9 Comments

Thank you for your service in watching and summarizing this, it was both very funny and a genuinely helpful look at where people are coming from on this stuff. It reminded me of Arlie Hochschild's book on american conservatism, which I also found really helpful in framing out these narratives.

Also, "We’re engaging in politics as a game of individual righteousness, but with no vision for the world for which we’re fighting" is such a succinct formulation of that concept, I'm writing it down so I can have it to hand next time I need to explain it!

Expand full comment
author

Love Hoschchild’s book so much.

Expand full comment

Thank you for watching and distilling that so we all don't have to, and especially for those last three paragraphs. And whoever is going to start making the plan to show white people that life without white supremacy actually feels better for everyone, please count me in.

Expand full comment
author

Hey thanks Jane. Based on all our conversations, you’re already part of building that plan, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

Expand full comment

Thank you for subjecting yourself to these, though I'm sorry you had to. Sounds like a similar refrain to the "Anglo-Saxons had the ideal culture and original American/English Christian settlers are the inheritors of that culture and anything that is anti-Anglo-Saxon is anti-God" thing I read about recently.

I hear you on taking anti-CRT, etc., more seriously. I do think, or have personally felt at least since the early Bush era, that progressives don't always have a good enough grasp of the world we want to build to articulate it and work for it. At least, though, just in this last year I've finally seen more people pay attention to what goes on locally, and how these national tensions and narratives seep into our local politics and lives. It feels like a bit of a shift.

Expand full comment
author

Oh yeah, definitely similar vibes to what you’ve been writing about recently (re: Anglo-Saxon identity). In this case, the race science edges are rubbed off, but it’s still rooted in the idea that there was only one moment of true wisdom in world history- the Western European enlightenment.

Expand full comment

It's so exhausting!

Expand full comment

Did it mention the 1776 Report? It's all about restoring Christian Democracy via national curriculum (which sounds a little socialist to me, but what do I know).

Expand full comment
author

Yes! The co-chair of the commission that created the 1776 report was one of the recurring talking heads.

Expand full comment