Join institutional investors, analysts and strategists from the world's largest banks: Subscribe today
Already have an account? log in
Imagined Pasts
Legend has it
Whenever I venture out into the hollow, cold paradox of a constantly-connected societ
I was almost pleasantly surprised to see that ~90% of reptilicans found it at least somewhat important to publicly discuss the historical failures of the US.
But then I thought that would consist of a couple of tweets (Xcrements?) the last of which would pin the blame on Democrats and then back to business as usual.
The past 8 plus years have been terrible for the “American story”. Primarily, I blame Congress for passing on its duties to the American people, and therefore, putting both Trump and Biden in a position to function “autocratic”. Terrible for our country, our citizens, our currency and the world. Thankfully, as voters, we have another opportunity in 3.5 years to do the right thing. Ultimately, the voters are to blame. But that requires education of the voters and promoting the type of candidates that we actually want as leaders. Currently, there is a massive void in the type of leadership that we need for our country – both in the Democratic and the Republican parties. This creates a situation where people just get greedy and only think of themselves.
Well done, thank you.
Peter
American society’s march towards its aspirational ethos could be characterized as two steps forward and one step back with an occasional hiccup (Civil War, Vietnam). Trump 1.0 was more clownish than deconstructive. Trump 2.0 is a serious return to tribalism. For a nation built on immigration this is too ironic to bear. Some pigs are more equal than others.
The new National Story for MAGA is that “our” nation is under attack, and we must fight the “enemy” to preserve it, where “our” doesn’t include recent immigrants and “enemy” includes anyone arguing otherwise. It has nothing to do with rights, or with anything “for all”. This story is their “imaginary thing they can believe in”. And it has proven a powerful story.
Very nice. Beautifully developed. America’s hypocrisy has been part of its fabric since the nation was born. Reread Hawthorne, Cotton Mather, and his fellows. Note fellows. We wouldn’t even let white women vote nationally until 1920. Others such as Asian Americans, Native Americans, most Black Americans and others did not have full voting rights until 1975. Some citizens still don’t. The Equal Rights Amendment while passed by Congress and approved by a sufficient number of states, not all, however, has to pass one more hurdle, a final Congressional approval so it still fails to be included in the Constitution. This means that most of our citizens, especially including women, contrary to various political myths, do not all have equal rights as citizens in our fair land.
Initially only 6% qualified to vote which is what the famous Founding Fathers intended. It wasn’t until 1856 that all white men could vote without property or religious exclusion. Everybody else? Well, it took about another 100 plus years and access to voting is still a vexing problem.