[View here as a Twitter thread]
1/ Americans still don’t fully understand what hit them. So how the heck did an entire nation get blindsided? Prof. Snyder has answers. This thread starts with his 6-26-16 lecture and weaves in examples from these books
2/ First, some terms: LIberals: “change is good” Conservatives: “keep things as they are, free market is good” Reactionaries “we long for the past when things were better” For the past 25 years, liberals & conservatives have lived in a “politics of inevitability”
3/ Because they live in the politics of inevitability, they “get” the rules & “know” where things are going. As a result, they didn’t think alternatives were possible, and were blindsided when an alternative hit them.
4/ Conservatives assume that capitalism creates democracy, so more capitalism means more democracy. (OOPs! It didn’t work that way: unregulated capitalism led to the kind of income inequality that makes democracy impossible; moreover . . .
5/ . . unregulated capitalism created “gray areas” that allowed businesses to operate anonymously, and to move $$ into offshore deals, in turn allowing Americans to forge undemocratic alliances with foreign powers (er, that would be Russian oligarchs).
6/ Liberal “Politics of Inevitability” sees history as a progression marching toward an ever-brighter future, i.e. expanding inclusiveness, from 1776 (only wealthy white men in power) to POC, women, LBGTQ, etc. The problem is that this kind of progress isn’t inevitable.
7/ In fact, the notion that we are in an inevitable progression toward more inclusiveness is relatively new. Most of history had stability: Things didn’t change. People knew their place. Villagers lived the same lives for thousands of years, etc. Social movement wasn’t possible.
8/ Reactionaries long for that stability. They see the nation as a body. Cells don’t move around! Legs do their job without trying to be the head! They reject idea of “social advancement” They live in a “Politics of Eternity,” in which the future is no different from today.
9/ Freedom is knowing your place, fulfilling your role. The reactionary view held sway for much of US history (slavery, segregation, a woman’s “place”) In a Politics of Eternity, politics is “us v. them.” “We” of course are good. “They” want to upset things (and are bad)
10/ So what happened in 2016? Russia beckoned the American reactionaries, “Look what we have! A wonderfully stable society ruled by oligarchs. We don’t have to worry about change! We have “elections” but everything is predictable! Everyone stays in their place.
11/ Liberals didn’t expect the Fox-Trump-GOP to break laws and norms in the 2016 elections, and are shocked that so many laws were broken. (Some conservatives are having a harder time admitting the lawbreaking because they voted for Trump.)
12/ Aside: Why are people shocked at the lawbreaking? Reactionaries have been rejecting the rules for a long time: Refusing compromise, refusing to accept the legitimacy of political opponents, refusing to let an elected president appoint a Supreme Court justice.
13/ In 2016, the Reactionaries, to harken back to a time of stability, violated the rules and laws. They did it on purpose. Because they don’t LIKE the laws and norms. Q: How do you achieve perfect stability? A: You start by fixing elections.
