At the risk of overstating it, the contempt of Democrats for contemporary derivatives of the "Southern Strategy" is such that many left progressives have rolled an obscure academic meaning of "whiteness" into their quotidian political rhetoric. It is not at all clear that this is working out for them politically, and I predict a shift away from it, although I also think that shift has been deferred by the persistence of Trump as a factor in national politics.
"Richard Nixon saw the wave forming and positioned himself to catch a ride." As a retired professor of English, I'm qualified to say that Brands has a way with language which makes his books and essays fun to read. Maybe in a previous reincarnation LOL, he was an English professor and then later became a history prof.
On this day after the Fourth of July, on one level “Fashions in Politics” is a tight summary of 247 years of American history in one essay. Well done.
It has driven me to re-open my copy of Johnathan Haidt’s 2012 work “The Righteous Mind,” and wonder: have his findings and conclusions stated there in 2012 been with and among us since 1812. Had he researched and written in 1812 as he did in 2012, would he have come to the same end?
I was also prompted to re-read Prof. Brands’ July 3 offering “Climate and Population.”
In his book, Haidt summed “Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.” And then concluded “... why people are divided by politics and religion. The answer is not, as Manichaeans would have it, because some people are good and others are evil. Instead, the explanation is that our minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult—but not impossible—to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.”
At the risk of overstating it, the contempt of Democrats for contemporary derivatives of the "Southern Strategy" is such that many left progressives have rolled an obscure academic meaning of "whiteness" into their quotidian political rhetoric. It is not at all clear that this is working out for them politically, and I predict a shift away from it, although I also think that shift has been deferred by the persistence of Trump as a factor in national politics.
"Richard Nixon saw the wave forming and positioned himself to catch a ride." As a retired professor of English, I'm qualified to say that Brands has a way with language which makes his books and essays fun to read. Maybe in a previous reincarnation LOL, he was an English professor and then later became a history prof.
On this day after the Fourth of July, on one level “Fashions in Politics” is a tight summary of 247 years of American history in one essay. Well done.
It has driven me to re-open my copy of Johnathan Haidt’s 2012 work “The Righteous Mind,” and wonder: have his findings and conclusions stated there in 2012 been with and among us since 1812. Had he researched and written in 1812 as he did in 2012, would he have come to the same end?
I was also prompted to re-read Prof. Brands’ July 3 offering “Climate and Population.”
In his book, Haidt summed “Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.” And then concluded “... why people are divided by politics and religion. The answer is not, as Manichaeans would have it, because some people are good and others are evil. Instead, the explanation is that our minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult—but not impossible—to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.”
I wonder.