Weekend Reading is back! My new post, “Monsters and Their Enablers,” is a “reboot” of my Substack to move from focusing on the urgent task of stopping Trump, to the more important task—focusing on how we got to this moment, why we’re trapped in an interregnum where monsters thrive (as Antonio Gramsci diagnosed the crisis a century ago: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”), and what it will take to chart a new way forward.
On Substack Live today, Anat and I discussed all of that, as well as current challenges like how to talk about the fight over financing the Trump regime. Some key insights:
The political system hasn’t been responsive to ordinary Americans for a long time, and voters have been acting accordingly by routinely throwing out the party in power. That’s why narrow election wins and messaging tweaks alone aren’t going to get us out of this. We need a new deal—not a “let’s go to the policy blackboard” kind, but recognizing that getting the change we need requires a durable rebalancing of who has power in the country. In FDR’s time, the labor movement was the key to that rebalancing.
To call what’s coming up a “government shutdown fight” and argue about who will take blame is destructive and distracting. It legitimizes the current regime as a normal functioning government.
Anat suggests lines like: “We will not finance fascism. No dollars for dictatorship. No bankrolling billionaires.”
Move away from technocratic policy defense (ACA subsidies, Medicaid cuts, etc.) to visceral language: “I will not take food out of kids’ mouths. I will not steal health care from seniors.”
What “meeting people where they are” should mean isn’t lazily going along with whatever a poll tells you people believe. It’s understanding where your values align and taking people on a journey from there.
If you wonder why Democratic leaders and legislators aren’t listening to their base’s demands to get a spine and fight, remember where and with whom they spend most of their time—with funders and business people who for the most part are just fine with what's going on.
In Argentina, campaigners for abortion rights hung neon coat hangers labeled with senators’ names—“Senador Percha.” Everyone knew what it meant, and it flipped votes and won. Here, too often we play nice. Why wouldn’t we say “Senator Pedophile” for those enabling the Epstein cover-up?
Some tips on how to persuade “normie GOP” friends that the Republican Party has gone Neo-Confederate.
