I also do not see the US like Russia or Hungary even though they may be models for Trump. Why, because American people have not lived under "fascist" rule before. Black people have and understandably as people who might have supported Trump are figuring it out, he is out to destroy us. The rest know this. Still, no one wants to go back to slavery, or serfdom, or indentured servitude, and for these out of touch super rich folks to think that we won't poison them in their sleep is just naive. We do not want servitude. We honor those who fought for our freedoms, and these out of touch folks are just fomenting a Blue State Soft Secession. I am behind that. That is financial and legal disentanglement where it is possible.
I am in Chicago. We don't want Taxdodging Trump's Troops here. We are working to solve our own problems and are aligning with Blue State governors and Blue City mayors and AGs, to figure out how to salvage what we can of the destroying regime that just wants to take the US down from within.
Historian Kathleen Belew talks about the plans in the early 1990s of the White Power movement to band together with Christian nationalists to work from within, take over government and take power and get rid of the US constitution and replace it with their own manifesto. However, as they destroy the US they make it less powerful in the world, and that is something they did not bargain with. Let us hope that lacking a vision that is driven by anything but hate, they will not have the ideas to take over the people who live here. More power to the judge who is trying to save the children who were sent off to some hell somewhere today.
When you say "no one wants to go back to slavery, or serfdom, or indentured servitude," you forget Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Peter Thiel, Mike "Howdy Doody" Johnson and all his MAGA House, all U.S. Senate Republicans, Fox Spews, all the diabolical testing industry, the corporate textbook packagers, as well as fat sick Donald and equally hate-filled J.D. Vance.
Sadly, though, in your conclusion you balance out that error with one horrid fact, that "as they destroy the US they make it less powerful in the world."
Phil, I meant no one wants to go back to "being a slave." The people you mentioned never were slaves, but their ancestors may have been serfs or indentured servants. As for slavery, we have never left those times. We have slavery in our prisons allowed by the 13th amendment, and women and children are slaves in many households. There are people in agriculture who work and do not get paid. That is slavery. Then there is of course the huge market of sexual slavery, and there are workers for families in the US who are enslaved and their passports taken. There are businesses with enslaved workers, that is why we see signs in the women's bathroom doors at the airports at least in Chicago saying that if you are there against your will you can get help. A pathetic little attempt to point out to women who can read English that they can get help, but it does not really tell them how to, just that they have the right to.
As this regime destroys the US from within and make it less powerful in the world, they are getting help from outside players like Putin, for whom this is a dream happening. It is not going to make Russia more powerful to have the US diminished, but the US will be more like Russia. Filled with poverty, lacking in innovation, and having big nukes, which will eventually fall into disrepair the way it is suspected Russian nukes are. I suspect people with money will soon learn that favor is not alway to be bought and can be capricious, and therefore they may leave for other places where having money can afford them a nice lifestyle if they can.
We know that modern Autocracies do not necessarily trap you in the country, unless there is a war, and you are of age to fight, which could be any age, and there are those who are predicting that Trump will soon start a war. Of course Trump 2.0 may be replaced by JDV 1.0. We shall see if and when that happens and what it brings.
Value most here your litany on forms of slavery yet persisting, yet profiting our rich and powerful.
Though I would add the slavery of schools and otherwise could-be valuable teachers to the testing and corporate packaged textbook industries. Those two massive enslavers go a long way to accounting for Timothy S. today on our "decimated and humbled schools and universities."
Phil, while I know what you are talking about there are many ways that learning takes place in the US.
I taught in the Chicago Public schools and created my own, non textbook driven project based curriculum, and then taught in my alma mater, which was founded by John Dewey, whose philosophy was to learn by doing authentic things for authentic purposes and audiences. My daughter went to schools where they did interesting math, read whole books writing literary analysis and research papers, and doing creative writing of many genres. They had a strong arts curriculum and there were trips each year from third grade on. Travel broadens too. It was not a text driven education at all. Nor did I have one. I feel that in general American schools have too many hours in school and too much homework and that has caused a lot of problems which I will not enumerate here. I feel guilty that I did not remove her from the US system, but I did remove her from the prep school she was in to one that was more humane.
Now she is in a public university in Germany, and for our tax dollars she is getting a good education. She also has a good work-life balance. Enough to read books for leisure, run a hobby business, and do creative things as well as see friends. Germany is ranked #4 on work life balance. I recommend that if anyone is thinking of leaving, that would be something to consider.
I'm in a blue state (CA) and I'm a Chicago native and visit often. Is there any reporting on what the Blue State governors and Blue City mayors and AGs are doing?
Hi Sandy, yesterday Mayor Johnson held a rally at which he spoke, and there was marching in Chicago against having Federal troops coming to Chicago, and now of course Trump is saying Baltimore too, and not when they will come. Our news media says not before Friday. We shall see.
Here are the Governor and Mayor speaking at a news conference a couple of hours ago as well as some other local politicians. One of the things they are doing is fighting Trump's lies with facts.
Dean Blundell has reported that if the Blue States develop their own security forces they can use those in lieu of Federal troops, and these people would be along with ICE and unmasked as well. I think that there is discussion of legislation to be able to create these.
Trump wanted to be a dictator all along, no secret, just like his counterparts Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. We see he’s going all out, full tilt authoritarian with half the congress, law firms, the media, the Supreme Court, the christofascist elements of society, seemingly all the levers of government and now oligarchs, all bending to his will. On top of all this, the cruelty, voter suppression and intimidation are the point, so check fascism. The only question left is, when the time comes will the military support their oath or the oaf?
I believe that depends on what we say now in our actions toward them - what are they going to stand for and what not is being decided today in every National Guard deployment, police brutality case, or masked kidnapping.
Much depends on western European nations successfully removing US troops from Europe at the soonest. When Hegseth removes women from the military, those former US soldiers can go to Ukraine and whip Putin's ass, then women control Russia and its arsenal.
Trump will have troops with increased loyalty to him, but he'll lose his Russian BFF.
I believe we have the answer to the military loyalty question already.
Trump's wholesale replacement of the top staff (not only civilian leaders) has installed loyalists everywhere. With each month, more loyalists are being positioned at lower levels.
When the time comes for the military to make a choice, I believe they will be "loyal" but totally corrupted and ineffective as we've seen in autocratic militaries like Russia (the 2nd most expensive military in the world and yet only the 2nd most powerful in Ukraine)
I expect the US military to rot from the inside - like everything else about this kleptocracy
Prof. Snyder’s comments are thorough and accurate. Unfortunately, these comments are challenging for the majority of the U S population who are accustomed to receiving News Flashes, emojis and emotive language.
Please do not overlook the short attention spans engendered by television ads that interrupt news programming. People have literally been trained to think, if that is the correct verb, in short bursts of time, with no time for reflection or analysis.
People reading Prof Snyder's Substack are a) Interested in politics and current affairs, and b) probably members of an educated elite, and who as a whole possess an understanding of world politics that is better informed and more nuanced that the majority of Americans. In other words, "Thinking about" is not the sort of reading matter that most Americans spend time with.
But I think that is "a feature, not a bug." The vast majority of Americans are concerned with the bread-and-butter matters which are more basic to their lives than considerations of our national polity. The is normal. America would be a very different place if things were otherwise.
The problem is not that the mass of voters are less well-informed and more poorly equipped to gauge the worth of, say, developing wind energy versus reliance on petroleum for power generation. The problem is that our political system is not conducive to the emergence of politicians possessed of the character, intellect, and leadership skills to give us viable candidates worth voting for.
"The problem is that our political system is not conducive to the emergence of politicians possessed of the character, intellect, and leadership skills to give us viable candidates worth voting for."
We don't even have a political system anymore. We have masses of money in few hands (thank you Citizens United, and a corrupted highest court in the land).
We have one political party turned into an unthinking, unquestioning, slavish, money-grubbing cult. And another political party whose members all divested themselves of any reference points to the great books, films, and songs actually in touch with the American people.
So, your idea is that all you described is not "a system"? News Flash for ya Phil -- it is a system, not just haphazard "shit happens" stuff, it is not static, and it may not be self-correcting because so many voters are not interested, not paying attention, of just zonked out. But what you call it isn't as important as how we change it. Make good trouble.
"The death that Trump and Vance prefer, and cause, and need is indirect and passive-aggressive: by destroying government functionality, the generate unnecessary suffering, which they then blame on migrants and African Americans. They have funded ICE and deployed the National Guard to deter those of us who see the logic. That is their sadopopulism, their safe space."
Yes!! But one thing was left out of this brilliant passage: the final bit of DEI rage, the rage against women. This is clearest in Vance - and how brilliant of Snyder to always say Trump and Vance, because the specter of Vance in waiting always seems more dire than the clown show of Trump flinging feces in all directions. Vance is on video saying women should lose the vote in addition to staying home and raising children for men.
I would like to ask a guy like Vance if a woman should submit to her husband if she is the more knowledgeable and intelligent spouse. Just humor him, let him make mistakes affecting their family?
If being male is such an honor and marker of privilege, surely being born male is not that rare, at approximately 50% of births. And people complain about kids getting a ribbon for participation.
Rosemary Grant (Peter and Rosemary Grant are the biologists who studied Darwin's finches), as a child assumed that all boys were smarter than all girls. We sometimes forget how much things have changed within living memory. She was born in 1936.
I was born in 1938, the daughter of a Marine Corps Colonel born in 1895. My 6-years-older brother was the presumed smart one in the family, and I was relieved when he was forced into studying Electrical Engineering while I, the frivolous girl, got to be a Liberal Arts major. As a professor, he famously set his students on a design project: build a better bra. The assumed privileges of being male are not all wonderful.
Fran - Prof Snyder is an intellectual and perhaps for that reason he is more attuned to the intellectual aspects of JD Vance than I do.
In my opinion, Vance is of far less consequence than Trump despite his intellect and ideology, for the simple reason that Trump is unique in combining a determined drive to persuade his followers that black is white, that up is down, that strict and unquestioning obedience to TrumpThink somehow equates to "Liberation Day" for America. Vance is many times more articulate than his boss, but many times less charismatic.
Trump's peculiar superpower is his ability to persuade the lumpen-MAGA mob that the Emperor's new clothes are indeed stunning, despite all evidence to the contrary. Once Trump goes, "poof", the magic goes with him. The faithful will still wear their red hats but won't bother going to a Vance rally.
I would like to add that it is important to ridicule Trump and Vance. We should laugh at their crudeness. They are certainly dangerous, but they are also extremely laughable. Just think about that cabinet meeting where everyone kissed the president's backside. It's so ridiculous. We need more Charlie Chaplins to make fun of these morons.
Yes! Satire is a form of resistance. That's why Gavin Newsom is gathering steam, and the Lincoln Project team is infuriating tRump every day. They hold a mirror up to the ugly face of tRump and his fascist wannabees. Tim Snyder gives us hope. Satire gives us a release.
This is so true, and why I look forward to the kind of "coverage" the cabinet meetings and rallies get from the leading satirists of our day like John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart (and his whole Daily Show crew!), as well as our other leading commenters from Prof Snyder to the Bulwark, the Contrarians, Scott Galloway, Kara Fischer, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman... Chaplin paid dearly for his parody and satirical stances. That bravery is unfortunately needed more than ever today.
"of Chaplin"? This is the straight stuff *by* Chaplin, straight from the movie, which I've seen several times. Just a misprint, I assume, but people may be misled by it.
"The Grat Dictator" redux! My favorite parodist of Trump was Alec Baldwin. His portrayals of Trump and his peculiar mannerisms during the 2016 campaign never failed to leave me in stitches. What made it so painfully funny was the kernel of truth he revealed: Trump is a phony, a fraud and a clown.
But sadly, a huge amount of voters prioritise entertainment - and clowns are designed to entertain. Now, here we are - stuck in an ever escalating clown show
I, too, notice that you are now saying frump and vance, Dr Snyder. Much more realistic I think. After all nobody believes that frump has the wherewithal to come up with all these antics on his own, but is merely the front ice piece for a cabal of very sick members of his cadre (miller??). I still keep hoping that we can somehow come up with an effective shadow cabinet to counteract the lack of truth of this administration. It seems that only exists among writers and thinkers on substack, etc. Thank you for your writing!
Yes. Aside from all that, Trump is 79. He may think he's immortal, but he's not. And he may think Don Jr. can win the presidency; I doubt it. Vance is next in line, though, and dangerous too.
My friend and I live in a mixed community. Public housing hidden away amidst wealth. We worked hard to get the city to recognize our levels of poverty (2 years) in order for our public housing buildings to be eligible for services and small grants. The local resource center agreed to help us reach out.,,,finally.
Five years later we have middle class people crossing the boundaries of fear to work on new gardens for our public housing buildings. More important the people in the buildings are joining in and taking over the management of the gardens and more! This week we have a large turnout to a BBQ to celebrate the end of the free soccer coaching for new teams of kids especially in public housing but others too. The field was full of kids from many countries and races. It took years to get that the kind of participation ...but reaching out, garnering resources for others builds resilience, showing care can leave a legacy for a better community. One woman said she had lived in one our public housing buildings for 25 years and she had never seen people pulling together as they do now.
I think it counts and encourage everyone to practice acts of caring even when it is out of our comfort zone.
Raj Chetty at Harvard has done big data studies on poverty and economic disparities. He shows that when mixed neighborhoods engage at schools, and events, it is a strong factor in breaking inter-generational poverty. At risk kids who are involved in sports teams have a 74% less chance of being involved in crime. In a kinder world, we would all be engaged in poverty reduction and thus crime prevention. My experience is that in the case of having poor neighbors, fear of the other is huge on both sides is a huge block to real engagement. NIMBYism can be changed when cities work with communities on Good Neighbor Agreements to reduce concerns on both sides. And they can fund champions of change in the community...many of whom live in public housing.
Thank you for a great start to this Labor Day. Sitting home looking at the Capitol building from my window, I am am awed by our history and scared/worried for our future. I find your words a tremendous gift.
Quackery, incompetence, hostility to science & the rule of law as well as depraved indifference to human life are assets & qualification for high office in Trumpworld.
Thank you for this brilliant, clear analysis of what we are immersed in now. I have been missing your commentary. Having read, studied your two slim volumes, I so appreciate this current view of what we are going through and what we are called to. Bless you, Dr. Snyder!
I see the Balkanization of America more clearly every day.
Nevertheless, Mathew Foresta (https://bettergracesandliberations.substack.com/) commented on Robert Reich's post today with this other bit of Shelley:
"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you --
Ye are many -- they are few."
Solidarity Now. We are our only hope.
I also do not see the US like Russia or Hungary even though they may be models for Trump. Why, because American people have not lived under "fascist" rule before. Black people have and understandably as people who might have supported Trump are figuring it out, he is out to destroy us. The rest know this. Still, no one wants to go back to slavery, or serfdom, or indentured servitude, and for these out of touch super rich folks to think that we won't poison them in their sleep is just naive. We do not want servitude. We honor those who fought for our freedoms, and these out of touch folks are just fomenting a Blue State Soft Secession. I am behind that. That is financial and legal disentanglement where it is possible.
I am in Chicago. We don't want Taxdodging Trump's Troops here. We are working to solve our own problems and are aligning with Blue State governors and Blue City mayors and AGs, to figure out how to salvage what we can of the destroying regime that just wants to take the US down from within.
Historian Kathleen Belew talks about the plans in the early 1990s of the White Power movement to band together with Christian nationalists to work from within, take over government and take power and get rid of the US constitution and replace it with their own manifesto. However, as they destroy the US they make it less powerful in the world, and that is something they did not bargain with. Let us hope that lacking a vision that is driven by anything but hate, they will not have the ideas to take over the people who live here. More power to the judge who is trying to save the children who were sent off to some hell somewhere today.
One error on your part here, Linda.
When you say "no one wants to go back to slavery, or serfdom, or indentured servitude," you forget Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Peter Thiel, Mike "Howdy Doody" Johnson and all his MAGA House, all U.S. Senate Republicans, Fox Spews, all the diabolical testing industry, the corporate textbook packagers, as well as fat sick Donald and equally hate-filled J.D. Vance.
Sadly, though, in your conclusion you balance out that error with one horrid fact, that "as they destroy the US they make it less powerful in the world."
Phil, I meant no one wants to go back to "being a slave." The people you mentioned never were slaves, but their ancestors may have been serfs or indentured servants. As for slavery, we have never left those times. We have slavery in our prisons allowed by the 13th amendment, and women and children are slaves in many households. There are people in agriculture who work and do not get paid. That is slavery. Then there is of course the huge market of sexual slavery, and there are workers for families in the US who are enslaved and their passports taken. There are businesses with enslaved workers, that is why we see signs in the women's bathroom doors at the airports at least in Chicago saying that if you are there against your will you can get help. A pathetic little attempt to point out to women who can read English that they can get help, but it does not really tell them how to, just that they have the right to.
As this regime destroys the US from within and make it less powerful in the world, they are getting help from outside players like Putin, for whom this is a dream happening. It is not going to make Russia more powerful to have the US diminished, but the US will be more like Russia. Filled with poverty, lacking in innovation, and having big nukes, which will eventually fall into disrepair the way it is suspected Russian nukes are. I suspect people with money will soon learn that favor is not alway to be bought and can be capricious, and therefore they may leave for other places where having money can afford them a nice lifestyle if they can.
We know that modern Autocracies do not necessarily trap you in the country, unless there is a war, and you are of age to fight, which could be any age, and there are those who are predicting that Trump will soon start a war. Of course Trump 2.0 may be replaced by JDV 1.0. We shall see if and when that happens and what it brings.
Most well put, Linda.
Value most here your litany on forms of slavery yet persisting, yet profiting our rich and powerful.
Though I would add the slavery of schools and otherwise could-be valuable teachers to the testing and corporate packaged textbook industries. Those two massive enslavers go a long way to accounting for Timothy S. today on our "decimated and humbled schools and universities."
Phil, while I know what you are talking about there are many ways that learning takes place in the US.
I taught in the Chicago Public schools and created my own, non textbook driven project based curriculum, and then taught in my alma mater, which was founded by John Dewey, whose philosophy was to learn by doing authentic things for authentic purposes and audiences. My daughter went to schools where they did interesting math, read whole books writing literary analysis and research papers, and doing creative writing of many genres. They had a strong arts curriculum and there were trips each year from third grade on. Travel broadens too. It was not a text driven education at all. Nor did I have one. I feel that in general American schools have too many hours in school and too much homework and that has caused a lot of problems which I will not enumerate here. I feel guilty that I did not remove her from the US system, but I did remove her from the prep school she was in to one that was more humane.
Now she is in a public university in Germany, and for our tax dollars she is getting a good education. She also has a good work-life balance. Enough to read books for leisure, run a hobby business, and do creative things as well as see friends. Germany is ranked #4 on work life balance. I recommend that if anyone is thinking of leaving, that would be something to consider.
https://remote.com/hubfs/Remote%20Website%20-%202025/(Approved)%20Other%20Page%20Content/Documents/Global%20Life-Work%20Balance%20Index%202025.pdf
So many countries so much more civilized, decent, and prosperous than the U.S. now, Linda.
I'm in a blue state (CA) and I'm a Chicago native and visit often. Is there any reporting on what the Blue State governors and Blue City mayors and AGs are doing?
Thanks.
Hi Sandy, yesterday Mayor Johnson held a rally at which he spoke, and there was marching in Chicago against having Federal troops coming to Chicago, and now of course Trump is saying Baltimore too, and not when they will come. Our news media says not before Friday. We shall see.
Here are the Governor and Mayor speaking at a news conference a couple of hours ago as well as some other local politicians. One of the things they are doing is fighting Trump's lies with facts.
https://youtu.be/WzLEHl_5EDg?si=SkO819-8WdVjj6YJ
Dean Blundell has reported that if the Blue States develop their own security forces they can use those in lieu of Federal troops, and these people would be along with ICE and unmasked as well. I think that there is discussion of legislation to be able to create these.
Trump wanted to be a dictator all along, no secret, just like his counterparts Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. We see he’s going all out, full tilt authoritarian with half the congress, law firms, the media, the Supreme Court, the christofascist elements of society, seemingly all the levers of government and now oligarchs, all bending to his will. On top of all this, the cruelty, voter suppression and intimidation are the point, so check fascism. The only question left is, when the time comes will the military support their oath or the oaf?
I believe that depends on what we say now in our actions toward them - what are they going to stand for and what not is being decided today in every National Guard deployment, police brutality case, or masked kidnapping.
Much depends on western European nations successfully removing US troops from Europe at the soonest. When Hegseth removes women from the military, those former US soldiers can go to Ukraine and whip Putin's ass, then women control Russia and its arsenal.
Trump will have troops with increased loyalty to him, but he'll lose his Russian BFF.
I believe we have the answer to the military loyalty question already.
Trump's wholesale replacement of the top staff (not only civilian leaders) has installed loyalists everywhere. With each month, more loyalists are being positioned at lower levels.
When the time comes for the military to make a choice, I believe they will be "loyal" but totally corrupted and ineffective as we've seen in autocratic militaries like Russia (the 2nd most expensive military in the world and yet only the 2nd most powerful in Ukraine)
I expect the US military to rot from the inside - like everything else about this kleptocracy
Mike Hammer, I believe that your question is the fundamental question.
I heard a military term for the behavior of Trump’s sycophants recently: “Butt-snorkelers.”
Please continue to educate me… can the US survive the fascist onslaught, Or is it too late to turn back.
Thank you for your clarity, and for including a bit of hope.
My thoughts exactly.
Prof. Snyder’s comments are thorough and accurate. Unfortunately, these comments are challenging for the majority of the U S population who are accustomed to receiving News Flashes, emojis and emotive language.
Please do not overlook the short attention spans engendered by television ads that interrupt news programming. People have literally been trained to think, if that is the correct verb, in short bursts of time, with no time for reflection or analysis.
Yes, Therese, communication has thus devolved in the U.S.
As Timothy S. put it in his today, it's also in large part due to "decimated and humbled schools and universities."
Perhaps the more logical way to look at this is that political discourse is sandwiched between advertisements. Ads make money, nuff said.
People reading Prof Snyder's Substack are a) Interested in politics and current affairs, and b) probably members of an educated elite, and who as a whole possess an understanding of world politics that is better informed and more nuanced that the majority of Americans. In other words, "Thinking about" is not the sort of reading matter that most Americans spend time with.
But I think that is "a feature, not a bug." The vast majority of Americans are concerned with the bread-and-butter matters which are more basic to their lives than considerations of our national polity. The is normal. America would be a very different place if things were otherwise.
The problem is not that the mass of voters are less well-informed and more poorly equipped to gauge the worth of, say, developing wind energy versus reliance on petroleum for power generation. The problem is that our political system is not conducive to the emergence of politicians possessed of the character, intellect, and leadership skills to give us viable candidates worth voting for.
"The problem is that our political system is not conducive to the emergence of politicians possessed of the character, intellect, and leadership skills to give us viable candidates worth voting for."
Well said.
No, Jeff, not well-said.
We don't even have a political system anymore. We have masses of money in few hands (thank you Citizens United, and a corrupted highest court in the land).
We have one political party turned into an unthinking, unquestioning, slavish, money-grubbing cult. And another political party whose members all divested themselves of any reference points to the great books, films, and songs actually in touch with the American people.
So, your idea is that all you described is not "a system"? News Flash for ya Phil -- it is a system, not just haphazard "shit happens" stuff, it is not static, and it may not be self-correcting because so many voters are not interested, not paying attention, of just zonked out. But what you call it isn't as important as how we change it. Make good trouble.
Yes, James, communication has thus devolved in the U.S.
As Timothy S. put it in his today, it's also in large part due to "decimated and humbled schools and universities."
Yes, in a nutshell. Thank you, Professor Snyder.
"The death that Trump and Vance prefer, and cause, and need is indirect and passive-aggressive: by destroying government functionality, the generate unnecessary suffering, which they then blame on migrants and African Americans. They have funded ICE and deployed the National Guard to deter those of us who see the logic. That is their sadopopulism, their safe space."
Yes!! But one thing was left out of this brilliant passage: the final bit of DEI rage, the rage against women. This is clearest in Vance - and how brilliant of Snyder to always say Trump and Vance, because the specter of Vance in waiting always seems more dire than the clown show of Trump flinging feces in all directions. Vance is on video saying women should lose the vote in addition to staying home and raising children for men.
And: the plural of ICE is ISIS.
Well stated and extremely important to add.
I would like to ask a guy like Vance if a woman should submit to her husband if she is the more knowledgeable and intelligent spouse. Just humor him, let him make mistakes affecting their family?
If being male is such an honor and marker of privilege, surely being born male is not that rare, at approximately 50% of births. And people complain about kids getting a ribbon for participation.
Rosemary Grant (Peter and Rosemary Grant are the biologists who studied Darwin's finches), as a child assumed that all boys were smarter than all girls. We sometimes forget how much things have changed within living memory. She was born in 1936.
I was born in 1938, the daughter of a Marine Corps Colonel born in 1895. My 6-years-older brother was the presumed smart one in the family, and I was relieved when he was forced into studying Electrical Engineering while I, the frivolous girl, got to be a Liberal Arts major. As a professor, he famously set his students on a design project: build a better bra. The assumed privileges of being male are not all wonderful.
Love it!
But I'm dying to know. What kind of "better bra" did Electrical Engineering students design?
Ha! Not electrical, fortunately. I think it was a general intro to engineering.But it definitely got them thinking - and, I assume, researching.
Great comment :-) !! Ribbons all around.
Fran - Prof Snyder is an intellectual and perhaps for that reason he is more attuned to the intellectual aspects of JD Vance than I do.
In my opinion, Vance is of far less consequence than Trump despite his intellect and ideology, for the simple reason that Trump is unique in combining a determined drive to persuade his followers that black is white, that up is down, that strict and unquestioning obedience to TrumpThink somehow equates to "Liberation Day" for America. Vance is many times more articulate than his boss, but many times less charismatic.
Trump's peculiar superpower is his ability to persuade the lumpen-MAGA mob that the Emperor's new clothes are indeed stunning, despite all evidence to the contrary. Once Trump goes, "poof", the magic goes with him. The faithful will still wear their red hats but won't bother going to a Vance rally.
Worth meditating on, Fran -- your plural of ICE being ISIS.
Both rely on masses atavistic to go back to the most base, patriarchal tribalism.
Yes, Reggie, you've got the great new coinage: sadopopulism.
I would like to add that it is important to ridicule Trump and Vance. We should laugh at their crudeness. They are certainly dangerous, but they are also extremely laughable. Just think about that cabinet meeting where everyone kissed the president's backside. It's so ridiculous. We need more Charlie Chaplins to make fun of these morons.
Yes! Satire is a form of resistance. That's why Gavin Newsom is gathering steam, and the Lincoln Project team is infuriating tRump every day. They hold a mirror up to the ugly face of tRump and his fascist wannabees. Tim Snyder gives us hope. Satire gives us a release.
Yes, the three R's ... Resist, Refuse, Ridicule.
This is so true, and why I look forward to the kind of "coverage" the cabinet meetings and rallies get from the leading satirists of our day like John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart (and his whole Daily Show crew!), as well as our other leading commenters from Prof Snyder to the Bulwark, the Contrarians, Scott Galloway, Kara Fischer, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman... Chaplin paid dearly for his parody and satirical stances. That bravery is unfortunately needed more than ever today.
And Andy Borowitz.
And Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, all the staff of the Daily Show.
A takeoff of Chaplin in the famous scene from The Great Dictator
https://anntelnaes.substack.com/p/the-wannabe-dictator
Hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RhqTQfUagFM
"of Chaplin"? This is the straight stuff *by* Chaplin, straight from the movie, which I've seen several times. Just a misprint, I assume, but people may be misled by it.
Sorry, I misread it. And I don't know how to revise it as it stands.
"The Grat Dictator" redux! My favorite parodist of Trump was Alec Baldwin. His portrayals of Trump and his peculiar mannerisms during the 2016 campaign never failed to leave me in stitches. What made it so painfully funny was the kernel of truth he revealed: Trump is a phony, a fraud and a clown.
All true
But sadly, a huge amount of voters prioritise entertainment - and clowns are designed to entertain. Now, here we are - stuck in an ever escalating clown show
Thank you very much, Professor Snyder. Your Substack helps keep me centered rather than
swirling Into despair about our nation’s future.
Thank you for this essay on Labor Day.
Thank you, Prof.Snyder. I saw the picture of the head oligarch's banner at the Labor Dept and vomited. Instead you created words for us to ponder.
Thank you for the encouragement. We must keep resisting, speaking up, showing up, acting up-making good trouble!
I, too, notice that you are now saying frump and vance, Dr Snyder. Much more realistic I think. After all nobody believes that frump has the wherewithal to come up with all these antics on his own, but is merely the front ice piece for a cabal of very sick members of his cadre (miller??). I still keep hoping that we can somehow come up with an effective shadow cabinet to counteract the lack of truth of this administration. It seems that only exists among writers and thinkers on substack, etc. Thank you for your writing!
Yes. Aside from all that, Trump is 79. He may think he's immortal, but he's not. And he may think Don Jr. can win the presidency; I doubt it. Vance is next in line, though, and dangerous too.
"every act of kindness and solidarity".
My friend and I live in a mixed community. Public housing hidden away amidst wealth. We worked hard to get the city to recognize our levels of poverty (2 years) in order for our public housing buildings to be eligible for services and small grants. The local resource center agreed to help us reach out.,,,finally.
Five years later we have middle class people crossing the boundaries of fear to work on new gardens for our public housing buildings. More important the people in the buildings are joining in and taking over the management of the gardens and more! This week we have a large turnout to a BBQ to celebrate the end of the free soccer coaching for new teams of kids especially in public housing but others too. The field was full of kids from many countries and races. It took years to get that the kind of participation ...but reaching out, garnering resources for others builds resilience, showing care can leave a legacy for a better community. One woman said she had lived in one our public housing buildings for 25 years and she had never seen people pulling together as they do now.
I think it counts and encourage everyone to practice acts of caring even when it is out of our comfort zone.
Yes, those words - kindness and solidarity - are my guiding principles.
Kudos to your neighborhood! Very nice to hear those stories.
Full integration of neighborhoods and communities is a powerful challenge to bigotry and NIMBY thinking. Thank you for sharing some great news.
HI Kate.
Raj Chetty at Harvard has done big data studies on poverty and economic disparities. He shows that when mixed neighborhoods engage at schools, and events, it is a strong factor in breaking inter-generational poverty. At risk kids who are involved in sports teams have a 74% less chance of being involved in crime. In a kinder world, we would all be engaged in poverty reduction and thus crime prevention. My experience is that in the case of having poor neighbors, fear of the other is huge on both sides is a huge block to real engagement. NIMBYism can be changed when cities work with communities on Good Neighbor Agreements to reduce concerns on both sides. And they can fund champions of change in the community...many of whom live in public housing.
Thanks, Elizabeth!
Thank you for a great start to this Labor Day. Sitting home looking at the Capitol building from my window, I am am awed by our history and scared/worried for our future. I find your words a tremendous gift.
Quackery, incompetence, hostility to science & the rule of law as well as depraved indifference to human life are assets & qualification for high office in Trumpworld.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87JNkoyoWOc
The Guard are getting important raking practice so they're prepared to fight wildfires?
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lxq63apa7k24
#Resist authoritarianism & #Vote Blue!
Words to live by. Thank you for your guidance and clarity of purpose.
A calm and yet powerful plea for us to keep forging ahead, peacefully, with determination. Your voice sustains us.
Thank you for this brilliant, clear analysis of what we are immersed in now. I have been missing your commentary. Having read, studied your two slim volumes, I so appreciate this current view of what we are going through and what we are called to. Bless you, Dr. Snyder!