Same. It’s amazing really isn’t it? To understand these major issues of inequality, racism, identity politics, and how people can be so fooled by the big lie and this long con of false populism, it is a gift from lifelong commitment to learning, researching, writing, and teaching. Dr Snyder’s words are truly a gift to us all. I’m grateful that he is here to share his wisdom. I read it multiple times too. One more time just so I can understand it better, two more so I can articulate these points as best I can with the people I care about. The world is a far better place with Dr Snyder in it. 🙏
People like Trump use bumper sticker mentality to make their points to the populace -- a move that rewards non-thinking and, eventually, forces inattention to issues or consequences. Especially, as Prof. Snyder says, if the populace can be made to view their suffering as less than that of 'others' -- an easy task with bumper sticker mentalities.
The hard part for us is figuring out how to do the complicated thinking stuff and then the actions that that thinking recommends. Culture/class is a concept that can be understood albeit taking some time to absorb, but what are the actions recommended?
The click bait President. Don’t fall for it. Avoid the trumpie clicks with all your soul. It’s not the same as looking away. Just find other sources of information, like here. The Guardian, your local newspaper, your favorite Substack. Join a resistance community, or many.
Why didn’t white women, latinos, and young men vote for Kamala or, at least, against Trump and his “values”? I believe Dr. Snyder hit on a number of the reasons: deeply-entrenched and unacknowledged racism; an ingrained sense of superiority; fear of loss of their position, status, privilege; greed-based desire to keep what they have and accumulate even more for themselves; deep disdain for those less fortunate; a complete lack of empathy or any sense of wanting to share or care. The list could go on.
“Normies” like us can rail against this astonishing decline, but the “Abbies” won’t hear us. And even if they could, they’ve become so conditioned to respond with one of their sayings (Fake News, etc.) that the words won’t penetrate any deeper than the skin. How, then, do we break through?
Well, what have been the normal balancing forces that tended to right a civilization (or finish it off) once it’d gone off-center? Religious or faith-based appeals, social upheaval and unrest, economic influences, war. None of these, at least over the last decade or more, have seemed to take hold and help here. We appear to have become so well-insulated from each other, isolated in our own cocoons of information and thought, that the normal balancing forces can’t get enough traction to work any longer.
But yet, if we just wait for the inevitable failures of the incoming class of clowns to hit home (with the Trumpomuskovites), I believe what Dr. Snyder suggests will actually happen: the wily oligarchs at the top will spout their basket of lies and angle the spotlight on one group or another, like Hitler did in the 1930’s. It’ll be “their fault”, “blame them, not the government”, and there will be some horrendous “remedy” put forth to assuage the inflicted “wrongs”. This is the sadopopulism of which Dr. Snyder spoke.
What the Abbies have, that we don’t, is a rich, white, strongman-type figure – a man who is both feared and respected in his Abbie world. What the Normies need is our own figure or symbol – someone who would demand the respect of the other side and gather our forces behind him. I don’t happen to see one at the moment.
What would he be like, if I did? Probably someone with the qualities of Alexei Navalny – hero, patriot, brilliant and unapologetic, a born irritant under the skin of the opposition. Someone like Navalny could do it – break through the crass of the other side and gain enough respect to begin.
Check out Dr Alan Lichtman. He’s written some really good books on your questions. He hosted Thursday night YouTube channel with his son and they discuss and take questions. It’s pretty interactive and fun. Share often. It helps.
…as have I, Jan. It deals in complex subtleties and distinctions between race and class but without the clearly compelling nature of his former statements like “don’t obey in advance."
Understood. I am slowly finding my way to some sort of positive action, but not quite there yet. I think it’s important to know the situation we are in, before we act, so am grateful to all of you and TS for this conversation. My parents didn’t serve in WWII so we would hand our freedom over to another fascist.
One thing that I just heard from Heather Cox Richardson on her Tuesday Chats talk (https://www.facebook.com/roxanna.springer/posts/pfbid02H3QMjK6k88MixE8JJ3DsmRLBXfavLRy3X92cs7cRuNxEYVH3k6ir2xDoLVNX3ELfl) is that we need to speak up everywhere (local government, state government, school, news, etc.) everyday continuously about our issues, our determination to have a democracy, our expectation from our representatives, etc.. She says that we need to be our leaders, our inspiration -- out of many, we'll find our representatives who are going to need us to be with them.
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
Since it’s winter, I m following the Scandinavians, saunas and fires, mix in some hot yoga, long walks by the river’s side. Hold hands and breathe, and look up at the stars. Hugs Cynthia!
That is why the challenge of getting people to see these matters with clarity is so great. Who we are and how we interpret events is at odds with the clarity.
Yes. I'm confused by the definitions of "class" and "culture". I don't equate enormous wealth with class. To people in Manhattan, Trump had zero class. He was an outsider. Has he finally gotten his revenge? He still has zero class.
I think you got a lot of it right. The other part of class is the social hierarchy. The upper classes fall for his schikt. They feel better just cuz they have an “other” to look down on, to watch other who are suffering MORE than they are. It’s as old as the Colosseum. The Romans forgot their troubles, at least they weren’t like these poor fools fighting to their deaths in savagery. What was it the Greeks said about civilization, “To tame the savageness of man and..?”
I think it's something like the aristocracy -- wealth and class status -- who were the only ones 'entitled' to be social leaders, to receive education, etc.. The plantation slave holders were the colonies' aristocrats who especially thought they would be welcome in the English Parliament someday....
Where does our immunity from his brand of demagoguery come from? I have some ideas on that. But, I am just grateful for never having succumbed to it. Donnie is a world class creeper to me. I’ve known it my entire life. “There goes I fir the grace of goad”- Ben Franklin
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty to improve the lives of America's neediest citizens. The GOP hated it.
In 2024 the Trump/Musk/MAGA/GOP/Billionaires has launched the War on the Poor so they can pay for Trillions of on going tax cuts that they need to keep America "Free".
This will not end well for the rich.
They right should re-read the history of the French Revolution and fascism in Mussolini's Italy. It didn't end well for leaders then. We will find that the rich in the US cannot drag down the lives of 150 million Americans even if Musk, the MAGA guru, spends 24 hours texting that he can.
Merrill, I fear we waste our time and energy selecting what those on the political right should do or read (do they?). We serve ourselves and our cause better by deciphering what WE should do in such fraught times. This is why professor Snyder’s books have been so valuable for me and why this particular column has been difficult to square with my previous view that we should be talking more about class, money and education and less about which race or gender is involved, even recognizing that most of our laws are written regarding race and more recently sex while very few are written regarding class beyond regulations about who is entitled to various kinds of aid.
I so agree. I don't think the MAGA millions or Musk "X" army read more than a few inflammatory statements at a time to keep their anger inflamed.
We Dems and related resistance groups need to refocus our fight with the Right by making clear to 70% of Americans what Trump/MAGA/Musk's agenda actually is; cut taxes and make sure another $2-3 Trilion flows to the upper .01%.
Sadly for the top .01%, they live in a country with 330 million other human beings. When they screw enough of them it will blow up in their face. I can't say how or when, but it will just like it blew up in the face of the racists and the Vietnam militarists in the 1960s.
Merrill, in defense of the .01% in the multimillioinaire/billionaire class it is difficult to imagine how they COULD be in touch with what real life is like for the vast majority of Americans. This disconnection allows them free range in their opinions about what would “fix” the problems in government, most usually to their benefit. Whatever benefits being part of a community or village might confer on most of the rest of us further dilutes any sense of social responsibility they might otherwise have had.
Like all broad generalizations, there are mega wealthy individual and families that I know who are incredibly generous and fully recognize the need, in our free society, for a binding social contract that includes all participants regardless of wealth or status. Our problem with the Musks among us is their utter abandonment of social responsibility and their self aggrandizing greed. We shall overcome..SOON!
Merrill, my fear is that the MAGA strategy is to make people so fearful and angry that their cognitive abilities are weakened. As the Jews in Germany learned, if you take away people’s livelihood, forcibly relocate them multiple times, and starve them of food and water, their waning energy will not be focused on resistance. (Hmmm, sounds like Netanyahu learned a lot from the Nazis and has been applying it to Gaza?). Weakening the resistors is part of the strategy. And it works. Not on everyone - but primarily on those who are already suffering from stress overload.
Appreciate your energy! I find that MAGA rhetoric implies that taxes are just payoffs to corrupt officials. R voters don’t seem to connect the dots between tax revenues and stuff we all demanded over time and need, it’s just their “hard earned money” being given to evil lazy types. How do we hit the point that lowering taxes is an expenditure, or cost to all of us? The “Government” successfully eradicated killer hornets this year, with tax dollars. If helping people get on their feet doesn’t break through, maybe scary insects will?
I feel like this post was directed to me. I AM one of the unfortunate ones who have already experienced “ medical bankruptcy.” My life was saved over a 12-year bombardment of aggressive healthcare by some of the best physicians in the US. BUT the catch was, even with Medicare and an affordable supplemental insurance STILL lost ALL my assets to pay medical bills. Home & neighborhood (one of the best in Denver), antiques I treasured, TWO pension funds, and last, my car that was still in great condition. I had a genetic liver disease, and my care ended at Cleveland Clinic with a liver transplant. If I’d stayed in Denver the transplant would never have happened. The waitlist there was too long. My European friends are shocked by my story. Here in the US - sure thing. No procedures were ever denied. But when humans have seriously dire situations, THIS is what happens to us. Your comments and opinions don’t really address this kind of situation. All I can say is - SHIT HAPPENS. I truly want to escape this country rather than ENDURE another Trump “reign of terror.” But no money.
Thank you making the abstract and hypothetical real with your story. Identity cohorts know because of experience the reality of discrimination in their daily lives just as it took your misfortune for you to know the terrible health care system we live under. Perhaps a Substack column detailing your story may be helpful. I will join!
Are you saying that in Europe some of the procedures that saved your life here would have been denied there? My son lives in Spain, and my understanding from him, and from friends who live in France, is that some procedures are in fact denied under their “free” health care because they’re too expensive, so you don’t get them. To keep down costs for everyone, some people just die. Please clarify what happened to you. It sounds like you sold your house and left your really nice neighborhood in Denver in order to get the liver transplant that saved your life (“…If I’d stayed in Denver the transplant would never have happened. The waitlist there was too long…”). So you had a choice, and you made a decision that saved your life. Sounds good to me. Yes, it’s too bad you had to sell your antiques and your car. That’s just furniture, objects, things. You’re a human being who is still here, and now healthy. Many people can’t say that, especially not in Europe. Free healthcare isn’t actually free. The taxes required to pay for it don’t permit owning nice houses in good neighborhoods furnished with antiques and automobiles. Some procedures are not provided because they’re too expensive cost too much. Organ transplants aren’t available everywhere. If you wanted to die surrounded by all your “stuff”, you could have chosen to do that. You chose life instead. Make the most of it.
I appreciate the information you shared about some procedures, even in Europe, would be denied - too expensive. So I’m guessing that some of the procedures (highly specialized) indeed would have been denied. And I had 25 of them - one for each infection in the bile ducts of my liver. Each very painful and each life-threatening. If your liver shuts down, that’s it. So I was fortunate (and knew it at the time) that I had highly specialized endoscopists to perform those for me. There were high risks each time. Once I landed in ICU with respiratory distress for 2 weeks after my pancreas was nicked. Like I said before - and medicine isn’t perfect - shit happens. I got VERY lucky. And survived! 💖🌈💯
Indeed. When I googled this I mostly got articles about how organ donation works in Europe and the problems they have getting people to donate organs, including religious objections to donating organs. The result is a somewhat severe imbalance between the number of organs available versus the number needed. So a lot of people who need a transplant never get one. How it’s financed wasn’t mentioned, other than “taxes”. So we all have problems. My H just yesterday read about a 25 yr old news anchor who dropped dead from a brain aneurysm. Like turning off a light switch. Be grateful for every day.
Organ donation is encouraged and supported in many ways in the US. In Colorado when you get or renew your driver’s license, you are asked if you want to be an organ donor. Easy peasy. We also have an excellent organizing body UNOS that is a nonprofit operating 24/7/365 with a phone room open all the time. There are 100 transplant centers in the US, divided into 8 regions by state with certain centers in each region. AND there is a database of ALL these centers with all kinds of statistics - about 30 pages worth - for each center. Very well-organized. I could write a whole book about this!
I do! And still the pain & tears come because some people just don’t want to be around me. I also have medical PTSD - not that well managed unfortunately. A lot of other transplant recipients had family members, spouses, kids but I don’t. So basically I’m trying to find a group situation. That hasn’t worked out. And I expect it won’t. I only met one person like that - and I loved him dearly. But this disease recurs and it did for him. So he had a second transplant and shortly after died from cardiac arrest. Not 40 years old yet. Honestly I don’t have much hope. I just live day to day. Thank you for your kind words.
“Heartsick” is a good word for all of us who love this democracy and have high hopes for its growth. “Heartsick” helps me understand better how I feel. Only “do(ing) something” makes me feel better. Indivisible Illinois will have a list of tasks from which I can choose. I know that January will bring postcards to voters and will give my hand and arm some rest after 3000 cards written this fall. The French said “do something” when the Nazis took over their country. We can learn from the spirit of WWII.
There were reasons why American men excluded American women from the franchise for so long and why a great many American men (including Trump) likely wish this exclusion had continued, Those reasons go back so far into our past as to be lost in the mists, and they continue to animate far too many of our electorate today.
Some of them were encapsulated in all the predictions that Harris wouldn’t be able to stand up to our foreign enemies. Some of them are encapsulated in the common and ancient male view that women are not intellectually or politically capable of governing although, of course, they have always been capable of running a home, which is where they should stay. This view was central to much of the American political thinking of the nineteenth century, and it continues to animate much conservative religious thinking. It was thoroughly if all too briefly stated in John Adams’s condescending response to Abigail’s famous letter stating that ‘all men would be tyrants if they could”.
Beneath all that is another very conservative American belief that only certain kinds of Americans really qualify as Americans and so deserve the full rights of citizenship. Trump and his myrmidons are well-known for continually stating this in one way or another, but this also goes back to our Founding when voting rights were largely limited to white, male property owners over 21. It was and remains the foundation of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations.
Political ‘nicety’ often makes such believers careful, at least in public, to disavow any such beliefs. One had to listen carefully and often secretly to hear the real nature of much opposition to Barak O’Bama - to many the appalling reality of a Black man in the White House. Suggestions that Harris lost because she was a woman, and of color are usually buried under all the other supposed reasons for the Democratic loss.
I have developed a regular habit of re-watching Ken Burn’s marvelous graduation address at Brandeis University last June when he noted that “there is only US”. Until we recognize this single and all-important fact, we will never approach the full potential of the promise of our founding.
Well said, James. Refreshing that you included misogyny. I suspect many of the stay-at-home, non-voting democrats simply could not bring themselves to vote for a woman of color.
I love your expression, James, that "only certain kinds of Americans really qualify as . . .."
This perfectly gets the logic of all the standardized testing that has so strangled American (and world) education.
Categories. Groups. "Kinds of." "Sorts of." "Types of." Only abstracted views of life, all running in linearity only.
Billionaires and oligarchs feast on this, as they've already all learned to reduce "life" to nothing more than commodities, units, numbers -- all for themselves. They cannot see or imagine any "others" because, in their fealty to vulgarity, they killed humanities, struck them, eviscerated them from all our schools.
I must admit that you’ve lost me. How you connect the often restrictive vision of ‘real Americans’ so prevalent among some segments of our society with the problem of standardized testing in schools eludes me.
I should add that I taught American history at the elementary level in two very different but first rate independent schools for over 40 years, and standardized testing was never a concern. I understand that it can and does get out of hand in public schools, but even then I miss whatever connection you’re trying to make here.
You might go to recent writing, James, by David Brooks and Daniel Markovits.
Brooks has a piece in The Atlantic’s December cover story, “How the Ivy League Broke America.” He argues that the standardized testing that swamps American schools all emulates the cognitive skills needed only in few schools at the top.
Daniel Markovits goes further in his new book, "The Meritocracy Trap." He details how humanly, imaginatively limited the standardized testing is.
The classic, of course, is Diane Ravitz's "The Language Police" (2003). Her many appendices alone confirm how the billionaires' priorities for commodification require the neutering, abstracting, and categorizing that standardized testing and corporate textbooks enforce.
Humanities have died in American schools, James. Americans are no longer aware of "others" as individuals in human communities.
I’m well aware of both the authors and the ideas you mention. But I still don’t understand the connection you are trying to make with my original piece. The right wing (no matter which political party represented it, and that has changed over time) has consistently attempted to narrow the definition of what it considers full citizenship. This is reflected in their consistent attempts to either deny or limit the franchise. This has nothing at all to do with education, but primarily with sex, race, foreign origins, religion, and economic status.
It's the way elites limit themselves to groups, James.
Categories. Abstracted entities. Groups. Or, as you put it "only certain kinds of Americans . . .."
Standardized testing enforces this way of thinking. And in the proportion that people see that way, the same people exclude any of the novels, films, memoirs, biographies, or any other humanities.
David Brooks, Diane Ravitch, and Daniel Markovits all bemoan this, all regret how our schools have become captive to the packaging habits our billionaires only worsen.
We need more humanities, James. More reference to individuals, the personal situations people inhabit. Our schools need humanities, personal essaying -- not that relentless, soul-killing juggernaut of standardized testing.
I’m not talking about elites; educationally or otherwise. Those who wish to narrow the definition of those entitled to the full fruits of citizenship come from every social and educational strata. The lowest ones on the totem pole still decide that there are others who are lower and less worthy.
We can argue all day about the content of a college education and what it ought to include. We could argue about standardized testing - something I know a great deal about having been an elementary school teacher for over 40 years. Indeed, I would heartily agree that the humanities should have at least equal footing with any other area, if not top priority. I’m a humanities graduate myself, and I value my education highly, a part of which was earned at one of those Ivies. My paternal grandfather was an Ivy League college dean and humanities department head (English). But education is not the issue here.
In my book, lol, you're always in the running for "The World's Smartest Man" & I have brothers in math & physics so I recognize smart (mostly hard work that most can't do!) But you & so many others right now are making the same mistake when you say, "So if people had wanted to prevent rule by billionaires, they could have done so."
And you do know better. We know of so many separate attacks by Putin against our election, from false-flag advertising, to 30 years of information & psychological conditioning by FOX & other pro-Trump media, from internet disinformation to Election Day bomb threats. The Citizens United decision, that blew down the walls that had kept oligarch money out of the process. Then we have the nominally separate local attacks to suppress voting by Democrats, from flagrant partisan gerrymandering to mass purging of registered voters, polling place intimidation & so much more.
Until we are shown that all of the above didn't create the result in this 1.5% margin-of-victory election, it's an unnecessary & demoralizing mistake to accept the narrative that most of the alleged "Democratic Party failings" are self-inflicted. When real enemies are on unremitting multiple attacks, taking account of them isn't wildly paranoid when it's based on genuine evidence..
My point isn't inconsistent with your point that oligarchical class war & culture war against the interests of the majority of Americans, especially since you recognize that the present dominating culture is the product of the anti-democratic forces which have usually been in control of mass perceptions & realities, are both what shape the present.
Richard, I agree with your explanations about the factors that left many without real choice. The tsunami of propaganda, from Putin, to social media, to MSM has had its desired effect.
A single (but likely indicative) example. Several years ago Planned Parenthood asked me to speak to a room filled with young people who were being groomed to be activists for reproductive rights. I told them what life was like pre-Roe and warned them Roe could be overturned. At the end, a few young women with worried faces asked how they could know what is true and what are lies?
Think about that. Propaganda has been so ubiquitous that bright, committed young people don’t know what to believe and how to tell lies from truth.
Thanks. "When real enemies are on unremitting multiple attacks, taking account of them isn't wildly paranoid when it's based on genuine evidence" means that when you're really being attacked, as democracy & Constitutional law are under attack here, it's real, not imaginary, & it's appropriate to feel under attack. Hope this helps.
Dear Dr. Snyder. Thank you for your brilliant analysis. Although many issues you shared struck hard, one comment particularly resonated with me:
"but part of it is that many people who would gain security, prosperity, and lifespan from a better system don't want it if they have to share it with others (a culture factor, let's say)."
This comment demonstrates the success of the greatest propaganda campaign inflicted upon the American citizenship. Think this one through. Combine this with the lies that are compounded with social media. Moving physical entities is relatively simple. Moving mindshare, if attainable, will take generations.
One comment that you made deserves challenging. You state "The wealthy, putting it gently, have been in charge before." Has there ever been a time when the wealthy have not been in charge?
The idea that African Americans have the savviest voting record fell in this election. Black men voted for Trump in droves. Black musical and sports leaders have embraced the idea that ostentatious displays of wealth are perhaps their defining feature, and Trump embodies that in spades - while keeping women in their place. To me the overwhelming commonality among Trump voters is lack of education or lack of interest in becoming educated. My parents did not go to college. They learned their jobs in the library and night school, and because of their efforts I became one of the "college educated elite". Now, education is seen as a negative (except by the top 1% who continue to do anything and everything to get their kids into the Ivys, but then pretend it doesn't matter).
I question the statement that "Black men voted for Trump in droves." If the numbers in this AP News article are accurate, a higher percentage of Black men voted for Trump in 2024 (25%) than voted for him in 2020 (12%). But 25% of the vote is still quite low. (https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12). Of the demographic groups identified in the AP article, in 2024 only Black women voted for Trump at a lower percentage than Black men. (By the way, Christa, I agree with your observation about the top 1% portraying college education as a negative while pursuing it for their own kids.)
It's hard not to respond to this by asking "what took you so long?" Actual American leftists and their white descendants have known since the early 20th century at least (and often earlier) that a polity without racial justice, especially for American black people whose ancestors were slaves, will never overcome plutocracy. The struggle for justice only works when we do it all at once. Note the better work of labor unions ... still.
I have often thought that the political battles over race and gender and education we have been drawn into fighting would be more effectively conceived and fought as issues of class. Your column has caused me to think but not abandon that view, however, I certainly applaud your insight into the value of empathy with not only the poor afflicted by ill health but also those who are well off. The state of our healthcare system is deplorable, especially when compared to that of our neighbors to the north!
Startling, yet how else to explain the deportation of millions working at jobs “real American’s” won’t touch, including denying birthright citizenship and deporting entire families because one member is undocumented?
That these polices are proposed is bad enough… that they are cheered and supported by so many is shocking.
Sometimes they're a result of passion and intensity. Sometimes they're a result of poor eyesight. Sometimes the person writing types one thing and it gets auto-corrected repeatedly and they don't catch every instance.
Sometimes they're a result of trusting that we'll get the point even if everything's not perfect.
Some people are not confident writers but still want to express themselves.
Frankly, if I have a 10 page article to read, I also object to typos. For a couple of paragraphs in the comments section, I really don't care as long as I get the meaning.
We are so fortunate to have Timothy Snyder. I’ve read almost all of his books and I believe I’m more aware of the signs of fascism that are unfolding around us. I can tolerate typos it’s the least of our worries.
In my field (editorial), there's certainly been some discussion and hope that, even as Dr. Snyder manages to turn out timely and cogent essays day after day, week after week, he can find a good editor/proofreader to give them a fresh eye before publication. I, for one, am semi-retired and loath to be "on call," but there must be plenty of great candidates out there who'd be eager to pitch in.
I've learned more about power, money and (in)justice since T has been on the scene that in any former period. He has indeed exposed the underbelly of power and corruption for all to see. It's been horrifying to see it all up close and personal. Raw terror tactics, power and money rule the world.
One issue that unites all Americans is the rage we feel against the entirely unnecessary and grotesquely exploitive health insurance industry. We should focus on erasing this sector of our
Now all Professor Snyder has to do is figure out how to reduce this fascinating, but complex, issue to the length of a middle school five paragraph essay using fourth-grade-level language so that it could be understood and believed by the average Trump voter.
Only one word describes the way I feel about our nation right now: heartsick.
I have to confess, I will have to read this essay several times to see if I can absorb it.
Same. It’s amazing really isn’t it? To understand these major issues of inequality, racism, identity politics, and how people can be so fooled by the big lie and this long con of false populism, it is a gift from lifelong commitment to learning, researching, writing, and teaching. Dr Snyder’s words are truly a gift to us all. I’m grateful that he is here to share his wisdom. I read it multiple times too. One more time just so I can understand it better, two more so I can articulate these points as best I can with the people I care about. The world is a far better place with Dr Snyder in it. 🙏
People like Trump use bumper sticker mentality to make their points to the populace -- a move that rewards non-thinking and, eventually, forces inattention to issues or consequences. Especially, as Prof. Snyder says, if the populace can be made to view their suffering as less than that of 'others' -- an easy task with bumper sticker mentalities.
The hard part for us is figuring out how to do the complicated thinking stuff and then the actions that that thinking recommends. Culture/class is a concept that can be understood albeit taking some time to absorb, but what are the actions recommended?
The click bait President. Don’t fall for it. Avoid the trumpie clicks with all your soul. It’s not the same as looking away. Just find other sources of information, like here. The Guardian, your local newspaper, your favorite Substack. Join a resistance community, or many.
I agree with you and Ted, Roxanna.
Why didn’t white women, latinos, and young men vote for Kamala or, at least, against Trump and his “values”? I believe Dr. Snyder hit on a number of the reasons: deeply-entrenched and unacknowledged racism; an ingrained sense of superiority; fear of loss of their position, status, privilege; greed-based desire to keep what they have and accumulate even more for themselves; deep disdain for those less fortunate; a complete lack of empathy or any sense of wanting to share or care. The list could go on.
“Normies” like us can rail against this astonishing decline, but the “Abbies” won’t hear us. And even if they could, they’ve become so conditioned to respond with one of their sayings (Fake News, etc.) that the words won’t penetrate any deeper than the skin. How, then, do we break through?
Well, what have been the normal balancing forces that tended to right a civilization (or finish it off) once it’d gone off-center? Religious or faith-based appeals, social upheaval and unrest, economic influences, war. None of these, at least over the last decade or more, have seemed to take hold and help here. We appear to have become so well-insulated from each other, isolated in our own cocoons of information and thought, that the normal balancing forces can’t get enough traction to work any longer.
But yet, if we just wait for the inevitable failures of the incoming class of clowns to hit home (with the Trumpomuskovites), I believe what Dr. Snyder suggests will actually happen: the wily oligarchs at the top will spout their basket of lies and angle the spotlight on one group or another, like Hitler did in the 1930’s. It’ll be “their fault”, “blame them, not the government”, and there will be some horrendous “remedy” put forth to assuage the inflicted “wrongs”. This is the sadopopulism of which Dr. Snyder spoke.
What the Abbies have, that we don’t, is a rich, white, strongman-type figure – a man who is both feared and respected in his Abbie world. What the Normies need is our own figure or symbol – someone who would demand the respect of the other side and gather our forces behind him. I don’t happen to see one at the moment.
What would he be like, if I did? Probably someone with the qualities of Alexei Navalny – hero, patriot, brilliant and unapologetic, a born irritant under the skin of the opposition. Someone like Navalny could do it – break through the crass of the other side and gain enough respect to begin.
Where, oh where, could our Alexei be?
Check out Dr Alan Lichtman. He’s written some really good books on your questions. He hosted Thursday night YouTube channel with his son and they discuss and take questions. It’s pretty interactive and fun. Share often. It helps.
Thank you, Ted. I'll check him out. Have a good evening.
…as have I, Jan. It deals in complex subtleties and distinctions between race and class but without the clearly compelling nature of his former statements like “don’t obey in advance."
All I can feel is depressed. Too complex and discouraging.
Understood. I am slowly finding my way to some sort of positive action, but not quite there yet. I think it’s important to know the situation we are in, before we act, so am grateful to all of you and TS for this conversation. My parents didn’t serve in WWII so we would hand our freedom over to another fascist.
One thing that I just heard from Heather Cox Richardson on her Tuesday Chats talk (https://www.facebook.com/roxanna.springer/posts/pfbid02H3QMjK6k88MixE8JJ3DsmRLBXfavLRy3X92cs7cRuNxEYVH3k6ir2xDoLVNX3ELfl) is that we need to speak up everywhere (local government, state government, school, news, etc.) everyday continuously about our issues, our determination to have a democracy, our expectation from our representatives, etc.. She says that we need to be our leaders, our inspiration -- out of many, we'll find our representatives who are going to need us to be with them.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
Since it’s winter, I m following the Scandinavians, saunas and fires, mix in some hot yoga, long walks by the river’s side. Hold hands and breathe, and look up at the stars. Hugs Cynthia!
That is why the challenge of getting people to see these matters with clarity is so great. Who we are and how we interpret events is at odds with the clarity.
Yes. I'm confused by the definitions of "class" and "culture". I don't equate enormous wealth with class. To people in Manhattan, Trump had zero class. He was an outsider. Has he finally gotten his revenge? He still has zero class.
I think you got a lot of it right. The other part of class is the social hierarchy. The upper classes fall for his schikt. They feel better just cuz they have an “other” to look down on, to watch other who are suffering MORE than they are. It’s as old as the Colosseum. The Romans forgot their troubles, at least they weren’t like these poor fools fighting to their deaths in savagery. What was it the Greeks said about civilization, “To tame the savageness of man and..?”
I think it's something like the aristocracy -- wealth and class status -- who were the only ones 'entitled' to be social leaders, to receive education, etc.. The plantation slave holders were the colonies' aristocrats who especially thought they would be welcome in the English Parliament someday....
Honestly, I just don’t understand it.
Where does our immunity from his brand of demagoguery come from? I have some ideas on that. But, I am just grateful for never having succumbed to it. Donnie is a world class creeper to me. I’ve known it my entire life. “There goes I fir the grace of goad”- Ben Franklin
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty to improve the lives of America's neediest citizens. The GOP hated it.
In 2024 the Trump/Musk/MAGA/GOP/Billionaires has launched the War on the Poor so they can pay for Trillions of on going tax cuts that they need to keep America "Free".
This will not end well for the rich.
They right should re-read the history of the French Revolution and fascism in Mussolini's Italy. It didn't end well for leaders then. We will find that the rich in the US cannot drag down the lives of 150 million Americans even if Musk, the MAGA guru, spends 24 hours texting that he can.
Merrill, I fear we waste our time and energy selecting what those on the political right should do or read (do they?). We serve ourselves and our cause better by deciphering what WE should do in such fraught times. This is why professor Snyder’s books have been so valuable for me and why this particular column has been difficult to square with my previous view that we should be talking more about class, money and education and less about which race or gender is involved, even recognizing that most of our laws are written regarding race and more recently sex while very few are written regarding class beyond regulations about who is entitled to various kinds of aid.
I so agree. I don't think the MAGA millions or Musk "X" army read more than a few inflammatory statements at a time to keep their anger inflamed.
We Dems and related resistance groups need to refocus our fight with the Right by making clear to 70% of Americans what Trump/MAGA/Musk's agenda actually is; cut taxes and make sure another $2-3 Trilion flows to the upper .01%.
Sadly for the top .01%, they live in a country with 330 million other human beings. When they screw enough of them it will blow up in their face. I can't say how or when, but it will just like it blew up in the face of the racists and the Vietnam militarists in the 1960s.
Merrill, in defense of the .01% in the multimillioinaire/billionaire class it is difficult to imagine how they COULD be in touch with what real life is like for the vast majority of Americans. This disconnection allows them free range in their opinions about what would “fix” the problems in government, most usually to their benefit. Whatever benefits being part of a community or village might confer on most of the rest of us further dilutes any sense of social responsibility they might otherwise have had.
John
Like all broad generalizations, there are mega wealthy individual and families that I know who are incredibly generous and fully recognize the need, in our free society, for a binding social contract that includes all participants regardless of wealth or status. Our problem with the Musks among us is their utter abandonment of social responsibility and their self aggrandizing greed. We shall overcome..SOON!
Merrill, my fear is that the MAGA strategy is to make people so fearful and angry that their cognitive abilities are weakened. As the Jews in Germany learned, if you take away people’s livelihood, forcibly relocate them multiple times, and starve them of food and water, their waning energy will not be focused on resistance. (Hmmm, sounds like Netanyahu learned a lot from the Nazis and has been applying it to Gaza?). Weakening the resistors is part of the strategy. And it works. Not on everyone - but primarily on those who are already suffering from stress overload.
The MGAG megaphones are trying to weaken those +70 million of us who still believe in the social contract. We will rise again..SOON!
Appreciate your energy! I find that MAGA rhetoric implies that taxes are just payoffs to corrupt officials. R voters don’t seem to connect the dots between tax revenues and stuff we all demanded over time and need, it’s just their “hard earned money” being given to evil lazy types. How do we hit the point that lowering taxes is an expenditure, or cost to all of us? The “Government” successfully eradicated killer hornets this year, with tax dollars. If helping people get on their feet doesn’t break through, maybe scary insects will?
I feel like this post was directed to me. I AM one of the unfortunate ones who have already experienced “ medical bankruptcy.” My life was saved over a 12-year bombardment of aggressive healthcare by some of the best physicians in the US. BUT the catch was, even with Medicare and an affordable supplemental insurance STILL lost ALL my assets to pay medical bills. Home & neighborhood (one of the best in Denver), antiques I treasured, TWO pension funds, and last, my car that was still in great condition. I had a genetic liver disease, and my care ended at Cleveland Clinic with a liver transplant. If I’d stayed in Denver the transplant would never have happened. The waitlist there was too long. My European friends are shocked by my story. Here in the US - sure thing. No procedures were ever denied. But when humans have seriously dire situations, THIS is what happens to us. Your comments and opinions don’t really address this kind of situation. All I can say is - SHIT HAPPENS. I truly want to escape this country rather than ENDURE another Trump “reign of terror.” But no money.
Bless you. That is an unforgivable story about our American healthcare system. ♥️
Thank you making the abstract and hypothetical real with your story. Identity cohorts know because of experience the reality of discrimination in their daily lives just as it took your misfortune for you to know the terrible health care system we live under. Perhaps a Substack column detailing your story may be helpful. I will join!
Thanks, Michael. 💞
Are you saying that in Europe some of the procedures that saved your life here would have been denied there? My son lives in Spain, and my understanding from him, and from friends who live in France, is that some procedures are in fact denied under their “free” health care because they’re too expensive, so you don’t get them. To keep down costs for everyone, some people just die. Please clarify what happened to you. It sounds like you sold your house and left your really nice neighborhood in Denver in order to get the liver transplant that saved your life (“…If I’d stayed in Denver the transplant would never have happened. The waitlist there was too long…”). So you had a choice, and you made a decision that saved your life. Sounds good to me. Yes, it’s too bad you had to sell your antiques and your car. That’s just furniture, objects, things. You’re a human being who is still here, and now healthy. Many people can’t say that, especially not in Europe. Free healthcare isn’t actually free. The taxes required to pay for it don’t permit owning nice houses in good neighborhoods furnished with antiques and automobiles. Some procedures are not provided because they’re too expensive cost too much. Organ transplants aren’t available everywhere. If you wanted to die surrounded by all your “stuff”, you could have chosen to do that. You chose life instead. Make the most of it.
I appreciate the information you shared about some procedures, even in Europe, would be denied - too expensive. So I’m guessing that some of the procedures (highly specialized) indeed would have been denied. And I had 25 of them - one for each infection in the bile ducts of my liver. Each very painful and each life-threatening. If your liver shuts down, that’s it. So I was fortunate (and knew it at the time) that I had highly specialized endoscopists to perform those for me. There were high risks each time. Once I landed in ICU with respiratory distress for 2 weeks after my pancreas was nicked. Like I said before - and medicine isn’t perfect - shit happens. I got VERY lucky. And survived! 💖🌈💯
Indeed. When I googled this I mostly got articles about how organ donation works in Europe and the problems they have getting people to donate organs, including religious objections to donating organs. The result is a somewhat severe imbalance between the number of organs available versus the number needed. So a lot of people who need a transplant never get one. How it’s financed wasn’t mentioned, other than “taxes”. So we all have problems. My H just yesterday read about a 25 yr old news anchor who dropped dead from a brain aneurysm. Like turning off a light switch. Be grateful for every day.
Organ donation is encouraged and supported in many ways in the US. In Colorado when you get or renew your driver’s license, you are asked if you want to be an organ donor. Easy peasy. We also have an excellent organizing body UNOS that is a nonprofit operating 24/7/365 with a phone room open all the time. There are 100 transplant centers in the US, divided into 8 regions by state with certain centers in each region. AND there is a database of ALL these centers with all kinds of statistics - about 30 pages worth - for each center. Very well-organized. I could write a whole book about this!
But you have your life!
I do! And still the pain & tears come because some people just don’t want to be around me. I also have medical PTSD - not that well managed unfortunately. A lot of other transplant recipients had family members, spouses, kids but I don’t. So basically I’m trying to find a group situation. That hasn’t worked out. And I expect it won’t. I only met one person like that - and I loved him dearly. But this disease recurs and it did for him. So he had a second transplant and shortly after died from cardiac arrest. Not 40 years old yet. Honestly I don’t have much hope. I just live day to day. Thank you for your kind words.
“Heartsick” is a good word for all of us who love this democracy and have high hopes for its growth. “Heartsick” helps me understand better how I feel. Only “do(ing) something” makes me feel better. Indivisible Illinois will have a list of tasks from which I can choose. I know that January will bring postcards to voters and will give my hand and arm some rest after 3000 cards written this fall. The French said “do something” when the Nazis took over their country. We can learn from the spirit of WWII.
There were reasons why American men excluded American women from the franchise for so long and why a great many American men (including Trump) likely wish this exclusion had continued, Those reasons go back so far into our past as to be lost in the mists, and they continue to animate far too many of our electorate today.
Some of them were encapsulated in all the predictions that Harris wouldn’t be able to stand up to our foreign enemies. Some of them are encapsulated in the common and ancient male view that women are not intellectually or politically capable of governing although, of course, they have always been capable of running a home, which is where they should stay. This view was central to much of the American political thinking of the nineteenth century, and it continues to animate much conservative religious thinking. It was thoroughly if all too briefly stated in John Adams’s condescending response to Abigail’s famous letter stating that ‘all men would be tyrants if they could”.
Beneath all that is another very conservative American belief that only certain kinds of Americans really qualify as Americans and so deserve the full rights of citizenship. Trump and his myrmidons are well-known for continually stating this in one way or another, but this also goes back to our Founding when voting rights were largely limited to white, male property owners over 21. It was and remains the foundation of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations.
Political ‘nicety’ often makes such believers careful, at least in public, to disavow any such beliefs. One had to listen carefully and often secretly to hear the real nature of much opposition to Barak O’Bama - to many the appalling reality of a Black man in the White House. Suggestions that Harris lost because she was a woman, and of color are usually buried under all the other supposed reasons for the Democratic loss.
I have developed a regular habit of re-watching Ken Burn’s marvelous graduation address at Brandeis University last June when he noted that “there is only US”. Until we recognize this single and all-important fact, we will never approach the full potential of the promise of our founding.
Well said, James. Refreshing that you included misogyny. I suspect many of the stay-at-home, non-voting democrats simply could not bring themselves to vote for a woman of color.
I love your expression, James, that "only certain kinds of Americans really qualify as . . .."
This perfectly gets the logic of all the standardized testing that has so strangled American (and world) education.
Categories. Groups. "Kinds of." "Sorts of." "Types of." Only abstracted views of life, all running in linearity only.
Billionaires and oligarchs feast on this, as they've already all learned to reduce "life" to nothing more than commodities, units, numbers -- all for themselves. They cannot see or imagine any "others" because, in their fealty to vulgarity, they killed humanities, struck them, eviscerated them from all our schools.
I must admit that you’ve lost me. How you connect the often restrictive vision of ‘real Americans’ so prevalent among some segments of our society with the problem of standardized testing in schools eludes me.
I should add that I taught American history at the elementary level in two very different but first rate independent schools for over 40 years, and standardized testing was never a concern. I understand that it can and does get out of hand in public schools, but even then I miss whatever connection you’re trying to make here.
You might go to recent writing, James, by David Brooks and Daniel Markovits.
Brooks has a piece in The Atlantic’s December cover story, “How the Ivy League Broke America.” He argues that the standardized testing that swamps American schools all emulates the cognitive skills needed only in few schools at the top.
Daniel Markovits goes further in his new book, "The Meritocracy Trap." He details how humanly, imaginatively limited the standardized testing is.
The classic, of course, is Diane Ravitz's "The Language Police" (2003). Her many appendices alone confirm how the billionaires' priorities for commodification require the neutering, abstracting, and categorizing that standardized testing and corporate textbooks enforce.
Humanities have died in American schools, James. Americans are no longer aware of "others" as individuals in human communities.
I’m well aware of both the authors and the ideas you mention. But I still don’t understand the connection you are trying to make with my original piece. The right wing (no matter which political party represented it, and that has changed over time) has consistently attempted to narrow the definition of what it considers full citizenship. This is reflected in their consistent attempts to either deny or limit the franchise. This has nothing at all to do with education, but primarily with sex, race, foreign origins, religion, and economic status.
It's the way elites limit themselves to groups, James.
Categories. Abstracted entities. Groups. Or, as you put it "only certain kinds of Americans . . .."
Standardized testing enforces this way of thinking. And in the proportion that people see that way, the same people exclude any of the novels, films, memoirs, biographies, or any other humanities.
David Brooks, Diane Ravitch, and Daniel Markovits all bemoan this, all regret how our schools have become captive to the packaging habits our billionaires only worsen.
We need more humanities, James. More reference to individuals, the personal situations people inhabit. Our schools need humanities, personal essaying -- not that relentless, soul-killing juggernaut of standardized testing.
I’m not talking about elites; educationally or otherwise. Those who wish to narrow the definition of those entitled to the full fruits of citizenship come from every social and educational strata. The lowest ones on the totem pole still decide that there are others who are lower and less worthy.
We can argue all day about the content of a college education and what it ought to include. We could argue about standardized testing - something I know a great deal about having been an elementary school teacher for over 40 years. Indeed, I would heartily agree that the humanities should have at least equal footing with any other area, if not top priority. I’m a humanities graduate myself, and I value my education highly, a part of which was earned at one of those Ivies. My paternal grandfather was an Ivy League college dean and humanities department head (English). But education is not the issue here.
Thank you, Mr Quinn, for this clearly stated observation on us, or US.
In my book, lol, you're always in the running for "The World's Smartest Man" & I have brothers in math & physics so I recognize smart (mostly hard work that most can't do!) But you & so many others right now are making the same mistake when you say, "So if people had wanted to prevent rule by billionaires, they could have done so."
And you do know better. We know of so many separate attacks by Putin against our election, from false-flag advertising, to 30 years of information & psychological conditioning by FOX & other pro-Trump media, from internet disinformation to Election Day bomb threats. The Citizens United decision, that blew down the walls that had kept oligarch money out of the process. Then we have the nominally separate local attacks to suppress voting by Democrats, from flagrant partisan gerrymandering to mass purging of registered voters, polling place intimidation & so much more.
Until we are shown that all of the above didn't create the result in this 1.5% margin-of-victory election, it's an unnecessary & demoralizing mistake to accept the narrative that most of the alleged "Democratic Party failings" are self-inflicted. When real enemies are on unremitting multiple attacks, taking account of them isn't wildly paranoid when it's based on genuine evidence..
My point isn't inconsistent with your point that oligarchical class war & culture war against the interests of the majority of Americans, especially since you recognize that the present dominating culture is the product of the anti-democratic forces which have usually been in control of mass perceptions & realities, are both what shape the present.
Richard, I agree with your explanations about the factors that left many without real choice. The tsunami of propaganda, from Putin, to social media, to MSM has had its desired effect.
A single (but likely indicative) example. Several years ago Planned Parenthood asked me to speak to a room filled with young people who were being groomed to be activists for reproductive rights. I told them what life was like pre-Roe and warned them Roe could be overturned. At the end, a few young women with worried faces asked how they could know what is true and what are lies?
Think about that. Propaganda has been so ubiquitous that bright, committed young people don’t know what to believe and how to tell lies from truth.
Please proofread the last sentence of the second to last paragraph. I'm not sure what you meant.
Thanks. "When real enemies are on unremitting multiple attacks, taking account of them isn't wildly paranoid when it's based on genuine evidence" means that when you're really being attacked, as democracy & Constitutional law are under attack here, it's real, not imaginary, & it's appropriate to feel under attack. Hope this helps.
Dear Dr. Snyder. Thank you for your brilliant analysis. Although many issues you shared struck hard, one comment particularly resonated with me:
"but part of it is that many people who would gain security, prosperity, and lifespan from a better system don't want it if they have to share it with others (a culture factor, let's say)."
This comment demonstrates the success of the greatest propaganda campaign inflicted upon the American citizenship. Think this one through. Combine this with the lies that are compounded with social media. Moving physical entities is relatively simple. Moving mindshare, if attainable, will take generations.
One comment that you made deserves challenging. You state "The wealthy, putting it gently, have been in charge before." Has there ever been a time when the wealthy have not been in charge?
The idea that African Americans have the savviest voting record fell in this election. Black men voted for Trump in droves. Black musical and sports leaders have embraced the idea that ostentatious displays of wealth are perhaps their defining feature, and Trump embodies that in spades - while keeping women in their place. To me the overwhelming commonality among Trump voters is lack of education or lack of interest in becoming educated. My parents did not go to college. They learned their jobs in the library and night school, and because of their efforts I became one of the "college educated elite". Now, education is seen as a negative (except by the top 1% who continue to do anything and everything to get their kids into the Ivys, but then pretend it doesn't matter).
I question the statement that "Black men voted for Trump in droves." If the numbers in this AP News article are accurate, a higher percentage of Black men voted for Trump in 2024 (25%) than voted for him in 2020 (12%). But 25% of the vote is still quite low. (https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12). Of the demographic groups identified in the AP article, in 2024 only Black women voted for Trump at a lower percentage than Black men. (By the way, Christa, I agree with your observation about the top 1% portraying college education as a negative while pursuing it for their own kids.)
It's hard not to respond to this by asking "what took you so long?" Actual American leftists and their white descendants have known since the early 20th century at least (and often earlier) that a polity without racial justice, especially for American black people whose ancestors were slaves, will never overcome plutocracy. The struggle for justice only works when we do it all at once. Note the better work of labor unions ... still.
I have often thought that the political battles over race and gender and education we have been drawn into fighting would be more effectively conceived and fought as issues of class. Your column has caused me to think but not abandon that view, however, I certainly applaud your insight into the value of empathy with not only the poor afflicted by ill health but also those who are well off. The state of our healthcare system is deplorable, especially when compared to that of our neighbors to the north!
“Sado-populism”!!!
Startling, yet how else to explain the deportation of millions working at jobs “real American’s” won’t touch, including denying birthright citizenship and deporting entire families because one member is undocumented?
That these polices are proposed is bad enough… that they are cheered and supported by so many is shocking.
Please continue to help us figure out how to proceed but do proofread your work. Typos are very distracting.
We certainly wouldn’t want you to be distracted, Ruth. Perhaps you could have someone read it for you and tell you what it said.
Typos are not just distracting. They’re a sign of laziness.
Sometimes they're a result of passion and intensity. Sometimes they're a result of poor eyesight. Sometimes the person writing types one thing and it gets auto-corrected repeatedly and they don't catch every instance.
Sometimes they're a result of trusting that we'll get the point even if everything's not perfect.
Some people are not confident writers but still want to express themselves.
Frankly, if I have a 10 page article to read, I also object to typos. For a couple of paragraphs in the comments section, I really don't care as long as I get the meaning.
Live and let live, maybe? Just a thought.
Good response
Laziness? Oh no, not that!
We are so fortunate to have Timothy Snyder. I’ve read almost all of his books and I believe I’m more aware of the signs of fascism that are unfolding around us. I can tolerate typos it’s the least of our worries.
In my field (editorial), there's certainly been some discussion and hope that, even as Dr. Snyder manages to turn out timely and cogent essays day after day, week after week, he can find a good editor/proofreader to give them a fresh eye before publication. I, for one, am semi-retired and loath to be "on call," but there must be plenty of great candidates out there who'd be eager to pitch in.
I've learned more about power, money and (in)justice since T has been on the scene that in any former period. He has indeed exposed the underbelly of power and corruption for all to see. It's been horrifying to see it all up close and personal. Raw terror tactics, power and money rule the world.
One issue that unites all Americans is the rage we feel against the entirely unnecessary and grotesquely exploitive health insurance industry. We should focus on erasing this sector of our
economy forever.
Now all Professor Snyder has to do is figure out how to reduce this fascinating, but complex, issue to the length of a middle school five paragraph essay using fourth-grade-level language so that it could be understood and believed by the average Trump voter.