Thank you so much for your clarity. Before the election, it was clear to me that even if Harris won, the coming authoritarian tide would just be postponed, for the simple reason that Biden had taken no substantive steps to interfere with the ongoing dismantling of democracy, and nothing signaled that Harris & Co. would switch gears. Still, as an anti-occupation Jewish lesbian in an interracial relationship (raised by Holocaust survivors, no less), I thought we'd have 4 years to plan our next moves. Grateful for your structural, morally-informed analysis as we contemplate the future.
Even if she had won the presidency, she would be in the same boat at Obama, having both houses of congress controlled by the Republicans. She would not have gotten any more done than he did…until We the People learned how bad having NO government is opposed to a working government.
This is a well-grounded analysis and makes a lot of sense. Thank you. But somehow I still can't believe that even a single serious person could fall for the maga cult propaganda, other than self-serving people like Musk. Nor can I understand how the obviously disqualifying words and actions of this particular "non-loser" didn't seem to matter much. Pantomiming oral sex with a microphone in front of a crowd on live TV? No problem, but what's even more disgusting is to see the crowd laughing at that one, let alone endure the election results. I can see only the worst in people and no longer recognize this country. Chaos seemed to be all they want. My heart hurts and my head doesn't seem to be working. Thanks again for the essay.
To put it simply, the counterrevolutionaries have won. They now have total control over all branches of government, they have a plan to cement that control in perpetuity, and they are utterly ruthless. They don’t need trump, he has little interest in actual governance. But they have the billionaires, a vast effective propaganda network and Vance. If the party standing for America’s democratic institutions couldn’t beat an obviously unhinged criminal spewing lies and hate, what makes anyone think that can be beaten now that they have it all?
Any thoughts on who the counterrevolutionaries are?
I’m a little skeptical about whoever-they-are not needing Trump. In spite of his unfitness for office and his low fund of knowledge and his lack of managerial skills, etc., I think he’s the only one in that crowd of criminals and liars who was capable of convincing all those millions of MAGAs to give up their ability to think for themselves and to believe impossibilities (to steal part of Voltaire’s phrase).
I admit I got the idea that the people behind trump are counterrevolutionaries from Heather Cox Richardson. They want to overturn the central premise of the American Revolution that all people are equal and replace it with what humans always had since the rise of civilization: rule by kings, oligarchs, strongmen who are naturally superior to the rest of us untermenchen.
I would hope you are correct that MAGA will fade without the dear leader, but given the wealth power and utter ruthlessness of the musks, Vances etc. they might well overturn the Republic and cement their authoritarian vision with or without him.
So, what do we do about this state of affairs? I'm reading up on totalitarianism and how people can defeat it. Joyce Vance recommended the Vaclav Havel essay, "The power of the powerless."
I will also read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny for starters. And, I'm currently reading Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark -- along with Michael Podhorzer and other great SubStack authors.
I skimmed some of the Havel essay and found that he thought a large, complex country would be harder to subdue than a small one. Our states have their own powers. We have blue states whose leaders have gone through Project 2025 line by line. Many of us will not give up but are overcoming the exhaustion of this election cycle and finding our bearings.
BTW the audio link to Roberts' disgraceful quote requires permission to access.
At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, I have to say I liked everything you wrote in your post. Appreciated the link to Havel’s essay and your reminder that states have their own powers.
Well, now that they have won the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, and have extremists in the Judicial Branch, up and down the line, now they have to start governing. The president-elect knows he only has four more years—unless he and like thinkers kill the Constitution—but those other “winners” will have seats to defend. They know that if they do not come up with MAGA-related laws, they will be booted by someone even farther right.
That, of course, does not bode well for We the People.
With the so-called “mandate to operate” notch in their belt, and only 6 states away from calling a constitutional convention, the Constitution is most definitely on the chopping block. We need to use its authority, our endowment to self governance, now while we still can.
Agree and I wonder if one use of the authority of the Constitution would be for President Biden to use pardons to protect people on Trump’s Enemies list.
I knew this would be the election of a lifetime. I’ve been saying the same thing ad nauseam for over a year. A Trump win means control of the federal judiciary for the next 40 years, and the courts will rule by judicial fiat regardless of which party is in power.
Republicans have already been very successful with judge shopping; and now they will most likely have complete control of the circuit courts as well, including the most liberal court in the land: The Ninth Circuit. Good luck keeping abortion legal.
Going forward, any legislation passed by a democratic Congress and presidency will be met with swift lawsuits by republican states, allowing the court to stay the legislation and tie it up for years in court.
So please tell us how we can fight and win legally? It appears after the recent Supreme Court immunity ruling, all opposition to Trump immediately changed and here we are; two years away from being called The US of Hungary!
"According to VoteCast, 40 percent of the electorate had voted for Biden in 2020. Michael McDonald, the recognized expert, estimates that 154.8 million voted (149 million votes have been counted). That would mean there were 62 million Biden voters who cast ballots and 19 million who didn’t (he received 81 million in 2020)."
- Harris received 6 million fewer votes than Biden (75 million in 2024 vs 81 million in 2020).
- If 19 million who voted for Biden did NOT vote for Harris, then Harris had to win 13 million votes from either the "new" voters or from Republicans and third parties.
So if our elections are no more free than the continuous wars between Oceania and East Asia were real conflicts in 1984, does that mean there’s no way out of our predicament? New reader to your posts, so I haven’t yet seen everything you have said in previous ones.
The electorate has been unhappy for decades. Watching the 1% skate free after the 2008 economic meltdown added to the growing belief that the "system was rigged".
Biden's inability to communicate the economic benefits he enacted for unions and the middle class, his decision to "move on" from the pandemic without reckoning with the rampant disillusionment, Biden's refusal to discuss substantive antitrust wins (and how they affect everyday lives)...all sowed further resentment.
Add to that Democratic leadership's decision to do nothing to strengthen Democratic institutions led many to believe the issues about democracy in jeopardy were overblown.
The insanity about "wokeism" was a fiction amplified relentlessly by the right-wing, not the Left. It was a Trojan horse for right-wing authoritarianism, period
I think some liberal pundits did dwell on minor issues excessively and might’ve alienated a number of Center-left and liberal Democrats, but there was no hiding of gender changes and defunding the police was a slogan that supported “reducing police funding and allocating them to non-policing forms of public safety such as social services, housing, education…” etc. So-called BLM riots were protests over the deliberate, calm, cold-blooded, televised murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May, 2020. The appropriate human response to this event was outrage and that turned violent in some locations. I don’t support violence by either protesters or police but do support BLM and the peaceful expression of outrage over that murder though it’s hard to express outrage without becoming angry.
I like the word “woke” much as I like the supposedly pejorative words “Deep State.” The former expresses what I think is an admirable state of mind. The latter accurately describes American democracy. It is as longstanding and as strong as a democracy can be and has also proven itself by making our as yet imperfect country the wealthiest, most productive, most inclusive, welcoming, peaceful, and just nation in the world. I am not saying we have achieved perfection in those areas; just that we have overall made the best progress toward it compared to the rest of the world. One more thing which I admit is off-topic: I can’t imagine why so many of us common people want to throw that away.
Thank you so much for your clarity. Before the election, it was clear to me that even if Harris won, the coming authoritarian tide would just be postponed, for the simple reason that Biden had taken no substantive steps to interfere with the ongoing dismantling of democracy, and nothing signaled that Harris & Co. would switch gears. Still, as an anti-occupation Jewish lesbian in an interracial relationship (raised by Holocaust survivors, no less), I thought we'd have 4 years to plan our next moves. Grateful for your structural, morally-informed analysis as we contemplate the future.
Even if she had won the presidency, she would be in the same boat at Obama, having both houses of congress controlled by the Republicans. She would not have gotten any more done than he did…until We the People learned how bad having NO government is opposed to a working government.
This is a well-grounded analysis and makes a lot of sense. Thank you. But somehow I still can't believe that even a single serious person could fall for the maga cult propaganda, other than self-serving people like Musk. Nor can I understand how the obviously disqualifying words and actions of this particular "non-loser" didn't seem to matter much. Pantomiming oral sex with a microphone in front of a crowd on live TV? No problem, but what's even more disgusting is to see the crowd laughing at that one, let alone endure the election results. I can see only the worst in people and no longer recognize this country. Chaos seemed to be all they want. My heart hurts and my head doesn't seem to be working. Thanks again for the essay.
To put it simply, the counterrevolutionaries have won. They now have total control over all branches of government, they have a plan to cement that control in perpetuity, and they are utterly ruthless. They don’t need trump, he has little interest in actual governance. But they have the billionaires, a vast effective propaganda network and Vance. If the party standing for America’s democratic institutions couldn’t beat an obviously unhinged criminal spewing lies and hate, what makes anyone think that can be beaten now that they have it all?
Any thoughts on who the counterrevolutionaries are?
I’m a little skeptical about whoever-they-are not needing Trump. In spite of his unfitness for office and his low fund of knowledge and his lack of managerial skills, etc., I think he’s the only one in that crowd of criminals and liars who was capable of convincing all those millions of MAGAs to give up their ability to think for themselves and to believe impossibilities (to steal part of Voltaire’s phrase).
I admit I got the idea that the people behind trump are counterrevolutionaries from Heather Cox Richardson. They want to overturn the central premise of the American Revolution that all people are equal and replace it with what humans always had since the rise of civilization: rule by kings, oligarchs, strongmen who are naturally superior to the rest of us untermenchen.
I would hope you are correct that MAGA will fade without the dear leader, but given the wealth power and utter ruthlessness of the musks, Vances etc. they might well overturn the Republic and cement their authoritarian vision with or without him.
Well put. Thanks. I can’t disagree that extreme wealth and the power that goes with it are a huge threat to our democracy.
So, what do we do about this state of affairs? I'm reading up on totalitarianism and how people can defeat it. Joyce Vance recommended the Vaclav Havel essay, "The power of the powerless."
https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23
I will also read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny for starters. And, I'm currently reading Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark -- along with Michael Podhorzer and other great SubStack authors.
I skimmed some of the Havel essay and found that he thought a large, complex country would be harder to subdue than a small one. Our states have their own powers. We have blue states whose leaders have gone through Project 2025 line by line. Many of us will not give up but are overcoming the exhaustion of this election cycle and finding our bearings.
BTW the audio link to Roberts' disgraceful quote requires permission to access.
Thanks for catching the glitch with the audio link. It should be working now!
At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, I have to say I liked everything you wrote in your post. Appreciated the link to Havel’s essay and your reminder that states have their own powers.
I wonder how voting would progress in general if it was mandatory in our toxic, broken, completely split country, as it is in 21 other countries.
(Yes, I know the reasons for AND against.)
Well, now that they have won the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, and have extremists in the Judicial Branch, up and down the line, now they have to start governing. The president-elect knows he only has four more years—unless he and like thinkers kill the Constitution—but those other “winners” will have seats to defend. They know that if they do not come up with MAGA-related laws, they will be booted by someone even farther right.
That, of course, does not bode well for We the People.
With the so-called “mandate to operate” notch in their belt, and only 6 states away from calling a constitutional convention, the Constitution is most definitely on the chopping block. We need to use its authority, our endowment to self governance, now while we still can.
Agree and I wonder if one use of the authority of the Constitution would be for President Biden to use pardons to protect people on Trump’s Enemies list.
I knew this would be the election of a lifetime. I’ve been saying the same thing ad nauseam for over a year. A Trump win means control of the federal judiciary for the next 40 years, and the courts will rule by judicial fiat regardless of which party is in power.
Republicans have already been very successful with judge shopping; and now they will most likely have complete control of the circuit courts as well, including the most liberal court in the land: The Ninth Circuit. Good luck keeping abortion legal.
Going forward, any legislation passed by a democratic Congress and presidency will be met with swift lawsuits by republican states, allowing the court to stay the legislation and tie it up for years in court.
So please tell us how we can fight and win legally? It appears after the recent Supreme Court immunity ruling, all opposition to Trump immediately changed and here we are; two years away from being called The US of Hungary!
You say
"According to VoteCast, 40 percent of the electorate had voted for Biden in 2020. Michael McDonald, the recognized expert, estimates that 154.8 million voted (149 million votes have been counted). That would mean there were 62 million Biden voters who cast ballots and 19 million who didn’t (he received 81 million in 2020)."
This makes no sense to me.
- in 2020 Biden won 51.31% of the vote on a turnout of 66.8% so that 31.8% of the electorate (eligible voter). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#Electoral_results
- One exit poll said 10% of 2024 voters did not vote in 2020 so that is ~15.5 million “new” voters https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
- Harris received 6 million fewer votes than Biden (75 million in 2024 vs 81 million in 2020).
- If 19 million who voted for Biden did NOT vote for Harris, then Harris had to win 13 million votes from either the "new" voters or from Republicans and third parties.
---
FYI "19 million who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote" is threatening to become folklore. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/kamala-harris-gaza-israel-biden-election-poll
So if our elections are no more free than the continuous wars between Oceania and East Asia were real conflicts in 1984, does that mean there’s no way out of our predicament? New reader to your posts, so I haven’t yet seen everything you have said in previous ones.
It was weird hyperleft ideology that turned off liberals and energized magas.
Hiding gender changes from parents, police defunding, BLM riots, and woke bullshit.
I'm a liberal, but I'm not crazy. Just disappointed.
This is nonsense.
The electorate has been unhappy for decades. Watching the 1% skate free after the 2008 economic meltdown added to the growing belief that the "system was rigged".
Biden's inability to communicate the economic benefits he enacted for unions and the middle class, his decision to "move on" from the pandemic without reckoning with the rampant disillusionment, Biden's refusal to discuss substantive antitrust wins (and how they affect everyday lives)...all sowed further resentment.
Add to that Democratic leadership's decision to do nothing to strengthen Democratic institutions led many to believe the issues about democracy in jeopardy were overblown.
The insanity about "wokeism" was a fiction amplified relentlessly by the right-wing, not the Left. It was a Trojan horse for right-wing authoritarianism, period
I think some liberal pundits did dwell on minor issues excessively and might’ve alienated a number of Center-left and liberal Democrats, but there was no hiding of gender changes and defunding the police was a slogan that supported “reducing police funding and allocating them to non-policing forms of public safety such as social services, housing, education…” etc. So-called BLM riots were protests over the deliberate, calm, cold-blooded, televised murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May, 2020. The appropriate human response to this event was outrage and that turned violent in some locations. I don’t support violence by either protesters or police but do support BLM and the peaceful expression of outrage over that murder though it’s hard to express outrage without becoming angry.
I like the word “woke” much as I like the supposedly pejorative words “Deep State.” The former expresses what I think is an admirable state of mind. The latter accurately describes American democracy. It is as longstanding and as strong as a democracy can be and has also proven itself by making our as yet imperfect country the wealthiest, most productive, most inclusive, welcoming, peaceful, and just nation in the world. I am not saying we have achieved perfection in those areas; just that we have overall made the best progress toward it compared to the rest of the world. One more thing which I admit is off-topic: I can’t imagine why so many of us common people want to throw that away.