Letters from an American… the appalling history of racism and anti-labor sentiments…

… from a very long time conservatives have fanned the flames of fear of socialism and black and brown men… we have lived in a society of patriarchal white supremacy for the entire history of the country… we have reached a critical point in which minorities will soon overtake the patriarchal white majority in numbers… we are experiencing and existential reaction to that fact…

Beginning in 1871, they argued that they had no objection to their Black neighbors on racial grounds. What they objected to, they said, was that these folks, newly out of enslavement, were poor. White leaders claimed that the South remained in a recession not because India and Egypt had taken over the cotton market during the war, but because Black southerners were lazy and hoped to use their new political power to redistribute the wealth of white landowners into their own pockets.

Republicans’ fear of workers grew. Organized laborers “are agrarians, levelers, revolutionists, inciters of anarchy, and, in fact, promoters of indiscriminate pillage and murder,” the _Boston Evening Transcript_ charged. The _Philadelphia Inquirer_ insisted the redistribution of wealth through law appealed to poor, lazy, vicious men who would rather steal from the nation’s small farmers and mechanics than work themselves. _Scribner’s Monthly_warned in italics: “_the interference of ignorant labor with politics is dangerous to society_.”

Stephen King on What Authentic Maine Cuisine Means to Him

When people think of Maine cuisine, they tend to think first of clams and lobster. Never cared for clams myself; they always looked to me like snot in a shell. Lobster is tasty, but I ate too much of it as a kid. My mom was on a perpetual budget, and she’d buy day-old (or two-day-old) lobster at the IGA in Lisbon Falls. Some of those bugs were still moving, but not that many. She made lobster rolls, and there was often a pot of lobster stew simmering on the stove. She’d hide it in the oven if someone came visiting because, in those days, lobster stew was “poor food.”

Eric Adams declares state of emergency amid migrant arrivals… mayor of NYC Eric Adams declaring a state of emergency over the influx of asylum seekers being bused up from border states… pleads with congress and state lawmakers to act and provide assistance… is the political theater of bussing asylum seekers north working?…

How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany #nazism #fascism… this article about Hitler’s rise to power and how it compares to the current political situation in the U.S. is a must read…

… the big lie…

During its first four years, Weimar was under constant attack—above all, from the Big Lie that the republic was a totally illegitimate government because it owed its genesis to a “stab in the back” delivered on the home front.

… exploitation of the masses through the big lie…

Not just Hitler and the Nazis but the entire German right latched on to this message and promoted it. Two factors distinguished Hitler from the rest of the German right. First was his self-awareness and cool calculation in deploying the Big Lie. In _Mein Kampf_, published in 1925–26, he explained that “the masses _…_more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one,” and that even a propaganda claim “so impudent that people thought it insane” could ultimately prevail.

… failure to impose the appropriate consequences…

Most important, what both conservative politicians and a conservative judiciary in Bavaria failed to do was rid themselves of this dangerous agitator by expelling him from the country as an unwelcome convicted felon of Austrian citizenship. Instead, they—and eventually the old-guard establishment right throughout Germany—enabled his improbable political comeback.

… doesn’t that sound familiar?…

Hitler’s lesson from the failed putsch was that he needed to pursue revolution through “the politics of legality” rather than storm Munich City Hall. The Nazis would use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.

… hmmmm…

By January 1933, Germany’s old guard saw that they were not remotely competitive in any election without the Nazi base, and opted to have Hitler legally appointed chancellor (or first minister). But because non-Nazi conservatives still held eight of 11 cabinet positions in the new government, they persisted in their delusion that they could control him—or, as some might say in today’s parlance, that they could preserve the “guardrails” that would contain him.

… double hmmmm…

Within five months, Germany was a one-party dictatorship and a police state.

… what author Christopher R. Browning goes on to say is that what the U.S. is most likely heading for, if the effort succeeds, is a managed democracy, an illiberal democracy ala Viktor Orban… he points to built-in vlunerabilities of the American political system… the Electoral College and the Senate both favor parts of the country where conservatives are strong… sophisticated gerrymandering, ruthlessly deployed, has given Republicans advantage in key states… and Trump plots revenge…

… and then there is this…

The GOP has now embraced an accelerated strategy of legal revolution to control the outcome of future elections. This fall, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear _Moore v. Harper_, which concerns the power of the judicial branch in North Carolina to protect the state constitution’s guarantee of free and fair elections by overturning a gerrymandered congressional redistricting map. The state-court ruling was stayed so that the Supreme Court could hear arguments and rule on the claims of the “independent state legislature doctrine,” according to which the elections and electors clauses of the Constitution vest sole authority in state legislatures to determine the manner in which federal elections are held and presidential electors selected (absent any specific mandate of federal law passed by Congress). A ruling in favor of the independent state legislature doctrine would leave gerrymandered state legislatures in total control over federal elections, unchecked by any other branch of state government.

Just as von Hindenburg and the rest of Weimar’s old guard chose complicity with Hitler’s Big Lie, dooming Germany’s interwar democracy, today’s Republican faithful are going along with Trump’s Big Lie, which casts Biden’s Democrats as the November criminals of 2020 and Trump himself as the patriotic defender of American freedom. America is not Weimar, Trump is not Hitler, Republicans are not Nazis, yet the fate of this republic hangs in the balance.