466 Comments

I enjoy your letters a lot. The summary of the day’s news from a liberal perspective is thoughtful and separates chaff from wheat. Your great benefit to me is when you put the news into a historical framework and that has given me new insights into our society.

Recently in agonizing over the failures of our country to deal with its problems a common theme occurred to me. It is not just that things are screwed up. It is that no one is doing anything about the things that are screwed up. Big ones like climate change, inequality, and racism are ignored but also lots of lesser things like medical care and guns, voting rights, immigration, education, police reform, and infrastructure fall by the wayside.

I wonder if you have a historical perspective on the United States’ dealing with these issues over time. I am an old man and have seen some of these things develop over the last few decades, but our history stretches much farther back, and I don’t have that knowledge.

The failure of America to make even the tiniest effort to deal with the pathology of guns was my wake-up call as to how deep the malaise is. The inability to deal with guns is directly attributable to the gun manufacturers providing resources and a framework for the propaganda that led to the quandary today. In my youth the NRA was a worthy organization providing gun safety training and even standards for the use of guns in a rural and semi-rural society. That society used guns but looked on them as tools, not as sexual or religious objects. The manufactures’ propaganda that someone was going to “take your guns away” was swallowed by a portion of the population who mythologized guns into manhood. That propaganda provided the Supreme Court cover to issue its ridiculous and stunning rulings on guns. A ruling that had not been the law for the previous 200 years. This blatant corporate framing and promulgation of the issue has resulted in our deplorable current cycle of random death.

Recognizing the gun manufacturer’s origin of the gun problem and seeing the Supreme Court’s newfound reverence for corporations in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby and its portending cut back on congress’s right to regulate interstate commerce have combined to give me pause. It causes me to question whether our problems and inability to deal with problems are and have been, simply, the result of the abuse of corporate and commercial power. I remembered a quote from the seldom quoted Calvin Coolidge, “The Business of America is Business”. And it resonated with that possibility.

Decent medical care for all Americans was first proposed by Truman but was defeated by the American Medical Society. Since then, even more powerful forces like the lobbyists and public relations flacks of pharmaceutical companies, the hospital associations and some doctor groups have made that even more difficult. The corporate-driven diminution of unions has restricted the development of employer-based systems that had once created healthcare for the working middle class.

Similarly, inequality has increased dramatically with refusal to tax the wealthy and the tamping down of the minimum wage and the emasculation of unions. Congress and the Supreme Court have come to the rescue of corporations when they have felt the need.

Education has become privatized and there’s great pressure to increase that tendency with vouchers and charter schools and tax cuts. Universities and colleges have become mostly concerned about career path, tenure, and the ability to pull in money from students, parents, and donors. This leaves the focus less on the values of exploration of ideas, and curiosity and the nurturing of maturity for young people. Those commercial concerns are manifested by the scrum for patents and trademarks in the scientific arena and for articles and books in the humanities that conflict with the values of teaching skills and making individuals better as opposed to richer.

The problems of racism are grounded in the idea that one human can enslave another to provide for their own commercial success. Racism is so pervasive in our society’s institutions and so tied to the forces of commercialism and corporate governance that it can get overlooked as only combining with the forces driving inequality. The red lining of real estate, predatory lending and school segregation are the easy tools of forcing racism in addition to the factors of inequality. The forces affecting inequality affect minorities harder than other people.

The obverse of my analysis is the defense industry. In that case the money bestowed on lobbyists and for “education” of the public, flowing through the corporate giants of defense industry and the military has resulted in a bloated defense budget. This absorbs huge amounts of our treasure. We spend more on defense that the next 25 nations combined which proves the correctness of President Eisenhower’s warning of the Military-Industrial Complex. The silliness of that effort is proven by our inability to use our “military force” to deal with Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan. Our only tool for dealing with rogue countries is – economic sanctions.

The biggest problem our country – and the world faces is climate change. Our governments do little to address climate change and the private efforts are miniscule when confronted by government inaction or hostility.

Inability to regulate the financial sector and big tech emphasize the problems I see. The power of those industries and the individual owners becoming super-wealthy was turned loose by the Supreme Court and now they have increased their power rather than see reasonable limits to their desires.

Maybe the problem is just so pervasive that we have come to accept it as normal. No answers from me. The linear solution is to change the congress that makes things happen. But the power that exercises these abuses is also the power that decides who is elected to power and placed on the Supreme Court.

Thanks for the hard work you put in.

Expand full comment

A thought before sleeping...

The most violent element in society is ignorance. – Emma Goldman

Expand full comment

I read all of these postings and everything Dr coxRichardson write and I just get more and more afraid that we are headed towards a civil war. For which the general public is not prepared. If they thought not having TP was bad wait till it is more and more food. A little sitting on container ships off shore. How many lives will be lost to a civil war? Will it compete with the Covid death toll?

The other thing I don’t understand is how intelligent people still think trump is the answer. The man is a lunatic who is bringing this civil war on. I have family who are great people to be around but firmly believe all the garbage that trump and his cohorts spew as gospel and anything a democratic says as absolute lies. Is there no middle ground? Why isn’t trump in jail for the some of the things he did as President especially 6 Jan 2021?

I realize this is not the most elegantly worded ir thought out post I just want everyone to step back take a deep breath or two and think about what the politicians are doing to us and our country. Then do something short of civil war to fix it.

Expand full comment

Morning, all!! Morning, Dr. R!!

I have had thoughts about what rhetoric to use to reach "the other side." I have a cousin who used to work as a scientist at NIH years ago. He was testing the effects of smoking on rats. Whenever he would see someone smoking, he'd run up to them and give them a big 'ol bear hug, thanking them for keeping him employed!

The Lincoln Project's latest ad regarding AT&T made me think of my cousin: https://youtu.be/fwePYaUKLYw

Expand full comment

I cannot read anymore. It is destroying my health and wellbeing. We are having gorgeous fall weather here in San Sebastián, and I need to embrace it, be creative once again with a screenplay and a new website. My hope is that American's finally take to the streets to protest and call out the evil being done by the remnants of a party that must lie, cheat, steal, kill to stay afloat. How ironic that the NRA gun lovers believed they needed weapons to protect themselves from the government are now attacking our democracy and the majority who believe in President Biden's platform.

Expand full comment

Who remembers that, toward the end of 2012 election, Mitt Romney was so bouyed by the crowds that turned out for him that he genuinely felt he would win the election? That's why I don't draw any conclusions about crowd size at trump rallies. In fact, I believe there is a growing new silent majority, which includes Republicans playing it close to the vest, as well as Dems, that will turn out and vote against the trump wing of the GOP.

While all we see and that is covered are the angry trump republican'ts (spelling intentional) in our midst at school board meetings and elsewhere, I still believe in that silent majority of average Americans who are truly concerned for the future of our country.

My mom, who had only an eighth grade education but was intelligent beyond measure, used to tell me, "It's a great life if you don't weaken."

Now more than ever is the time to stay internally strong and hold the light for all of us and our country, and to endorse and promote the Biden agenda, which will be so restorative for the soul of our country, as well as the current and very sick Republican't Party.

Expand full comment

I've just learned today about civic tech on MSNBC with Ayman Mohyeldin. This is what rethinking democracy in the digital world and positive use of algorithms in social media can do. Instead of having social media algorithms that split us apart, civic tech uses techniques to move groups toward consensus. Taiwan is the leader in digital democracy or edemocracy. Read the following article on what Taiwan is accomplishing. Makes me want to move to Taiwan and participate in open democracy for the digital age! I don't understand all this yet, but know this is going to be my focus until I do. This is truly exciting if this is the solution we need to make democracy work again.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/taiwan-democracy-social-media

Expand full comment

To help understand the observations and reports from HRC, read Anne Applebaum's June 2021 book "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism".

The chaos created by not addressing real issues, as well as the political moves to undermine and radically alter our institutions until they don't work, all contribute to the movement toward authoritarianism. Trump's pronouncements that only he can fix things even as he destroys them is the essence of this movement.

Applebaum, about 56, an Armerican well known for her Atlantic Magazine articles, has lived in Poland since she was a student and young courier of British funds to support Polish anti communist dissidents. She married one of these dissidents who has been active in the Polish government until the Law & Justice Party took over that is really the Unlawful & Injustice Party of authoritarianism.

She covers Poland, Hungary and Brexit Britain which demonstrate the pattern. Our 2021 Big Lie is the lynchpin (literally our democracy being lynched like blacks lynched during Jim Crow) of our authoritarianism movement.

Terrorism is a distraction. Authoritarianism is the goal.

Expand full comment

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; ("I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities;")

- Ovid, The Metamorphoses

At first, I'd thought of two 1932 Hollywood movies: Freaks and The Island of Lost Souls. The films are morality plays, in which the oppressed take revenge on their tormentors. And then next came to mind Ovid. But Ovid's work, which ends with the deification of Julius Caesar, transforms a tradition of violent transformation inspiring moral reflection into an amusement of artful manipulation.

It seems to me a natural reaction to the Party of Lincoln morphing into the Party of Reagan and now the Party of Trump.

The true horror of Kafka's iteration is that Gregor gradually accepts his metamorphosis as the natural order of things.

Somewhere (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) Marx remarks: Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

The Lincoln presidency is our historic fact. The Reagan presidency is our tragedy. The Trump presidency is our farce.

Lincoln upheld our Founders revolutionary vision of radical equality. Reagan, behind the rhetorical myth making of 'the shining city on a hill', weaponized racism and religion in the service of deregulating business and defunding the social safety net. Trump sees himself as a new Caesar, the preeminent god in his own pantheon, but he is more like the buffoonish self proclaimed dictator, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.

But ... the human wreckage and the deformation of the body politic.

Trump personifies the Republican party, but the Republican party personifies 'the banality of evil.' Not that in its devolution evil has become commonplace, but that Trump has been elevated "to that bad eminence" by a GOP bureaucracy of small men 'just doing their job' and giving no thought to the harm they doing in the larger community. (Gingrich, McConnell et al.) The GOP motto seems to be 'nasty as we want to be' or, in the words of Milton's Satan 'better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.' Pandemonium.

Republican right wing extremists have been muttering about civil war since the election of Pres. Barack Obama. At the drop of a, red, hat, Trump has amplified and legitimized their cry. Today's GOP is the ideological, and in many cases actual, heirs to the Confederacy who have nursed sedition in their breast since their Civil War defeat. And so back to Julius Caesar, this time Shakespeare's Antony: Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.

Expand full comment

I’m terribly frightened for our country - is there any hope? Is it is inevitable that we will devolve into Gilead? The war of southern rebellion was a terrible thing, but at least it was straight forward. The current events seem so much more insidious.

Expand full comment

Thank you Heather for this rather disturbing Letter.

I watched several interviews this weekend remarking where we are in this calamity. Dr Fiona Hill, Carl Berstein just to name 2, have sounded the alarm. We are well beyond "I hope this won't happen mode". We are in it. The GOP gameplan is no longer fantasy. The Trump GOP is in power. Make no mistake. The Democrats are in a reactive state, they missed the mark, as usual, to right the ship.

I see absolutely no good coming out of this juncture. The GOP are kneeling at the corner of this Nation with a lighted match ready to burn it down.

Be safe, be well.

Expand full comment

So this chilling account of the precipice on which we now perch begs this question: like moderate Democrats in 1860, will moderate Republicans switch parties to defend and save the nation? Will they finally show courage at personal risk now that their former president and still maniacal leader of their party is, in essence, embracing a civil war? And what about business leaders who perpetually straddle the fence? Are they ready to try to stop economic chaos that would engulf not just their companies but the nation and world? We will know soon enough.

Trump undoubtedly is stoking tensions to a fever pitch, hoping that a civil war would destroy the institutions trying to bring him, finally, to justice. He's manipulating the manipulated to fight for him, this time with blood. Only such an unthinkable reckoning can save him.

Expand full comment

The best way to avoid having to go back to what happened in 1860 which resulted in over half a million deaths in the Civil War is to make sure all those convicted of crimes in connection with the January 6 insurrection, including elected officials, receive sentences in tough prisons, not cupcake white collar crime institutions. That ought to have some effect on the Republican Party and its confused and misguided supporters who fail to understand how democracy works.

Expand full comment

I can't say watching McTurtleneck get upstaged by Chuck, isn't somewhat of a pleasure. What I absolutely abhor is that TFG still has a stronghold over the Repubs. What the hell does he have on them? Are they ALL crooked gangsters? To me, TFG looks like the Pied Piper and his loyal subjects follow him wherever he goes.

I beseech thee to embrace the decisions of the DOJ (If we ever get any!) and of the SDNY, Georgia, and any other states, who are inclined about what to do with this buffoon and his gaggle of illegitimate lapdogs.

Expand full comment

My high school history teacher was a man named Mark Gillette, son of Guy Gillette, a US Senator from Iowa, first during FDR's first term, then again in the late 40's to mid-50s. Mark , like HCR, taught history from the point of view of 'why'. Early on he told us he didn't care if we didn't know WHEN the War of 1812 was fought - he wanted us to understand WHY it was fought.

He lectured for an hour each class, all tests and exams were from the notes we took (and God forbid you were out; you'd better borrow the best note-taker's notes!), all questions were essay questions - no multiple choice questions on HIS tests!

He was strict as a tyrant and we hated him. For about the first year. By the time I graduated, anyone in any of his classes would have crawled over ground glass for him! Our final exam in World History class (I had him for Civics, American History and World History), had two questions, if memory serves: Name the major events leading up to, the major events of, and the outcome of WWII. I can't recall the second question!!

He didn't believe in 'A's', as that represented perfection, and he believed nothing is ever perfect. When I got an A- on an oral report on Karl Marx, I was over the moon! It's because of him that I became a serious student, and my already love of history took a more in depth turn. You might say having Mark as a teacher led me, eventually, to this daily letter.

I am forever in his debt.

Expand full comment

Every word written by Heather Cox Richardson is undoubtedly true. But what’s missing defines the author. The dreadful truth, the sickness underlying it all is ignored - as is the etiology of Trump’s sickness, and the sickness of his tribal followers. And the nation. We’ve seen all this many times. Nothing new here. In Trump’s history it’s Queens racism in Queen’s real estate directed by his brutal crude racist misogynist father. Donald learned how to disrespect women at home. He learned how to “restrict” his Queens apartments and play the race card - copying exclusive Manhattan buildings that banned Jews and the Negro and whole neighborhoods in the suburbs that banned Jews and Blacks post war. Newark and Harlem and the Bronx and many others remain segregated. Trump merely said what others do.

Today’s voting denying mess, the Big Lie, the other tribal games and idiotic mask and vaccine issues are much the same.

Trump needs chaos to employ the troops. Nixon wanted to flex following Kent State. Dictators need an enemy. A whipping post. Prejudice. Fear and ignorance. Dysfunction. Dystopia.

Our deficit and massive monetization may deliver chaos in markets. Bonds will fall first. Yields will rise - even soar. Long rates will slice 50% out of long maturities. Equity will collapse. It’s coming. Biden has the right ideas. The GOP will try to cripple his plans for rehabilitation of population segments, neighborhoods, schools, roads and infrastructure…

More another time. HCR must decapitate racism and slam business as usual.

We are going to experience agony, one way or another.

Expand full comment