Daily Archives: November 7, 2021

Before 2019, the AAP assumed a vocal anti-BJP character, with Kejriwal regularly feuding with the Central government, and particularly with Modi personally, at one point even terming the Prime Minister a coward and a (sic) psychopath. He appeared on TV channels accusing the ruling BJP of being the handmaiden of Ambani and Adani and slaying government policies such as demonetisation. While he was never an outspoken critic of Hindutva like Rahul Gandhi, he could occasionally condemn Modi for his Hindu-Muslim politics in public rallies. The path to expansion then lied, for Kejriwal, in capturing the opposition space by attacking the BJP.

All this changed after the 2019 election when AAP was humiliated by the BJP in all seven seats of Delhi. But for Bhagwant Manns win in Punjab, it would have lost all the forty seats it contested. Almost overnight, the AAP lost its anti-BJP voice, and it has spent the next two years pursuing a thorough course correction.

All of AAPs subsequent politics has been informed by its reading of the 2019 election mandate. The party made two calculations, both valid in this authors estimation. One, the ideological centre-ground of Indian politics has shifted Right, and two, for the foreseeable future, India would be under a BJP-dominant system. Gauging these larger structural shifts, Kejriwal set about refashioning his centrist populism in a distinctive rightward mould.

This is a rather simplistic conclusion. Whatever the moral objections to AAP legitimising Hindutva majoritarian symbols in the public sphere, it is quite possible that this new politics might aid the party in its expansion plans.

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Kejriwal & AAPs Tryst With Hindutva When Populism Trumps Ideology - The Quint

Photos by Adam Schultz/Biden for President and Gage Skidmore via Flickr

In this Question of the Week podcast episode, College of Arts & Sciences political scientist Lauren Mattioli assesses Joe Biden one year after his election. Promising to jettison Trumpism, the president has lowered the rhetorical thermostat, Mattioli says, but in areas like immigration, he is disappointing supporters with a populist politics, while GOP obstructionism imperils the rest of his agenda.

You can also find this episode onApple Podcasts,Spotify,Google Podcasts, andother podcast platforms.

Dana Ferrante: This is Question of the Week, from BU Today. Has Joe Biden jettisoned Trumpism and populist politics as promised? In this episode, Rich Barlow, BU Today senior writer, talks to Lauren Mattioli, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of political science, about whether Biden has lowered the temperature, as he promised, and abandoned the incendiary style of governance of his predecessor.

One year after the 2020 presidential election, Mattioli discusses which aspects of Trumpism Biden has rejected, and whether there are some aspects he has not.

Rich Barlow: Thank you, Professor Mattioli, for joining us this week.

Lauren Mattioli: Sure. Happy to be here.

Barlow: We are roughly one year after the presidential election of 2020. Has Joe Biden abandoned Trumpism and populist politics as he promised?

Mattioli: I wanted to push you a little bit on your working definition of Trumpism, to see if we have the same one. I think I might have a guess of what your definition of Trumpism is, but if you wouldnt mind explaining a little bit, that would probably make it easier for me to answer.

Barlow: Well, partly, stylistically being the incendiary center of attention 24/7 with tweets in the wee hours that consume the news cycle. And substantively, I guess populist politics would be policies that made up his MAGA platform, from immigration restrictionsand I think, what a lot of people would say, being a window, or a channel, for white grievance.

Mattioli: So yeah, it sounds like were working with the same ideas. I guess I was thinking more about the substance I think the question of whether the Trumpistic style rhetoric has changed is pretty self-evident. Not only do we see a different tone when Biden speaks, but also hes letting the members of his administration do the talking sometimes. And relying on his very competent communication staff and press staff. So I think thats one feature of the rhetoric thats really different. Also, just in terms of the text analysis that Ive done, hes using less incendiary language. Hes not using the types of words that we would normally associate with ideological extremism.

And then substantively, I guess, I thought of Trumpism as having three primary components, at least as far as he and Biden differ. So, the sort of general international relations isolationism, where it was a very America-centric, isolationist policy. And I think Biden, by reengaging in the Paris Climate Accord and with the WHO, reversing the travel ban from primarily Muslim countries, rebuilding our refugee resettlement program, that those are all policy steps that hes taken that I think show a distinct, substantive shift.

Another isI think Trumpism, as you mentioned, is sort of a window, or a sounding board, or a welcome of a set of thoughts around white grievance. And to me, Trumpism was about conserving the status quo around race and gender and anti-progressivism on those fronts. And I think Biden has made some progress on that.

Hes done a couple of things within the administration, like creating this gender policy council and asking the Department of Education to look back over their policies regarding education and sexual violence rules [which Betsy DeVos, Trumps education secretary, had rolled back]. President Trump talked about COVID as being the China virus, whereas the Biden administration has created a task force to combat racism against Asian [Americans] and Pacific Islanders.

So I think thats a big distinction just in policy, and in rhetoric around race, gender, and sexual violence. I forgot to also mention the reversal of the transgender ban on the military. And last, there was this element of Trumpism that was like very pro-business, pro-elite, which is sort of in opposition to what we would normally think of as populism.

But I think if anything, Biden is more populist in that regard, in terms of focusing on labor and the economically marginal, whereas some of the Trump administration policies were actively antagonizing problems that the economically marginal face. But, I wouldnt say complete abandonment is the right characterization of the Biden administration, because theres still lots of rhetoric that is very popular around traditional isolationism, like this Buy American policy within the Biden administration, which is reminiscent of the economic isolationism that was characteristic of the Trump administration.

[Biden has] maintained the steel tariffs that were so controversial during the Trump administration Also, I think the maltreatment of allies, which [has not been] so bad in the Biden administration, but was particularly heightened during this recent debacle with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And so I dont think its a total abandonment of populist policies and rhetoric, [but] its certainly toned down.

Its definitely a shift away from this individual-centered, charismatic leadership thats vested in ideological extremism. And so, definitely a shift rhetorically and substantively, but maybe not as far as Biden supporters might have hoped.

Barlow: You mentioned [its] not as far as his supporters had hopedcritics would also say that Bidens immigration policy and his fumbled withdrawal from Afghanistan are also reminiscent of Trumpism.

What changes should he make in his approach?

Mattioli: I think I want to take those in turn. So, I think the Afghanistan withdrawal was going to be thorny for any president that tried to do something, instead of just continuing to kick that policy can down the road. But I think this was a particularly poor handling of it.

And policy obviously matters, but how we talk about policy decisions matters [too], and I think Bidens rhetoric around Afghanistan was really problematic. I think it was an Al Jazeera article that described it as humility free, and I liked that because weve come to associate Biden with being almost self-effacing and a humble everyman. But then in discussing Afghanistan, he really isnt owning the mistakes that are very clear to his detractors.

And I think thats sort of interesting, because that was what many people thought was good about Biden as a contrast to Trump. But I think on the Afghanistan thing, the idea of not owning the problemsthere may have been problems inevitablybut I think failing to acknowledge them is undermining the overall effort.

It was going to be difficult no matter what. But the way hes dealt with it I think has exacerbated the problem. And then on immigration, this is the characteristic of democratic infightingthe rhetoric isnt the issue as much as the policy. So in contrast to Afghanistan, yeah, the border has still, I think as of two or three days ago, its still using public health measures to keep people from entering the country, still putting children in cages.

And theres no rhetoric that can excuse that. So I think the change you need to make on immigration is to stop using [Title] 42 [the principal set of public health rules and regulations issued by US federal agencies] to expel immigrants. Its offensive to the public health policy. We cant say we have this new turning point in the administration of a pandemic and then co-opt public health to serve a political agenda.

And then I think, generally, the move after that sort of long-term goal needs to be developing a legitimate process for dealing with asylum cases that can deal with this influx. If the system is overwhelmed, its not the asylum seekers fault, its the systems fault and the system needs to be reformed.

And I think that would require effort and also acknowledgement of the failures of the administration. And I havent seen that decisively.

Barlow: Youre a scholar of the American presidency and American government. So let me play devils advocate and ask you this: you talked about the presidents failures of humility on Afghanistan and policy on immigration, but with Republicans bent on obstruction, pretty much of anything he does, and Democrats bitterly divided among themselves, is quiet and successful governance possible for any president these days?

Mattioli: This is a question that I might steal from you and put on my final exam the next time I teach the presidency. Im not sure if weve ever had quiet, successful governance, I want to push back on that, [but] youre right, the policy for Republicans in Congress has been total obstruction of a Democratic presidents agenda.

And thats forced Democratic presidents and some Republican presidents facing divided government to act unilaterally. And so the source of successful governance comes from the executive branch and to a lesser extent the judiciary. So the prospect for good governance if nothing substantive can come out of Congresswe still have options, maybe less attractive options and less democratic, majoritarian options, but therere still possibilities for governance through unilateral executive action and through case-by-case policy-making, what I call judicial policy-making in the courts.

And Democrats are divided on breadth and depth of policy change, and the sort of exhaustion of effort amongst themselves isI think theyre putting a lot into identifying precisely what policy should look like without an eye towards actually getting those policies through Congress. Not to say that theyre totally not forecasting the possibilities, but I think the focus needs to be on overcoming obstructionism rather than overcoming their own internal factions, which is easier said than done, of course.

And then, probably the better approach politically for them will be focusing on winning a unified government come election time next year. And in the meantime, putting Republicans in a position where they have to make unpopular votes and force them to sort of call the bluff. Thats something thatweve seen [in] the sort of blame game politicking that has been successful to a certain extent in the past.

But whos going to suffer are the people who need policy, like Americans who need health care and need food aid and need unemployment insurance. And so the cost of obstruction then is public good. So a successful governance is going to have to come from someplace other than Congress, I think, so long as trends continue as they have been.

Barlow: And that place would be?

Mattioli: I think the executive branch and the courts. I think the prospects for major policy changesexcept for maybe on infrastructure, which is sort of shown to be the only bipartisan issue thats getting real momentumwell have to see about any major policy advancement; I think thats going to have to happen unilaterally through the executive branch, which will be unpopular, but so will not doing anything.

Barlow: I was going to ask, thats a gamble for the president, right?

Mattioli: Of course.

Barlow: Some pundits are saying that if he cant achieve anything between now and the midterms, or cant achieve much of his agenda, and a lot of his agenda cant be achieved, unless Im wrong, solely by executive action, the Democrats can take a shellacking next year.

Mattioli: Yeah, I think Democrats want to avoid committing the sins of the 2010 midterms, where having a unified Democratic Congress, they were able to get a lot of policies through and were basically saying, we take full credit for everything thats happened, and then sort of got blamed for everything that didnt happen that may have been due to obstructionism.

Unified government doesnt mean complete consensus on everything. So I think if theyre smart, Democrats will have to make it clear what theyre going to really take credit for. And politicians are horrible about this, right? They take credit for successes even if they arent theirs, and they reject their culpability and failures, even if they are theirs.

And then itll be up to voters to decide whos responsible. So its possible, youre right, that Democrats could take a shellacking and could really face defeat in the midterms, if Biden doesnt get a lot of [his agenda] through, with the caveat that if he can successfully blame Republicans, it may not be the case.

Ferrante: Thanks to Lauren Mattioli for joining us on this episode of Question of the Week. If you liked the show, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and never miss an episode. Im Dana Ferrante; see you next week

Excerpt from:

Has Joe Biden Abandoned Trumpism and Populist Politics? - BU Today

I have been wrong about very many things across many areas of our social world. With the results streaming in as I write this evening, it is clear that I have been wrong about the EFF in the LGE21.

I really believed that it would do outstandingly well in the election. As for having been so wrong, I will paraphrase Cardinal Newman and say that I am perfectly happy to admit to the worst that can be said of me as a writer on current affairs; this occasion being that I was wrong. (Dont ask me where I read that, I only remembered that he wrote something like that)

For what its worth, I have studied the EFF closely for about three or four years, and only Covid-19, my chronic lung problems and a battered immune system prevented me from travelling to remote places, digging into archives and gathering facts to strengthen or support all the information I had collected by the start of 2020 Nonetheless, there remains ample opportunity to make up for lost time.

The EFF is a fascinating study of a leftist organisation and its drift to extremist right-wing politics in the same way that Benito Mussolini started out as a socialist and ended up as a fascist, or the way that Juan Peron used his ersatz progressive political base of labour and the church to establish the ratlines escape routes for Nazis after the World War 2. But thats for another discussion.

With the LGE21 almost fully behind us, all bar the shouting, to which, I am sure, we will return once legislators return, the fact that the EFF seems (at the time of writing) to hover around the 10% mark overall may be a reflection of at least two things.

The first is that South Africans seem to not have the stomach for the EFFs particular brand of contemporary fascism blended as it is with populism, race-baiting, name-calling and scapegoating. The second is that the EFF and its loyalists mistook performance for substance. To these, I would add that South Africa provides fertile ground for Julius Malemas type of populism and politics of revenge, but it may be that South African voters are a lot smarter than we (particularly I) give them credit for.

Populism makes for good soundbites

Everything that the EFF has said and done in the weeks before the election has come from Malema. Its easy to say that the EFF has come to resemble a cult around his personality. But there is an analogy (from my least favourite sport, baseball) I want to try.

Malema has been good at getting his followers on to first base, sometimes to second base, but he just could not bring it home. Not for want of trying.

Lets stretch the analogy a bit. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I watched a few New York Yankees matches. Please dont ask me why I went to watch them play, because I hated the sport. The truth is that I hated the spectacle; the symbols of national pride, triumphalism, gorging of junk food and excessive patriotism. For what its worth, when the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup it had absolutely no meaning or significance to me

Anyway, the Yankees had among their ranks a closer, a pitcher called Mariano Revera. His sole job was to go to the mound for the last two or three innings (I think) when the Yankees had a lead and basically shut down any opposition efforts at beating the New Yorkers. Rivera is sometimes described as the best closer in the history of Major League Baseball.

The EFFs problem, it seems to me, is that it (Malema, actually) was quite brilliant when it came to winning hearts and minds, but it did not have a Mariano Riviera, someone to protect its gains and convert them into wins. We should be intellectually honest, the same socio-economic conditions (poverty, unemployment, distrust of international liberalism and dispute over lost territory) and disaffection with the peace settlement (in 1919) that gave rise to Mussolini, are somehow replicated in South Africa.

We have poverty, mass unemployment, a ready-made enemy in white monopoly capital our own version of 1920s Italys international liberalism, the loss of land and the dissatisfaction with South Africas peaceful political settlement of the 1990s. On paper, then, the country is ripe for populism which may account for Malemas popularity. The problem is that the EFF could not translate that into electability it did not have a Mariano Rivera.

The people necessarily have the ultimate say

Malema has a brilliant way of addressing crowds that verges on shamanistic Im probably being unfair to shamanism. Nonetheless, Malema has a way of almost intoxicating his audience and making it seem delirious with a toxic brew of racial hatred, revenge, vitriol, name-calling song and dance. However, what Malema seems to have misread is that the objective of institutionalising a particular rhetoric, hoping that it will shape a particular mode of thinking which will follow seamlessly into a particular mode of acting has not quite panned out. I hasten to add that there is time, yet.

The EFFs brand of populism, and Malemas drift into contemporary fascism alongside Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte and Victor Orban, should appeal to the poor, the unemployed, the disaffected, the homeless and the anti-globalists and liberal internationalists. But the electorate, small as it may have turned out to be in the LGE21, have had the ultimate say.

In some ways it is business as usual at the top. The ANCs losses/gains, the DAs losses/gains, the EFFs marginal losses/gains, the revival of Herman Mashaba and the mushrooming of small parties may throw up some interesting permutations in lawmaking (and hopefully in governance).

What is clear is that for those who voted for populism and the EFF was just not enough, and any way, Malema could inspire people with rhetoric, but could not translate that into votes. Perhaps he took on too much, maybe he needed a closer, like Mariano Rivera, but it doesnt matter for now.

The basic point I have to make is that I was wrong in thinking that the EFF would at least replace the DA as official opposition or as actual local government in most local government legislatures and municipalities around the country.

I was wrong to think that South Africans would be seduced by Malemas rhetoric, that he would intoxicate them with his oration and that this would lead to votes. I misread the electorate. DM

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Malema and the EFF failed to translate their populism into significant electoral gain - Daily Maverick

We learn most from our critics. Paul Greenberg used to say that all the time. And he always seemed like he meant it. We learn from our failures, he'd tell us. Adding that he hated to brag, but he'd had many.

The best critic of the Republican Party these days might be Bret Stephens, the writer for The New York Times. The paper must've hired him to be the conservative. His columns aren't just well-reasoned, they're wickedly biting. (And his dueling-banjo column with Gail Collins every week is a must-read.) Now that Paul Greenberg and Dr. Charles Krauthammer are gone, if you want the smart conservative point of view, in this day of populism, we point you to Mr. Stephens.

There are others who'd fight the good fight from the inside. To paraphrase LBJ so much that it doesn't sound like him anymore, it's better to have somebody inside the tent spitting out than outside the tent spitting in. For the Democrats, the best critics might be one of its biggest stars.

Some might say that James Carville is a "former" star. That the Day of Clinton has passed, and years ago. But tell that to TV audiences. If the number of his appearances on cable talk shows are a sign, people still want to hear what he says. Or maybe it's the accent.

In the wake of this past week's elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere--in which Democratic candidates didn't do nearly as well as predicted, and some even lost--James Carville could be found giving his point of view. And his party would be mistaken to ignore it.

On PBS, the day after the election, Judy Woodruff asked Mr. Carville what happened. How did a first-time gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, beat the old pro, Terry McAuliffe, in Virginia's gubernatorial race?

"What went wrong," James Carville said, "is just stupid wokeness. Don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island. Look at Buffalo. Look at Minneapolis. Even look at Seattle, Washington. I mean, this 'Defund the Police' lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools. I mean that--people see that!"

And continued: "It's just really--has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a 'woke' detox center or something. They're expressing a language that people just don't use, and there's backlash and a frustration at that."

He said, in his style, that the Republican candidate in Virginia just let the Democrats pull the pin and watched as the grenade went off.

"We got to change this and not be about changing dictionaries and change laws. These faculty lounge people that sit around mulling about I don't know what . . . . They're not working."

We learn most from our critics. When we bother to listen.

After his own party was shelled back in his day--and his day was 1958--Whittaker Chambers sent this message to a young man named Bill Buckley, who was just opening up a political journal you might have heard of:

"If the Republican Party cannot get some grip of the actual world we live in, and from it generalize and actively promote a program that means something to masses of people--why, somebody else will. There will be nothing to argue. The voters will simply vote Republicans into singularity. The Republican Party will become like one of those dark little shops which apparently never sell anything. If, for any reason, you go in, you find, at the back, an old man, fingering for his own pleasure some oddments of cloth. Nobody wants to buy them, which is fine because the old man is not really interested in selling. He just likes to hold and to feel."

Substitute "Democrat" for "Republican" and see if the statement still makes sense.

One party in this two-party system has been woke for a few years now. After Tuesday, maybe it's awake.

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OPINION | EDITORIAL: Reading the tea leaves, or maybe the chicken bones - Arkansas Online

WINCHESTER, Virginia In the first post-pandemic election, voters here showed their dissatisfaction with the Democrats, handing victories to GOP candidates running for the top two jobs in the state. In his victorious race for governor, businessman Glenn Allen Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide in a dozen years, proving Virginia isnt so true blue, after all.

The reckoning happened in a state Joe Biden won in a comfortable landslide less than a year ago, in a place where Republicans have lost their majority in the state chamber over the past four years.

While the Democratic nominee for governor, Terry McAuliffe, insisted the election was all about Donald J. Trump and patted his party on the back for its COVID policies, voters here gave him a wake-up call. Virginians voted on what they think the next problems are: the economy, their childrens education, crime, and definitely not COVID.

McAuliffes strategy of focusing on COVID, Trump, Trump and Trump was wildly out of touch. He and his fellow Democrats missed the most fundamental thing about human behavior, which is that people always vote looking forward. What matters is their lives, their childrens lives, their grandchildrens lives and their community not what happened yesterday.

When the Dems won the presidency, a narrow majority in the House and split the power in the Senate last year, they did so on a promise to return to normal. Yet, on every issue, whether it was shutting down the pipelines on day one, ignoring the crisis at the southern border, dismissing concerns about inflation, failing completely on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or directing the Department of Justice to address angry parents at raucous school board meetings, voters soured on how they governed.

Even the coveted suburban college-educated voters gave Youngkin 45 percent of their backing in Loudoun County, a multicultural and wealthy string of suburbsconsidered one of the most-educated counties in America.

Voters of all parties and persuasions turned out on Tuesday in record-shattering numbers disproving McAuliffes claim that turnout and enthusiasm for Democrats would be a problem. In fact, McAuliffe received around 200,000 more votes than current Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam received four years ago.

Youngkin, now the governor-elect of Virginia, won with a coalition of working-class whites, evangelicals and the support of 46 percent of suburban voters up a whopping 6 percentage points over Trumps suburban numbers in 2020. He also won 45 percent of college-educated voters, according tostatistics compiled by the Associated PressVoteCast. He and McAuliffe evenly split the Hispanic vote, a culturally conservative voting bloc that has continued to shift further and further right as the Democrat Party keeps lurching toward a progressive socialist platform.

Crime was the issue that first moved Youngkin from six points to less than one point behind his opponent, after McAuliffe said in May he wanted everybody to have access to parole. In the final weeks, Youngkins support grew incrementally as he discussed the economy and parents concerns over their childrens education, which has become increasingly dominated by critical race theory.

What is most remarkable about this election is that Youngkins overall message resonated everywhere in what was thought to be a very blue state, said Bruce Haynes, a Republican and chairman of a Virginia-based public affairs strategic communications firm.

Youngkins proposal to eliminate the sales tax on groceries resonated strongly with people who rely on the public school system, and who are impacted by gas prices and supply chain shortages, Haynes said. And his message on education reflected the reality the parents saw and heard in their own homes during the pandemic. They saw firsthand how their children were taught.

Plus, despite his estimated $440 million fortune, father-of-four Youngkin was not an objectionable candidate. He was a fleece-vest-wearing family man who was as unthreatening as Trump was provocative, Haynes said.

Youngkin served up a plate of traditional Republican economic ideas sprinkled with a dose of educational populism, and voters especially those most vulnerable to and impacted by the pandemic were hungry for it.

The biggest problem for Democrats is they never tried to fix their estrangement from blue collar and rural voters and relied only on hatred of Trump to reap the suburbs. Eventually they were going to have to face an election without Trump.

This is the first one. And it will not be the last.

Salena Zito is the author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

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Virginia election proves voters are sick of hearing about Donald Trump - New York Post

They say outer space has a smell, and it stinks.

Astronauts who have come back from space walks have described the smell as oily meat. Or gunpowder and gym socks and rum. Or welding fumes. The space walkers have a hard time describing exactly what the smell is like because, reportedly, its not like anything else on earth. Because, of course, it isnt found here. Its literally out there.

That same smell is wafting through our political and civic discourse.

Take a deep breath anywhere in the country now and the acrid tang of our disconnect from reality will sting your senses. It leaves writers like me searching for the right words to describe exactly whats happening, to convey a bit of context, to offer a new insight for readers. But I have to tell you, this time Ive got nothing. The tried-and-true is to find an episode in history to compare current events to, and while that works well in a general way and I recommend Timothy Snyders On Tyranny for the big picture history has pivoted since Jan. 6 to leave us in an undiscovered country of democracy.

I was talking about this just the other day over breakfast with Kim.

As is my habit, I mused about what period of history is most like what were living through now. Is it the 1890s (Populism!) or the 1920s (the Klan!) or the 1930s (Global Economic Depression and the Rise of Fascism!). Or perhaps 1968 (the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement!). She gave me that look, the same look that one of her cats has when perched on our roof surveying the quotidian routines of the dogs and mortals below. I get that same look from her when I talk about some historical event I think has relevance today but which she knows Im just using as an excuse to live in the past.

This isnt any other time, she told me. Its now.

Shes right.

Consider three bits of news from just the past week.

Item: Seven in 10 of local school board candidates backed by the 1776 Project PAC in our state won election on Tuesday. And it wasnt just in Kansas. The PAC also supported candidates in Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The PAC is a response, in part, to the New York Times 1619 Project, which examined the legacy of 400 years of slavery and embedded racism in American society. But the 1776 Projects calling card was its opposition to critical race theory, which it misinterprets for political advantage. Never mind that CRT isnt taught in the Kansas public school curriculum, or that it doesnt encourage white children to be ashamed of their race, or that it isnt a conspiracy hatched by the radical left. The facts dont matter. People are more likely to be driven to the polls by what they feel, rather than what they think, and CRT is a boogeyman of fear and outrage.

Item: Hundreds of QAnon supporters gathered at Dealey Plaza in Dallas waiting for John. F. Kennedy Jr. to somehow appear and help reinstate Trump as commander in chief. Never mind the son of the late president, who was assassinated in 1963 in the plaza, himself died in the crash of his private plane in 1999. In a real Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment, the crowd took up a chant about the moon landing being a hoax. This is nutty even for true QAnon believers, and I cant help but make one historical connection here: On Oct. 22, 1844, thousands devoted to the teachings of Biblical scholar William Miller stood on a rock at a farm outside Hampton, New York, and elsewhere, waiting for Jesus to return and whisk them to heaven. They waited a long time. Some were so sure they had given up all of their possessions except the diaphanous Ascension Robes on their backs, convinced they would no longer need earthly things. The event was called the Great Disappointment, but their despair didnt stop some Millerites from continuing to believe; the Seventh Day Adventists, and other churches, emerged from the movement.

Item: Global greenhouse emissions are back, after a decline during the pandemic. Scientists estimate we have just 11 years, if we continue burning carbon at the current rate, before the world tips over into catastrophic warming. Thats the warning in the Global Carbon Budget report, released at the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow. Last year, emissions dropped 5.4% because of the pandemic. This year, theyre exceeding 2019 levels. One researcher called this a reality check for anyone hoping a year of social and economic upheaval would shake the world from its climate complacency.

So, this is now.

Lets break it down.

The alarming thing about the 1776 Project PAC throwing its weight behind local school board candidates is that these positions are traditionally nonpartisan and filled by individuals with little incentive other than public service. Now, like much of everything else in public life, these positions have been politicized to the degree that they are in the forefront of the culture war now tearing us apart. Theres been more screaming and parents behaving badly at local school board meetings these days than at any high school football game. From masks to CRT, right wing extremists have bullied school board members based on issues that have little relation to fact. Although much coverage on Tuesday was given to the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, these local school board elections may have the most far-reaching, everyday consequences.

Here we have a new myth, a narrative about the son of a popular and assassinated president coming back from the dead to anoint a political outcast and restore him to power. This is a variety of King Arthur legend, reimagined for fact-free 21st Century America, complete with a resurrection and the metaphorical drawing of a sword of power from the mythical, blood-drenched stone of Dealey Plaza.

The QAnon supporters gathering in Dallas might seem risible and there is much to be said for the political effectiveness of what Mark Twain called the assault of laughter but it represents a dangerous intersection of popular culture, religious belief, and political manipulation. Here we have a new myth, a narrative about the son of a popular and assassinated president coming back from the dead to anoint a political outcast and restore him to power. This is a variety of King Arthur legend, reimagined for fact-free 21st Century America, complete with a resurrection and the metaphorical drawing of a sword of power from the mythical, blood-drenched stone of Dealey Plaza. In the past, these kinds of stories have provided real comfort in times of national crisis. The promise of Arthurs messianic return gave Britain some measure of hope during World War II, even though most understood it as fiction. But the QAnon movement has perverted the Arthur myth into something that is not at its core hopeful, but predatory. It preys on the desires of earnest Americans and compels them to act in ways that hurt themselves, puts their neighbors in jeopardy, and denies verifiable, objective truth.

With climate change, we are in such deep denial that we put future generations at risk in exchange for the comfort of complacency and a few dollars in our pockets. A hundred years from now, when the sap of current events has solidified into the amber of history, this transaction will rightly be damned as a betrayal of humanity. Those who doubt the science behind climate change predictions today and see radical left-wing plots behind every peer-reviewed report are contributing to an anti-science mindset that may ultimately be our doom. Climate change, as with nuclear weapons, represent an existential threat to our species. In the end, the world we know may not end with a bang, but with Eliots whimper.

So here we are, in the evanescent now, distracted by irrational fears while the things that ought to scare the hell out of us approach unimpeded. We are in real danger of losing our democracy to an erosion of civic duty fueled by hyper partisanship. We have already become, at least for a significant faction of the voting public, a mob so motivated by a sense of outrage and supernatural yearning that we will embrace the most toxic and discredited of theories as truth, if not fact. And nearly all of us are so preoccupied with the business of living that we cant see beyond the next decade or so, much less beyond the end of our lifetimes.

Weve never been here before.

The stink of oily meat, gunpowder, and gym socks is strong.

What do we do?

We try to come back to earth and urge others to do so as well. We quit treating politics as a football game (or, if youre a reporter, a horse race) and step back and ask how our civic institutions like our school boards can be insulated from partisan politics and outside influence. We refuse to promote feeling over fact, we cultivate a respect for science and expertise, and we try to find common ground with those we disagree with. To survive as a nation, we must find our way back to the center. We must be willing to compromise, respect fact, and contribute to civic life in a way that strengthens our democracy.

We sure as hell dont stand at Dealey Plaza waiting for the dead son of a dead president to magic a cult leader back to power.

Theres a prevailing notion that Ive heard voiced over and over in the past year, and its this: Weve survived tough times before, and weve always come out OK. This time is no different. So yeah, its uncomfortable, but well be OK.

But heres the thing.

Weve never been here before. It is possible that we wont survive the challenges confronting us. The weve been through this before narrative is told only by the winners, the survivors, the lucky. History can provide guidance, but history is not a forecast, and the events buffeting us are unprecedented.

All of us are beleaguered by fatigue. Were exhausted by 18 months of pandemic, fatigued by the onslaught of politics, and worn down by the quotidian routines of everyday life made all the tougher by short tempers, supply chain shortages, and skyrocketing prices. We are unmoored from the earth. Still, we cannot give up. We must find that spark of civic duty within each of us, ground ourselves in fact, and work, in whatever ways we can, to make the world a better place for now and the future.

Nobody is coming to save us. Were going to have to save ourselves.

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We've never been here before. We'll be judged on what we do next. - Kansas Reflector