Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 Will tomorrow's debate tip the scales in this inexplicably close election? Maybe. But in the end, it all comes down to the same question: Do people want to go back to the negative, chaotic Trump years and spend four more of them dealing with his rage, revenge and retribution?  We won't find out until the votes are counted. 

Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 With slightly more than a month until Election Day, the polls show that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are basically tied. Political scientists, historians, and other experts are describing the 2024 presidential election as one of the closest in modern American history. For those outside of the so-called MAGAverse, Trump’s popularity, even after more than eight years, remains a riddle. Unfortunately, the future of American democracy may be decided by their inability to break the Trump Code. The mainstream news media’s failure to decipher Trumpism has repeatedly led them to normalize the wantonly corrupt ex-president’s extremely malignant behavior.

In her new book “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right,” leading sociologist and author Arlie Hochschild has taken on the task of trying to explain Trump’s powerful appeal for and power over “white working class” voters and other downwardly mobile Americans. She argues that Trump speaks to their grievances, pain, rage, and feelings of lost pride, manhood, purpose and honor.

 By Michael Scherer

Updated September 28, 2024 at 10:30 a.m. EDT|Published September 28, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Shortly after Kamala Harris took control of Joe Biden’s campaign, her top advisers began holding senior staff meetings unlike any that had happened before.

New strategists appeared on Zoom calls with the Wilmington brass, and a transformed decision-making process took over. The competing power centers that had defined Biden’s world — a headquarters staff, a White House operation and a coterie of Biden loyalists who operated with one foot outside both structures — had been flattened into a single high council, reporting to a single boss, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who spoke most days with the candidate.

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Harris blessed the unified structure, giving O’Malley Dillon the power to hire and direct a new layer of top talent from Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns for president. The vice president also gave marching orders: I don’t care where you are coming from, she told the new team, according to a person familiar with the statements. We don’t have time for drama. We will just do what we need to do.

-From the WaPost

Hurricane Helene

 Hurricane Helene is about to make landfall in Florida.  Its path will apparently take dead thru Georgia.  In any event, I seldom get concerned about weather unless it's heading toward me.

 

Shared with Your friends

My memory is not what it used to be. This morning I discovered a marvelous technique for improving my memory. I have stopped listening to people. Immediately less crap to remember. When I go out I get tired of having to return to the house searching for something I forgot. This morning I started to get out of the car at Starbucks thank goodness reaching to make sure I had my billfold only to discover I forgot my pants. Luckily I made it back without exposing myself.

 At Starbucks this morning the Pelham Chief of Police comes and goes, picking up his order like he does most mornings. I recognize William Faulkner's birthday (September 25th) like the good Southerner that I am. The past isn't dead. It isn't even past. I have visited Rowan Oak several times. One of our favorite Southern pastimes is following the path of the latest hurricane as it rips northward. Time again! September I always remember. We Southerners like to remember yes we do.

On Dickens

 Read at least one Charles Dickens novel toward personal fulfillment and know it well. I prefer "Great Expectations," but your choice. When the words Pip and Miss Havisham come up, and they will eventually come up if you hang out with the right crowd, you will be ready to impress. Being literate seems to not be as popular as it once was, sadly, but it's still important in my world.

 

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Are you occasionally disappointed by your life? Well, what did you expect? Did you think this world was made just for you, that everything would always turn out for the best? If so, I suggest you might want to reconsider

 The world has not passed me by, but parts of it have passed me by, and I have no regrets. I stay true to things I know are still true. Substance over show. Print over digital for concentrated thought and deliberation. Character and consistency for the long run. An old fashioned substantive attention span. Breeding and family. Sticking to priorities. The long run rather over the short run. Things like this.

 It is obvious that most American voters do not wish to be informed voters. They are content to vote in their preconceived ignorance & prejudice. Low information voters? For sure but more and more no information voters.

 

Don’t Get Psyched Out! Trump Is an Evil Buffoon, Not an Evil Genius. 

The final weeks of this campaign will be hard fought. Now’s not the time to be jumping at shadows.-From The New Republic

 

In the three and a half years since Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Americans have come to learn how much Christian nationalism played a role in the riot. What is less known, however, is how the fringe Christian movement the New Apostolic Reformation dominated and shaped the effort to overturn the 2020 election. The group, once considered extreme even by most white evangelicals, was instrumental in organizing and spurring the crowd that stormed the Capitol that day. 

In his book "The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy," religious studies scholar Dr. Matthew Taylor explores how this group of self-proclaimed "prophets" and "apostles" became central to the MAGA movement and, eventually, an attempted coup. He spoke with Salon about this poorly understood fringe religious group and why they matter so much to Trump.

One of the things that is distinct about independent charismatic sector of Christianity is that people believe in modern-day apostles and prophets. This is not something that mainstream denominations recognize. Wagner became convinced that he was an apostle. He surrounded himself with these modern-day prophets. When he talked about the New Apostolic Reformation, he saw a change like the Protestant Reformation that would have a lasting impact and become a new branch of Christianity. By the early 21st century, that group of leaders became increasingly radicalized around American politics, increasingly fixated on visions of taking over society. They embraced a prophecy called the Seven Mountain Mandate. Sarah Palin was mentored by one of these prophets in Wagner's networks. They really believe they're this vanguard that God had placed on Earth to bring about the Kingdom of God. They want a global revival and to take over whole societies and turn them into Christian nations.

The NAR leaders had a theology that was primed for a figure like Trump. They were some of the first Christian leaders to embrace him, to endorse him. They created the theologies and the propaganda that made Trump palatable to broader American evangelicalism. They became some of his closest advisers and helped structure a lot of the policy during the Trump era. They truly believed that God had willed Trump to win the 2020 election. They had hundreds of prophecies about that idea. When Trump refused to concede, all these prophets and apostles decided that it was that their prophecies were not wrong, but that God was going to intervene in a miraculous way to reinstate Donald Trump. They started a mass spiritual warfare campaign, mobilizing charismatic Christians. to pray against the demons that they believed were stealing the election. That spiritual warfare campaign was a major factor in the Christians who showed up on January 6.

Salon.com

 Gore Vidal was correct when he damningly observed that the American people do not have a memory of the last week. “We are the United States of Amnesia," the famed novelist concluded. "We learn nothing because we remember nothing.” Given America’s state of hyperpolitics, the black hole that is the attention economy spurned on the 24/7 news media, and a public that is not able to concentrate longer than a goldfish, Vidal now looks much too generous. 

This absence of memory is especially true for White America and its understanding, or lack thereof, of the realities of the color line and its impact on America’s past and present. The real and complex history of the United States, and how it was and continues to be shaped by racism and white supremacy is systemically whitewashed and distorted in the nation's schools and culture. This is a form of psychological and emotional abuse for Black and brown people whose history and life experiences are erased in service of protecting white privilege and the many lies that sustain it. 

Such acts of racial erasure eventually damage the minds, morals and ethics of white people — and in particular white children. As such it is a threat to American democracy. It is an attempt to deny the American people the lessons of the Black Freedom Struggle and Civil Rights Movement, two of the most successful pro-democracy movements in U.S. history. 

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 

In case you're wondering what to get me for my birthday, here are some suggestions.

1) A bullet-proof vest, flexible and washable.

2) A case of Mt. Dew

3) A sturdy walker which won't tip me over in the rain.

4) A Bob Dylan mask/disguise for Halloween

5) A fleet of paper airplanes

6) $100,000 but if that's above your means whatever is in your

heart

 It's not exactly going to be easy for the Republicans this time. People know what they're up to and the Democrats are prepared with legal responses every step of the way. Luckily the voters have managed to keep the most powerful would-be usurpers out of office and Congress set up some serious roadblocks. And Trump isn't president so he won't have the government available to do his bidding. But if the election is very close and it ends up in the Supreme Court as Bush v. Gore did, there is a very good chance they will hand the presidency to him. They clearly have no care for whatever legitimacy they once had.

-Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 Well, that was predictable.

After a convention speech that had Democrats buzzing about how she had taken control of the race, and after a lopsided debate that seemed like it should have put the election away, Kamala Harris finds herself with only a slight lead over Donald Trump in the latest polls — and effectively tied in the most pivotal states. And now we’ve reached the stage of the fall where Democrats freak out and get furious at all the voters who must either be brain-dead or racist, and at an equivocating news media that should be making it clear how terrible Trump is, even though all the media does is talk about how terrible Trump is.

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It’s a good moment to take a step back. Because there’s some hard reality reasserting itself here for Democrats, but also reason to think you’d still rather be Harris than Trump.

Matt Bai in the WaPOST

(This is my point of view.  Trumpers are either brain-dead or purely fascist)

 Harris has benefitted in a upsurge of polling nationally and in battleground states, but it's still very close.  The race is up for grabs, and who knows what Republicans will do to steal the vote.

Mike Lofgren in Salon.com

 Readers of my previous articles here will have noticed a heavy focus on history: historical periods as intriguing analogies to current events; distorted history as propaganda; history as warning; perhaps above all, the question of who gets to control our history.

Contrary to the common belief, Americans are not less historically conscious than Europeans; in fact, the reverse is true. The Franco-Prussian War or the Italian wars of unification were roughly contemporaneous with the American Civil War, yet the former events are largely relegated to academic works, whereas the latter continues to create an unending flood of popular overviews, biographies and unit histories — with Abraham Lincoln being the most written-about figure in American history.

 Regardless of what polls show movement up and down, it's going to be close in November.

Brian Karem in Salon.com

 Republicans are openly proud of their lies — but our disdain for the truth is bipartisan

Nobody’s making it easy for anyone these days.

Let’s start with Donald Trump. The former president still won’t accept he lost the 2020 election, he lies about immigrants eating pets and continues his baseless claims that women are carrying fetuses full term – only to kill them after they are born. He's also an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, but that’s another story.

The rampant stupidity and numb ignorance from him is frightening. But Trump is just the vanguard for political hatred and violence

David French in the NYT

 I knew that MAGA was going to take this torch and carry it as far as it possibly could. And they did it in that particular way that MAGA interacts with the larger world, with this sense of gleeful transgression. They have fun being outrageous. They have fun being provocative. They like to “trigger the libs.” What MAGA is very good at doing is turning around back to its own people and saying, “See, we struck a nerve.” They’ll use words like, “If you’re taking flack, it means you’re over the target.” And so they use the backlash almost as proof that they’ve hit a nerve and all of this just creates an endless process of doubling down.

And one thing that I think that liberals tend to miss about the MAGA movement is they miss its underlying sense of community and its joy. So there is a strong sense of belonging within MAGA and they have a great time being MAGA. If you’re on the outside, you see MAGA as almost entirely an angry movement. And so this idea that it’s also a lot of fun and fellowship, that is something you don’t see at all. But if you’re on the inside of it, is one of its most dominant characteristics.

The people who are in on the joke, the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

The Big Lie II is coming.

 I get phone calls everyday that come with a scam alert. Too bad there isn't a comparable scam alert with people. As soon as the person says a word you somehow get a scam alert. It would certainly save time.

Salon.com

 "Gutfeld!" Wednesday, complaining once again that the ABC News debate moderators bothered to fact-check him while falsely claiming that the debate audience "went crazy" for his performance. Host Greg Gutfeld chose not to fact-check Trump over the fact that there was no debate audience whatsoever, per the rules set by ABC News and agreed to by both campaigns.

"They didn’t correct her once,” Trump complained, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. “And they corrected me, everything I said, practically. I think nine times or 11 times. And the audience was absolutely — they went crazy.”

MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes argued that the Republican candidate's remark validated concerns about his age and mental capacity.

"Trump talking about 'the audience' at the debate (where there famously was no audience) is more delusional and unsettling than any moment of Joe Biden misspeaking all year and it’s not close," Hayes wrote on social media.

Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 Trump's been getting away with scams, cons and crimes his entire life and always wriggles out of them. A new book by New York Times reporters Ross Beutner and Suzanne Craig called "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered his Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success" says it all about Trump's long history of fraudulent business failures and his unique ability to convince people to keep giving him money anyway. They point out that Trump has had two big financial windfalls in his life, neither of them based on even the slightest talent for business. The first came via his daddy, who bankrolled him for decades with hundreds of millions of dollars and bailed him out repeatedly. He did manage some early success with Trump Tower and a couple of other buildings on which he'd been partnered with some people who knew what they were doing. But apparently, that was when the narcissism really kicked in so he bought into his own hype. He never listened to anyone ever again and virtually everything he touched — casinos, an airline, a football league, buildings in Chicago, a development for the world's tallest building in Manhattan, money-losing golf resorts, all of it — failed.

The second windfall came from "The Apprentice" which was picked up by NBC at a moment when Trump badly needed money. The illusion of wealth the show sold to America helped Trump cash in with an exclusive product placement deal that brought in a ton of money. (He even cheated his collaborator Mark Burnett, the producer who created the show, but they were all making money so they just let him do it.) Trump's personal licensing deals — the steaks, the vodka, the ties etc. — apparently never made much money, however.

 A sense of humor is indispensable in today's crazy world to pull you thru the confusion. It won't pay the bills and help you with the IRS and difficult coworkers, but a sense of humor can keep you from taking some things too seriously deservedly so.

 Trumpean rhetoric and his kind of lies have broken the political life in this country so profoundly that it is unrecognizable to anyone who was alive to see the campaigns of John F. Kennedy, both the Bushes, Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama. Beginning in 2015, violent rhetoric and actual violence entered our politics in the words and actions of one man, Donald Trump.

Down became up and up became down and unbalanced became the new normal.

 Trump—who has been accused of interfering with the 2020 presidential election, called his political enemies “vermin,” promised to imprison his opponents, vowed to begin the largest deportations in the history of the United States, and spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs—is now accusing the other side of going too far by … pointing out that he did any of these things. 

Statements from Harris appeared on the list three times, and President Joe Biden six times. The campaign wrote that Harris had repeatedly called Trump “a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”

The list also included statements from politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, with a link to him speaking about “weird” MAGA Republicans. “Are they a threat to democracy? Yes,” said Walz. “Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. Are they going to put people’s lives in danger? Yes.”

From The New Republic

 Recent attempts in the mainstream media to understand and explain wonky matters have been embarrassing failures—a dereliction that shares strands of DNA with its tendency to tidy up Trump’s constant barrage of nonsense. A prime example can be found in one of the stories that provoked the sanewashing conversation: the Associated Press’s recapof Trump’s appearance at the Economic Club of New York last week, in which he offered up several paragraphs of word salad in lieu of a discussion of child poverty. The straight story of what happened was a naggingly simple one: Trump dodged a question about child poverty in order to pivot to what he wanted to talk about—tariffs—and shoehorn in his preferred talking points. He did this less artfully than many politicians, but it would have been sufficient to simply say he did not bother to answer the question he was asked.

But the AP didn’t opt for the straight story, and instead constructed a world rivaling George R.R. Martin. In the AP’s version of cloud-cuckoo-land, Trump explicated an innovative idea, in which the proceeds from our trade wars would facilitate bountiful childcare benefits … somehow.It’s bad enough that the AP did all this heavy lifting just to make it appear that Trump used complete English-language sentences in a speech. But considerably more effort was expended here to convert several minutes of sundowner gobbledygook into an allegedly earnest policy proposal. To get there, these reporters had to ignore a vast amount of information and experience, including knowledge of the policies that Republicans have actually supported and the informed opinions of actual experts.

The reality is that what will happen in Trump’s second term looks more like this: These tariffs get applied. American consumers pay more money for goods. The money goes into federal coffers. And the GOP passes (and Trump signs) budget packages that include massive tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, alongside massive cuts to funding for social services.

Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 If you feel as if American politics have taken yet another deep dive into the Trump show maelstrom, you aren't alone. This past week has been a chaotic whirlwind of lies, false accusations, lurid scandals and even a foiled assassination plot. Even the sleaziest reality show wouldn't have the nerve to script something like this.

The assassination plot that capped off the week took place on Sunday at Trump's Palm Beach golf club where the Secret Service reportedly spotted a man with a rifle in the bushes at one of the holes and shot at him, setting off a chase which concluded in his arrest. It's still early, but a cursory look at his background appears to show the man's politics were all over the place, from voting for Trump to giving donations to Democrats, and then begging Nikki Haley to team up with Vivek Ramaswamy to compete for the presidential nomination. At one time, he tried to be involved with recruiting foreign volunteers to fight in Ukraine, but nobody took him seriously.

They aren't going to let this go, at least until they find a new outrage with which to entertain their supporters and distract from the fact that Trump is deteriorating more everyday and JD Vance isn't ready for prime time.

Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 The Age of Trump is accidental. Project 2025, Trump’s own Agenda 47, and the other plans to make him a dictator on “day one” of his presidency to end multiracial pluralistic democracy are part of a much older and larger project. For decades, the American right has been developing a revolutionary campaign to radically transform American society to make it less democratic and to further concentrate power in the hands of a relatively small number of rich white “Christian” men. 

At its core, democracy means the ability of citizens to exercise effective political agency and power in their society. Today’s Republicans and so-called conservatives fundamentally reject that principle. They want to return the United States to the Gilded Age — if not before — as they transform the country into a new apartheid Christofascist plutocracy. 

The American (and global) right’s revolutionary project to end multiracial pluralistic democracy involves taking over not just the political realm but every aspect of society from culture to technology to the economy and education. The right-wing and its neofascists and other authoritarians know that by controlling the country’s educational system they can create compliant citizens who will be drones, trained to obey and not to practice critical thinking or otherwise resist the powerful. The struggle for America’s future and its democracy is taking place in America’s classrooms today.

"This is an existential election. It is even more so than in 2020 because Trump has surrounded himself with a group of advisors and policymakers who are very serious about ending democracy."

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of Erasing History: How Fascists Change the Past to Control the Future. In this conversation, he explains the role that education plays in a democratic community and how colleges and universities can better defend themselves against attacks by the Trumpists, neofascists, "conservatives," and other enemies of democracy and freedom. The myth of “liberal higher education,” Stanley notes, is belied by the fact that neofascists such as Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attended some of the country’s most elite universities yet are now working to undermine and delegitimate such institutions. Stanley also reflects on how the right-wing has weaponized such concepts as DEI and free speech in their campaign against education and democracy.

Stanley has a warning for liberals and progressives: Do not fall into the trap of being useful idiots by engaging in political debate with intellectually dishonest people during this time of ascendant fascism.

How are you feeling? How are you making sense of where we are in the story that is the Age of Trump now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party nominee? 

This is an existential election. It is even more so than in 2020 because Trump has surrounded himself with a group of advisors and policymakers who are very serious about ending democracy. With Project 2025, Trump's own Agenda 47, and other plans, they are ready from day one of his regime to move to authoritarianism. It's “all hands on deck” right now. There is really no excuse for not being involved in this election. The choice between Harris and Trump is the most important election in the world right now. 

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Joy is not a strategy. That having been said, joy and hope can help to power the Democrats and the larger pro-democracy movement to victory over Trump and the other neofascists. I am worried that too many people are too happy much too soon because Harris is the nominee which means they may not be willing to do the hard work now to defeat Trumpism. Given their premature exuberance, they may be brought crashing down to earth once the reality of how close the election is going to be finally sets in. If Trump wins it may break them psychologically and emotionally. This is a war, not a battle; it will likely last decades. That is the approach that is necessary for the pro-democracy movement. Help me balance my pessimism and optimism. 

It’s nice to feel a little joy and to not run an election solely on the fear that the opposition will win, in this case, Trump and the MAGA Republicans and the other anti-democratic forces. I think it's motivating. We need to do two things simultaneously. We need to give people hope, and we need to warn them of the dangers. I like the focus on freedom from the Democrats. Authoritarianism requires a culture of fear, and that's why the fascists erase history and are targeting our schools and educational programs and harassing teachers. We need to counter that atmosphere of fear and intimidation with one of joy and hope — and we must do it very quickly because we are running out of time. 

The Democratic National Convention was a type of pedagogical event. The Obamas for example, really did some powerful public teaching about democracy and competing visions of freedom. This is going to be the theme from Kamala Harris and the Democrats going forward. The American people are experiencing a national “teachable moment” about democratic theory. I worry that many of them are not able to appreciate or apply properly. 

The Democrats are running the election on a classic philosophical topic, which is the difference between negative and positive freedom. Freedom "from" versus freedom "to". So, as Obama said in his speech, the billionaire class thinks of freedom as freedom from taxes and freedom from regulation. Freedom to or positive liberty is the freedom a person will have if they are free to pursue their life goals without obstacles. It is not possible for people to pursue their life goals if they are burdened with debt, or don’t have health insurance unless they take the first job that comes to them. In this framework, the Republican and larger right-wing conception of freedom is not really freedom, it is something else that when taken to its logical conclusion is antidemocratic because true freedom is only available to those who have the wealth, money, and power to exercise it. 

From this right-wing and neoliberal point of view, the only agency that a citizen has is through the so-called free market. We are seeing this play out with how the Republicans and “conservatives” are so adamantly opposed to eliminating student debt. They want to force people to look at work and survival as their main roles in society as opposed to thinking about being active democratic citizens. Americans are so laden with debt that they cannot truly be free. Moreover, the free market, especially in this late capitalist regime, is far from “free.” It is actually a system of monopoly capitalism that is anti-free markets because the very richest individuals and corporations can rig the system to their advantage. Autocrats and authoritarians can take control of such a system because its players truly believe they can make a bargain with them. Look at Russia. Vladimir Putin showed the plutocrats how he is in control and if they don’t support him then they will have their money and perhaps even lives taken away. If Trump takes power the billionaires and other plutocrats will have to bend their knee to him as well –- and he knows it and is planning on it.

The American right has always been leery of universities. This is true of the United States and other countries as well. Universities are supposed to be political. They're supposed to be places where hegemonic power and ideologies are challenged and criticized. At its best, the university is supposed to be an engine of democracy that prepares people with the tools to participate as citizens who have an input on the laws and policies that govern them. By comparison, the right wing just wants universities to be glorified job training programs.

How do you make sense of the myth of liberal higher education and how it is supposedly overrun by Marxists and Communists? 

It is right out of the Nazi political playbook. Hitler argues that all democratic institutions, such as the news media, the entertainment sector, the schools and universities are run by Marxists. In essence, anything democratic is labeled Marxist. I teach at Yale University. There are not many orthodox Marxists here. That is certain. Elite universities are stocked with centrist liberals who voted for Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders had almost no support at elite institutions. Today’s Republicans are largely anti-intellectual fascists, which explains why you do not see many of them as faculty or in leadership roles at good colleges or universities. Thus, the irony if you want to describe it as such: many of the leaders of the American fascist movement went to elite universities. Ron DeSantis went to Yale and Harvard. JD Vance graduated from Yale Law. Ted Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard. Their kids are going to go to Yale and Harvard and Princeton and other Ivies, but they want your kids to be trained by Prager University.

DeSantis and Vance and that ilk want to maintain these elite institutions and the social capital they confer. But the bigger plan is to shape elite institutions of higher education to fit their right-wing extreme ideology and agenda. Many of our universities are being intimidated by the right-wing in what is an example of “anticipatory obedience.” We saw this with their surrender to the right-wing reaction to the Gaza student protests. Elite institutions are ultimately about power; the elite of our society comes from institutions such as Yale and Harvard. The elite authoritarians are going to send their children to these institutions for that very reason.

When you saw the huge pile of banned books on such topics as race, gender, and sexuality that were thrown out like garbage when DeSantis’s people took over the New College of Florida, what were you thinking?

I saw the mass book burnings by the Nazis in 1933. 

What specific suggestions do you have for America’s colleges and universities in this time of democracy crisis? And for liberals and progressives more broadly?

First, this must be viewed as a war against democracy by the right-wing and the other fascists, illiberals, and authoritarians. In a war, you do not enable or help the other side. For example, you do not engage in conversations based on “mutual respect” and “the free exchange of ideas” and such niceties and quaint idealized assumptions with enemies of democracy. They only say they want a conversation because they want to get a foot in the door to take over. If you don’t realize that – and here I am speaking to so many liberals and progressives – then you are being used as dupes by these right-wingers. You're complicit. There once were intellectually honest conservatives. I hope they return. Today’s conservatives and Republicans do not care about “tradition” or “norms.” They want to up-end everything. It is a radical movement. Today’s “conservatives” are neofascists and authoritarians. They are not Edmund Burke.

Two, recognize that you can change the narrative. University administrators should not accept things, such as current public opinion, and adjust to the accepted narrative. The job of a university president is to change the narrative. Do not accept that people are hostile to the humanities and so you have to cloak your institution in the veil of STEM. Change the way people think about the humanities.

Three, stand up for your values. Institutional neutrality is a myth and a cover to get you to hide your democratic values. You should be actively defending the democratic values of freedom and equality. A democratic institution IS a political institution because it's defending democracy against other political systems such as authoritarianism in its various forms. By its nature as a democratic institution, the university is a political institution. 

I receive all these emails from programs that are trying to bring Democrats and Republicans, Trump supporters and MAGA people, and those who oppose them, together for conversations to "understand one another" so we can have “civility” and “maintain community” and “get to understand each other better” to find “common ground” because "we are more alike than different." I have no interest in any of this. There is nothing to discuss. Am I being unreasonable? There are good and decent people who actually believe that engaging with neofascists and other enemies of democracy is somehow productive. This is the classic philosophical problem of tolerating the intolerant. You don't tolerate the intolerant by treating them as if they're tolerant. That's just foolish. Recognize that the people you are dealing with on today’s right-wing don't want to have a discussion. They want to take over your institutions, and they want to transform American society from a democracy into something else. Again, don’t be a liberal dupe or some type of useful idiot.

You are an expert in language and propaganda. How was the American right-wing able to weaponize DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs in higher education and elsewhere in service to their goal of ending multiracial pluralistic democracy?

The way the right-wing weaponized and distorted DEI programs is as American as apple pie. What they are basically saying is that any Black person in a position of power, particularly any Black woman, is not legitimate. Why? because positions of power should be held by white people – and preferably white men. Any other outcome is “anti-white” or the result of quotas or reverse racism or some other nonsense and racist white fantasies

Donald Trump has made explicit xenophobia acceptable, and explicit racism moreacceptable. But it is still the case that in America you need some code words for racism. DEI is such a code word and racist dog whistle. 

Part of this war on education in this time of democracy crisis involves the monitoring and harassment of teachers by the right-wing for thought crimes. This is happening across the country in public schools as well as at colleges and universities. An important and foundational question: why shouldn’t parents have the “right” to monitor a teacher in the classroom? Or the public or the larger community to monitor a college course and what is being taught there, especially at a publicly funded institution?

Educators are afraid of the fascists and other bullies. There's a group of people in this country, and any society really, who don't want minority perspectives taught. So, if the people observing you are members of dominant groups who want to exclude minority perspectives, then you know it’s not just your job, but your life that could potentially be at risk..

Even in a less high-stakes situation, a teacher cannot do their job when they are under surveillance because that makes free discussion of ideas impossible. When you're constantly observed then you're worried about saying something that will offend someone. That is antithetical to free thinking and the democratic project in the classroom — a democratic culture. In such a classroom we are creating drones and not critical thinkers because the teachers are afraid of controversy. 

If Donald Trump and the Republicans win the upcoming election, are you staying in the country or are you leaving? You are most certainly on the enemies lists that Trump and his forces have already drawn up of people who are to be “punished” for disobedience to MAGA as enemies of the state. You could face prison or worse. I asked you this question the last time we spoke here at Salon. Where are you now?

I have had offers to teach in other countries. But I have turned down those offers even though it would be safer for me and my children. America is my damn country. It doesn’t belong to the fascists and authoritarians. I am not leaving.