to end any effort to reverse climate change, to end of the Affordable Care Act, to end women’s reproductive rights, to hand healthcare policies over to a nutcase, and build concentration camps as the prelude to mass deporations. I could go on. If your only concern is the price of a loaf of bread (on PBS last night, David Brooks helpfully told us that it’s $1.93), you’ll vote for the strongman. The cost of groceries is a legitimate concern. But so is the cost of healthcare. And so is everything else. A vote based on the cost of a loaf of bread might come at a much greater cost.
Who?
Jonathan Capehart on PBS just now: “I’m mystified.” And: “Who are we as a country?”
An October surprise
In today’s installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson writes about Madison Square Garden rallies, past and present.
Here’s a compelling use of sound and image
“You’ve heard Trump say these things before. But not like this”: an ad from the Lincoln Project.
Base indeed
Watching choice clips from today’s Madison Square Garden gathering, I can reach only one conclusion: Donald Trump suspects that he’s going to lose the election and is thus doing all he can he to stoke the rage of his base so that violence may follow.
Recently updated
“Do not obey in advance”: Timothy Snyder posted a short video in which he comments on the Los Angeles Times and Washingon Post in light of this first lesson.
“Do not obey in advance”
From Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017): Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
Duce redux, redux
From a post I wrote in October 2016: I said in a letter to a friend today that Donald Trump has reinvented American presidential politics as neo-fascist entertainment. I remembered that post today.
“Contempt, rage, parsimony, racism”
In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg writes at length about Donald Trump and the military: “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had.’” Many familiar anecdotes, but also a new one about Trump’s offer to help the family of murdered Army private Vanessa Guillén with funeral expenses, and his response when he learned the cost: “contempt, rage, parsimony, racism.”
Trump, running as a fascist
In The Bulwark, Will Saletan offers eighteen reasons to say that Donald Trump is running as a fascist
“Primary rules”
Sounds like Donald Trump, but it’s not. Can you guess who?
Choice bits from Jack Smith’s filing
I find some of the details of Mike Pence’s efforts to persuade Donald Trump to accept an election loss bizarre and illuminating. These moments make me think of a parent trying to soothe an angry, tantrum-prone toddler.
Yesterday in Wisconsin
Donald Trump, lying, rambling, and rasping his way through the day.
“A September to remember”
The historian Timothy Snyder writes about “Trump’s Hitlerian month,” or “a September to remember.” With a discussion of the objection to making comparisons.
“Red flags for scholars of fascism”
Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump has always invented his stories from whole cloth, but there used to be some way to tie them to reality. Today that seemed to be gone. He was in a fantasy world, and his rhetoric was apocalyptic. It was also bloody in ways that raise huge red flags for scholars of fascism.”
Eleven suggestions from Robert Reich
Robert Reich offers eleven suggestions “to prevent America and the world from falling into fascism.”
A last 2¢ about the elections
I don’t think the results mean that younger voters think of themselves as “Democrats,” as aligned with a party. Rather, I think the results mean that younger voters oppose autocracy, fascism, inequality, racism, xenophobia, voter suppression, and state control of bodies and futures. And if they do, voting for Deomcratic candidates becomes the only game in town.
“Nothing stops the mail.”
Not even fascism.
“Something, perhaps, like this”
Toni Morrison, from the essay “Racism and Fascism.”
Is it fascism yet?
Former senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), speaking about Donald Trump* and the Department of Homeland Security.
“When It’s Too Late to Stop Fascism”
George Prochnik, writing in The New Yorker about Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday.
E. B. White on America Firsters
Fascism, nationalism, and America Firsters.
Merriam-Webster v. fascism
Merriam-Webster is encouraging readers to look up something other than “fascism.”
Naomi Klein on the election
“What we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left.”
Duce redux
In 2016 the helmet is made of hair.