Beautiful and inspirational. Now for some pessimism.
“ If Democrats have a chance to rebuild in 2029, …..They will thus surely see the value in making a clean and explicit break with the way we used to do things.”
And yet the policies being floated by Democratic hopefuls (covered in yesterday’s AMA) are warmed over Reaganisms straight out of 1981.
I absolutely agree with you. But, I'm discouraged that this didn't really happen in 2021. I held my breath for months, years, expecting some structural reforms or a dramatic reckoning of some sort in response to the humiliation of the first Trump term. Yes, 2029 can be an opportunity, I just hope the Democrats give us someone (or several someones) who will seize it.
Thanks. I really needed this today. I got off social media ages ago so I’m not as subject to the garbage that happens there. But even just getting information from more traditional sources has finally started to grind me down. The truth is pretty grim these days.
Thank you, Brian: Uplifting and inspirational. The optimist in me (which is a big chunk of me) loves the idea that things COULD get better. The realist in me has been saying since Nov 2024 that the damage this guy (and his minions - or puppetmasters, whichever you prefer) is doing will take 25 years to get over - and I'll long since be dead. The emergency physician in me (another big chunk) is more concerned with paying attention to the bad possible outcomes, whether or not I think they're likely, and protecting against that.
So my question is, are there smart policy wonk types who are now several years into a clear-eyed, hard-assed, first hundred days type of project, so on Jan 20, 2029 (hopefully!) we're not in the mindset of "It's time to get started!" or "Let's let bygones be bygones..." or "Let's focus on bringing down the price of eggs..." Project 2025 was not written in a weekend, and not by people who care about fancy prose. Or the price of eggs.
There are so many deep structural problems that need to be addressed! Are there people doing the work now?
"But imagine a particularly bleak scenario: The dollar has lost its value. Breadlines run through every community. America is a pariah state. The pro-democracy movement has regained power, but must more or less start from scratch." - that is not a bleak scenario. This scenario internalizes that there will consequences to Trump's actions visible to the common people. But recent history of populism , especially in rich countries does not show it to be the case. Breaking democracy is not "punished" by effects visible to those who don't want to see it. One waits for a breaking point, for a moment of clarity, for something that is a visible negative effect, but it won't come to most voters.
Putin could take his resource rich, advanced, nearly first world country, throw it into a war with hundreds of thousands of dead and for most of the country its acceptable. Their lives did not change that much. There is no mass mobilization of labour, no blackouts, no food rationing. Life goes on, but from time to time you hear of your neighbors or family members going to war or dying. Most of population simply tries not to listen to war news, to live in their small world and hope things will turn out good.
The sad, but realistic course of actions will be that Democrats will win Congress this autumn, but not because of Trump or the war, but due to the simple effects of anti-incumbency and their edge among voters voting in midterms and special elections. If Trump or his successor loses in 2029, it will be because of high fuel prices, or higher taxes, or simply because overexposure to Trump will make him boring and cringe to median voter in Wisconsin, as opposed to philosophical rejection of MAGA.
And then Democratic president will have to rule knowing that the same forces that forced out Trump in 2020, Biden in 2024 (and hopefully Trump in 2028) will work against him in 2032, and to advantage of Vance, Tucker Carson or another idol of the right. Will elected democrats try to rock the boat in such situation?
America more than any country is the country where we exist in the gap between expectations and reality. Real corn-fed grown-ass-man patriotism is accepting this, and then learning that we are also the country that should be most willing to grow into our best selves as a people and most willing to admit our failures, so that we can conquer them.
In a way, we are living in the real America for the first time in our lives which is a burden but also a privilege. The inconvenient fight over whether or not we can model a system of freedom and not elites running our lives and world for us is once again here. America is ground zero of this battle. Not for freedom itself, but to prove that the project can work. Right now we are proving the opposite!
That's not my idea, it's an idea every major figure in the history of the country believed. Here's Theodore Parker who had a lot of influence on Lincoln, who says it way better than me:
"The great political idea of America, the idea of the Declaration of Independence, is a composite idea made up of three simple ones.
1.) Each man is endowed with certain unalienable rights.
2.) In respect of these rights all men are equal.
3.) A government is to protect each man in the entire and actual enjoyment of all the unalienable rights.
Now the first two ideas represent the ontological facts, facts of human consciousness; they are facts of necessity. The third idea is an idea derived from the two others, is a synthetic judgment a priori; it was not learned from sensational experience; there never was a government which did this, nor is there now.
Each of the other ideas transcended history; every unalienable right has been alienated, still is; no two men have been actually equal in actual rights. Yet the idea is true, capable of proof by human nature, not of verification by experience, as true as the proposition that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; but no more capable of a sensational proof [based on the physical senses] than that. The American Revolution, with American history since, is an attempt to prove by experience this transcendental proposition, to organize the transcendental idea of politics. The idea demands for its organization a democracy-- a government of all, for all, and by all...."
Thank you. The every-day horror of this administration is so atrocious it’s easy to think it’s enough to wipe out any thing of value. Your beautifully written piece is a timely reminder that good is still out there, and that we can rebuild a better and more durable democracy.
Looking at the discussion optimistically, the Trump phenomenon has woken up a large part of the society who were on autopilot for decades and watched the gradual degradation of our society at the hands of bureaucrats and technocrats. I am hopeful that the Trump era has thought us what can go wrong when we choose not to get involved and not understand the issues and consequences.
Beautiful and inspirational. Now for some pessimism.
“ If Democrats have a chance to rebuild in 2029, …..They will thus surely see the value in making a clean and explicit break with the way we used to do things.”
And yet the policies being floated by Democratic hopefuls (covered in yesterday’s AMA) are warmed over Reaganisms straight out of 1981.
I absolutely agree with you. But, I'm discouraged that this didn't really happen in 2021. I held my breath for months, years, expecting some structural reforms or a dramatic reckoning of some sort in response to the humiliation of the first Trump term. Yes, 2029 can be an opportunity, I just hope the Democrats give us someone (or several someones) who will seize it.
Thanks. I really needed this today. I got off social media ages ago so I’m not as subject to the garbage that happens there. But even just getting information from more traditional sources has finally started to grind me down. The truth is pretty grim these days.
Thank you, Brian: Uplifting and inspirational. The optimist in me (which is a big chunk of me) loves the idea that things COULD get better. The realist in me has been saying since Nov 2024 that the damage this guy (and his minions - or puppetmasters, whichever you prefer) is doing will take 25 years to get over - and I'll long since be dead. The emergency physician in me (another big chunk) is more concerned with paying attention to the bad possible outcomes, whether or not I think they're likely, and protecting against that.
So my question is, are there smart policy wonk types who are now several years into a clear-eyed, hard-assed, first hundred days type of project, so on Jan 20, 2029 (hopefully!) we're not in the mindset of "It's time to get started!" or "Let's let bygones be bygones..." or "Let's focus on bringing down the price of eggs..." Project 2025 was not written in a weekend, and not by people who care about fancy prose. Or the price of eggs.
There are so many deep structural problems that need to be addressed! Are there people doing the work now?
Thanks.
"But imagine a particularly bleak scenario: The dollar has lost its value. Breadlines run through every community. America is a pariah state. The pro-democracy movement has regained power, but must more or less start from scratch." - that is not a bleak scenario. This scenario internalizes that there will consequences to Trump's actions visible to the common people. But recent history of populism , especially in rich countries does not show it to be the case. Breaking democracy is not "punished" by effects visible to those who don't want to see it. One waits for a breaking point, for a moment of clarity, for something that is a visible negative effect, but it won't come to most voters.
Putin could take his resource rich, advanced, nearly first world country, throw it into a war with hundreds of thousands of dead and for most of the country its acceptable. Their lives did not change that much. There is no mass mobilization of labour, no blackouts, no food rationing. Life goes on, but from time to time you hear of your neighbors or family members going to war or dying. Most of population simply tries not to listen to war news, to live in their small world and hope things will turn out good.
The sad, but realistic course of actions will be that Democrats will win Congress this autumn, but not because of Trump or the war, but due to the simple effects of anti-incumbency and their edge among voters voting in midterms and special elections. If Trump or his successor loses in 2029, it will be because of high fuel prices, or higher taxes, or simply because overexposure to Trump will make him boring and cringe to median voter in Wisconsin, as opposed to philosophical rejection of MAGA.
And then Democratic president will have to rule knowing that the same forces that forced out Trump in 2020, Biden in 2024 (and hopefully Trump in 2028) will work against him in 2032, and to advantage of Vance, Tucker Carson or another idol of the right. Will elected democrats try to rock the boat in such situation?
America more than any country is the country where we exist in the gap between expectations and reality. Real corn-fed grown-ass-man patriotism is accepting this, and then learning that we are also the country that should be most willing to grow into our best selves as a people and most willing to admit our failures, so that we can conquer them.
In a way, we are living in the real America for the first time in our lives which is a burden but also a privilege. The inconvenient fight over whether or not we can model a system of freedom and not elites running our lives and world for us is once again here. America is ground zero of this battle. Not for freedom itself, but to prove that the project can work. Right now we are proving the opposite!
That's not my idea, it's an idea every major figure in the history of the country believed. Here's Theodore Parker who had a lot of influence on Lincoln, who says it way better than me:
"The great political idea of America, the idea of the Declaration of Independence, is a composite idea made up of three simple ones.
1.) Each man is endowed with certain unalienable rights.
2.) In respect of these rights all men are equal.
3.) A government is to protect each man in the entire and actual enjoyment of all the unalienable rights.
Now the first two ideas represent the ontological facts, facts of human consciousness; they are facts of necessity. The third idea is an idea derived from the two others, is a synthetic judgment a priori; it was not learned from sensational experience; there never was a government which did this, nor is there now.
Each of the other ideas transcended history; every unalienable right has been alienated, still is; no two men have been actually equal in actual rights. Yet the idea is true, capable of proof by human nature, not of verification by experience, as true as the proposition that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; but no more capable of a sensational proof [based on the physical senses] than that. The American Revolution, with American history since, is an attempt to prove by experience this transcendental proposition, to organize the transcendental idea of politics. The idea demands for its organization a democracy-- a government of all, for all, and by all...."
Beautifully written piece, Brian. Conveys an appropriate sense of perspective as well as being a grounded but uplifting call to arms. Fantastic
Thank you. The every-day horror of this administration is so atrocious it’s easy to think it’s enough to wipe out any thing of value. Your beautifully written piece is a timely reminder that good is still out there, and that we can rebuild a better and more durable democracy.
Thank you Brian for capturing this feeling of hope that still resides in me even when everything feels so bleak.
Looking at the discussion optimistically, the Trump phenomenon has woken up a large part of the society who were on autopilot for decades and watched the gradual degradation of our society at the hands of bureaucrats and technocrats. I am hopeful that the Trump era has thought us what can go wrong when we choose not to get involved and not understand the issues and consequences.
Brilliant pick me up, thank you, Brian. Just what the doctor ordered.