Remember when Rick Perry became Energy Secretary, a Department he had wanted to eliminate during his presidential bid, was astonished to discover at his confirmation hearing that he had complete authority over the nation’s nuclear stockpile?
The sad fact is that schools stopped teaching social studies for a generation, or two. A depressing percentage of the population have no idea how government works.
Bloomberg Opinion Today: There are still millions who see Trump as not only a success but also the unfairly deposed savior of the country. Their brains have been poisoned by the lies of Trump and his enablers, amplified in social-media echo chambers. And too many Americans lack the basic civic education that might have inoculated them against such dangerous nonsense, writes Andrea Gabor. The immediate danger is that the Capitol attack will likely inspire copycat events around the country and the world, warns Tyler Cowen, citing a long, depressing history. That makes it all the more important that the perpetrators face real consequences.
The Interpreter: Police failures at the Capitol — The who, when and why are important, and still emerging. But there are also structural forces that set it in motion long before the events of last week. And the key to understanding those is to see the United States as an ethnocracy, a country in which institutions traditionally serve the interests of a politically dominant ethnic group, said Kate Cronin-Furman, a political scientist at University College London who studies ethnocracies and mass atrocities. (Other examples of ethnocratic states include apartheid South Africa, Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Burmese-majority Myanmar and Sinhalese-majority Sri Lanka.)
This was not an insurrection, it was a livestreamed social media white fantasy.
They’d chosen their costumes with great care: some ridiculous American caveman cosplay or a patriotic Pinterest outfit with a new hat they thought made them look cute for their selfies that captured them looting and destroying and damaging and assaulting.
Most did not make an attempt to conceal their identities: a product of how emboldened they felt in this aggression, how unafraid of accountability they were, and the story they’d told themselves about how righteous they imagined their cause, as they committed a deadly act of collective terrorism against the very heart of our democracy.
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But the question decent Americans are asking today is the same one we were asking on January 6th, the same one we’ve been asking since November of 2016:
a revolution of what?
What precisely were they overthrowing?What exactly were they protesting?How specifically had this nation so grievously wronged them?
As critical as those questions are, they are a fruitless endeavor, because the truth of the matter is—they would not be capable of a response.
This was a nothing revolution: an empty display of cheap anger formed in staggering privilege, made of fake oppression, inflamed by a massive lie—and directed toward a man who fully embodies them: one who has had everything in this life handed to him and is perpetually outraged when he cannot have more.
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It was a marvel to see the absolute most privileged humans walking the planet still manage to convince themselves that they’re oppressed—to be culpable for a murderous act of terrorism and to somehow be even more defiant after it.
History will record and quantify the events of January 6th, but it will tell a very different story than the one playing in the heads of the perpetrators and of their disgraced, emotionally bankrupt white messiah.
kaffekup over 3 years ago
Don’t expect your hearing until after Jan 20, Winslow. The Senate is slow-walking everything for the new administration.
quixotic3 over 3 years ago
Remember when Rick Perry became Energy Secretary, a Department he had wanted to eliminate during his presidential bid, was astonished to discover at his confirmation hearing that he had complete authority over the nation’s nuclear stockpile?
Surprise! What a way to run a country!
nosirrom over 3 years ago
Why is Stantis running a strip from 4 years ago? /s
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
The sad fact is that schools stopped teaching social studies for a generation, or two. A depressing percentage of the population have no idea how government works.
Bloomberg Opinion Today: There are still millions who see Trump as not only a success but also the unfairly deposed savior of the country. Their brains have been poisoned by the lies of Trump and his enablers, amplified in social-media echo chambers. And too many Americans lack the basic civic education that might have inoculated them against such dangerous nonsense, writes Andrea Gabor. The immediate danger is that the Capitol attack will likely inspire copycat events around the country and the world, warns Tyler Cowen, citing a long, depressing history. That makes it all the more important that the perpetrators face real consequences.
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
The Interpreter: Police failures at the Capitol — The who, when and why are important, and still emerging. But there are also structural forces that set it in motion long before the events of last week. And the key to understanding those is to see the United States as an ethnocracy, a country in which institutions traditionally serve the interests of a politically dominant ethnic group, said Kate Cronin-Furman, a political scientist at University College London who studies ethnocracies and mass atrocities. (Other examples of ethnocratic states include apartheid South Africa, Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Burmese-majority Myanmar and Sinhalese-majority Sri Lanka.)
StackableContainers over 3 years ago
Not clear what the commentary is here. No ignorance has been displayed by any of Biden picks.
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
“Impeachment was great, but there really is no more perfect way for this to end than Trump stiffing Rudy.” — Seth Meyers
librarian4hire over 3 years ago
A Revolution of Nothing
This was not an insurrection, it was a livestreamed social media white fantasy.
They’d chosen their costumes with great care: some ridiculous American caveman cosplay or a patriotic Pinterest outfit with a new hat they thought made them look cute for their selfies that captured them looting and destroying and damaging and assaulting.
Most did not make an attempt to conceal their identities: a product of how emboldened they felt in this aggression, how unafraid of accountability they were, and the story they’d told themselves about how righteous they imagined their cause, as they committed a deadly act of collective terrorism against the very heart of our democracy.
+++++
But the question decent Americans are asking today is the same one we were asking on January 6th, the same one we’ve been asking since November of 2016:
a revolution of what?
What precisely were they overthrowing?What exactly were they protesting?How specifically had this nation so grievously wronged them?
As critical as those questions are, they are a fruitless endeavor, because the truth of the matter is—they would not be capable of a response.
This was a nothing revolution: an empty display of cheap anger formed in staggering privilege, made of fake oppression, inflamed by a massive lie—and directed toward a man who fully embodies them: one who has had everything in this life handed to him and is perpetually outraged when he cannot have more.
+++++
It was a marvel to see the absolute most privileged humans walking the planet still manage to convince themselves that they’re oppressed—to be culpable for a murderous act of terrorism and to somehow be even more defiant after it.
History will record and quantify the events of January 6th, but it will tell a very different story than the one playing in the heads of the perpetrators and of their disgraced, emotionally bankrupt white messiah.
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/01/10/a-nothing-revolution/