Important point: “But they [progressives] need to drag the Overton window back from the right, and reset the basic terms of our political conversations. To reclaim the conversation on the pain points, and redefine what’s normal.”
So much of the conversation on to-tariff or not-to-tariff seems to ignore the need for an incentive for GOOD. Not only the US (and few seem to question how a tariff windfall benefits us when the federal government is being dismantled and funding to support research, poor people, the arts and such is being stopped… where will all the tariff trillions go?) but all people and nations.
There is a profound absence of any moral clarity guiding conversations. Analysis of the facts without such clarity leaves people despondent because we are running in circles and going nowhere.
I'm a bit exhausted from the fuckery we've all been living through since the election, and I'm sure I am not alone in that. One thing this blog has stated over and over again is that the fascists want to steal our joy, and one way to help defeat them is, well, to not let them do that.
Jazz brings me joy. Records bring me joy. So I just wanted to say, thank you for introducing me to Sarah Berliner - I am now the proud owner of her most recent release, on vinyl, thanks to The.Ink and Bandcamp.
I think all of the above have contributed to this perfect storm, but it still doesn't explain why a slim majority of Americans #1) voted against ---the hypocrisies of the Dems, et. al. and #2) that same slim majority voted for--- a liar, a rapist, a convicted felon, who speaks in word salads, and is someone who is now marshalling Project 2025. This defies rational explanation unless we consider that the crux of the matter is not the economy, but a wound long festering for many white Americans: The Lost Cause. While we may focus on the loss experienced by the antebellum South, the Civil War was a loss for privilege. class, white supremacy and American exceptionalism. That chauvinism might have been erased, or minimized, had the Federal Laws of Reconstruction survived.
Reconstruction's downfall meant that America would never have to atone for its genocide of indigenous Americans or for the Middle Passage and its millions of casualties. The spirit of the Lost Cause remains alive in the American DNA: It's the spirit of colonialism, a broad suppression of free speech, the concentration of wealth and power and maybe most of all, a total disregard for human rights. (The Dems are poor resisters because many are millionaires and have one foot in/one foot out of the status quo. The effective Dem resisters have nothing to lose.) The usual scapegoats are the first to be targeted. The rest of us, the "real Americans", are also being targeted in the dissolution of our federal agencies. This was a total surprise and shock to the Trump voters.
The shell game of "let's get the outsiders" has come home to roost. There is little honor among Neo-Confederates and Oligarchs.
Time to heed the advice of a 16th century philosopher, LaBoetie, whose writing seems so relevant to the crisis we are facing.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude:
Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority
By E. LaBoetie (Philosopher and Writer, 1530-1563)
(A 3-part essay. Excerpts with some adaptation for readability)
“How does it happen that an entire nation suffers under a single tyrant?
People suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty on account of a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament, and with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman. Who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat millions and deprive them of their liberty?
The answer? We let ourselves be deprived before our own eyes of the best part of our liberties. This misfortune, this ruin descends upon us not from alien foes but from the one enemy whom we ourselves render as powerful as he is.
The more a tyrant pillages, the more he craves, the more he ruins and destroys. And the more we yield to him and obey him, the mightier and more formidable he becomes, the readier he is to annihilate and destroy us.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.
He has indeed nothing more than the power that we confer upon him to destroy us.
He does not have any power over us except through us.
Let’s not grow accustomed to the idea of subjection.
Let’s not lose warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm because our hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed. A tyrant is well aware of this, and in order to degrade his subjects further, he will do what he can for us to assume this attitude and make instinctive.
The tyrant may reduce our freedom of action, of speech, and almost of thought, but in spite of this we will stand together in our aspiration. Our love for liberty and valor will not perish.
The desire for True Liberty must give us new strength. Not the notion of ‘liberty’ that is used to cover a false enterprise.
If things are to change, we must also realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny.
Such men must not only obey orders, they must anticipate his wishes, to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance. Can this be called a happy life? Can it be called living? Is there anything more intolerable than that situation … for anyone having the face of a man?
Still, men accept servility in order to acquire wealth and personal power.
The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love.
There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. And in places where the wicked gather there is conspiracy only, not companionship. They have no affection for one another. Fear holds them together. They are not friends, they are merely accomplices.
We simply will give the tyrant nothing.
We will not weaken ourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold us in check.
We are resolved to serve him no more and aim to regain your freedom.
We will simply no longer support him.
Like the great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, he will fall of this own weight and break into pieces.”
Meanwhile, Trump: “BE COOL...THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” This is clearly market manipulation, but Trump knows he's immune from prosecution. Kathleen Clark a professor focusing on government ethics and corruption at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis said Mr. Trump’s actions “would ordinarily trigger an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
Thank you. Great post by Hamilton Nolan with the suggestion of an international minimum wage. And a helpful link to the very clear informative article about noncitizen rights.
Reading what seems like a great article today but wanted to draw your attention to what I believe is a typo in paragraph 2….it alters what I think you mean to say significantly:
“We need to learn to expose that kernel of truth, examine it, and figure out actual rather made-up solutions. That takes the kind of courage that American institutions haven’t shown, and the willingness to throw out priors we all struggle with.”
@ ‘actual rather made up solutions’….should this not be ‘actual rather THAN made up’?
‘Actual rather made up solutions’ sounds like an ‘Alternative fact-ism’ expression from the Trump 1.0 world of Kelly Conway….Tx….
Important point: “But they [progressives] need to drag the Overton window back from the right, and reset the basic terms of our political conversations. To reclaim the conversation on the pain points, and redefine what’s normal.”
So much of the conversation on to-tariff or not-to-tariff seems to ignore the need for an incentive for GOOD. Not only the US (and few seem to question how a tariff windfall benefits us when the federal government is being dismantled and funding to support research, poor people, the arts and such is being stopped… where will all the tariff trillions go?) but all people and nations.
There is a profound absence of any moral clarity guiding conversations. Analysis of the facts without such clarity leaves people despondent because we are running in circles and going nowhere.
I'm a bit exhausted from the fuckery we've all been living through since the election, and I'm sure I am not alone in that. One thing this blog has stated over and over again is that the fascists want to steal our joy, and one way to help defeat them is, well, to not let them do that.
Jazz brings me joy. Records bring me joy. So I just wanted to say, thank you for introducing me to Sarah Berliner - I am now the proud owner of her most recent release, on vinyl, thanks to The.Ink and Bandcamp.
I think all of the above have contributed to this perfect storm, but it still doesn't explain why a slim majority of Americans #1) voted against ---the hypocrisies of the Dems, et. al. and #2) that same slim majority voted for--- a liar, a rapist, a convicted felon, who speaks in word salads, and is someone who is now marshalling Project 2025. This defies rational explanation unless we consider that the crux of the matter is not the economy, but a wound long festering for many white Americans: The Lost Cause. While we may focus on the loss experienced by the antebellum South, the Civil War was a loss for privilege. class, white supremacy and American exceptionalism. That chauvinism might have been erased, or minimized, had the Federal Laws of Reconstruction survived.
Reconstruction's downfall meant that America would never have to atone for its genocide of indigenous Americans or for the Middle Passage and its millions of casualties. The spirit of the Lost Cause remains alive in the American DNA: It's the spirit of colonialism, a broad suppression of free speech, the concentration of wealth and power and maybe most of all, a total disregard for human rights. (The Dems are poor resisters because many are millionaires and have one foot in/one foot out of the status quo. The effective Dem resisters have nothing to lose.) The usual scapegoats are the first to be targeted. The rest of us, the "real Americans", are also being targeted in the dissolution of our federal agencies. This was a total surprise and shock to the Trump voters.
The shell game of "let's get the outsiders" has come home to roost. There is little honor among Neo-Confederates and Oligarchs.
Time to heed the advice of a 16th century philosopher, LaBoetie, whose writing seems so relevant to the crisis we are facing.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude:
Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority
By E. LaBoetie (Philosopher and Writer, 1530-1563)
(A 3-part essay. Excerpts with some adaptation for readability)
“How does it happen that an entire nation suffers under a single tyrant?
People suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty on account of a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament, and with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman. Who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat millions and deprive them of their liberty?
The answer? We let ourselves be deprived before our own eyes of the best part of our liberties. This misfortune, this ruin descends upon us not from alien foes but from the one enemy whom we ourselves render as powerful as he is.
The more a tyrant pillages, the more he craves, the more he ruins and destroys. And the more we yield to him and obey him, the mightier and more formidable he becomes, the readier he is to annihilate and destroy us.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.
He has indeed nothing more than the power that we confer upon him to destroy us.
He does not have any power over us except through us.
Let’s not grow accustomed to the idea of subjection.
Let’s not lose warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm because our hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed. A tyrant is well aware of this, and in order to degrade his subjects further, he will do what he can for us to assume this attitude and make instinctive.
The tyrant may reduce our freedom of action, of speech, and almost of thought, but in spite of this we will stand together in our aspiration. Our love for liberty and valor will not perish.
The desire for True Liberty must give us new strength. Not the notion of ‘liberty’ that is used to cover a false enterprise.
If things are to change, we must also realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny.
Such men must not only obey orders, they must anticipate his wishes, to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance. Can this be called a happy life? Can it be called living? Is there anything more intolerable than that situation … for anyone having the face of a man?
Still, men accept servility in order to acquire wealth and personal power.
The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love.
There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. And in places where the wicked gather there is conspiracy only, not companionship. They have no affection for one another. Fear holds them together. They are not friends, they are merely accomplices.
We simply will give the tyrant nothing.
We will not weaken ourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold us in check.
We are resolved to serve him no more and aim to regain your freedom.
We will simply no longer support him.
Like the great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, he will fall of this own weight and break into pieces.”
The US won't address our minimum wage. But here is a bright Vibe Jason Marsalis https://youtu.be/Kr7WpqqrFIs?si=M9r4eiGegyBhb5co
‘Insane authoritarian stuff’: Trump directs Justice Department to investigate political enemies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVB9tNyiDW4
Meanwhile, Trump: “BE COOL...THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” This is clearly market manipulation, but Trump knows he's immune from prosecution. Kathleen Clark a professor focusing on government ethics and corruption at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis said Mr. Trump’s actions “would ordinarily trigger an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
"Progressives, people on the left, Democrats who want change, need to make transformative arguments, go big."
YES! Go Big. That is the only way to counter the current regime and to retain out sanity.
Thank you for this argument.
Thank you. Great post by Hamilton Nolan with the suggestion of an international minimum wage. And a helpful link to the very clear informative article about noncitizen rights.
Good Morning, Anand:
Reading what seems like a great article today but wanted to draw your attention to what I believe is a typo in paragraph 2….it alters what I think you mean to say significantly:
“We need to learn to expose that kernel of truth, examine it, and figure out actual rather made-up solutions. That takes the kind of courage that American institutions haven’t shown, and the willingness to throw out priors we all struggle with.”
@ ‘actual rather made up solutions’….should this not be ‘actual rather THAN made up’?
‘Actual rather made up solutions’ sounds like an ‘Alternative fact-ism’ expression from the Trump 1.0 world of Kelly Conway….Tx….
Thanks for the catch; fixed now.