Josh Marshall
In this on-going series of posts on ‘Making Sense of the Post-Trump Era’ I should be clear that I don’t mean this to prejudge the question. I mean ‘post-Trump’ only in the very narrow sense of the period after Trump left the White House. I think it’s very much an open question – one implicit or explicit in almost all your emails – whether we’re really “post” at all.
For my part, I increasingly think that we are ‘post-Trump’ in terms of the man himself. I think defeat just gutted him. The GOP remains in his thrall but much more as a placeholder or symbol than as someone actively engaged in national politics. But it’s not really about the man himself, at least not mainly. It’s about the civic degeneracy that created him and which galvanized, brought into light of day and made aware of itself.
From TPM Reader MG …
You asked, “What Sense Are You Making of the Post-Trump Era?”
Well, there is simply a mixture of relief and apprehension.
The relief is for the obvious things: The relatively smooth deployments of the Covid vaccines, a steady hand at the helm of state, government doing what the federal government should do, no more intentional twitter eruptions and all of that. Considering where we were on January 20th, it is immensely comforting to be where we are right now.
From TPM Reader JE, a rather different take on the question, less political outlook than deeply personal, inter-personal experience …
So, by far the biggest outcome for me from the “Post Trump Era” (and to some extent I need to move the date back to November 2016 to describe this fully) is the realization that a lot of middle class white Americans (I’m in that group) are still racist as hell. Prior to that the racism was couched in careful language, was eased out with a nod and a wink that indicated that maybe someone still wasn’t on board with the modern state of the world.
From TPM Reader KG …
I’ve enjoyed reading the replies to your question, but I have a somewhat different take. As a 79-year old white female I’ve seen remarkable changes in the country. Change being the operative word. My first brush with politics came on a train carrying Harry Truman, who I watched speak while sitting on my father’s shoulders. I’ve been a political junky ever since.
One of the many things I do at TPM is occasionally write emails to inspire people to become TPM members, re-up if they’ve lapsed or just thank them for being members already. I wrote one of these this morning and I thought I’d share it. I do so in part because it would be great if you could join up if you’re not currently a member but even more because writing one of these out gives me an opportunity to — forces me to — place TPM in the current moment and say why I think it matters.
Take a look.
Thank you to everyone who’s sent in their reads on making sense of the post-Trump Era. I’ll be publishing more this afternoon. Keep them coming. My interest in soliciting these notes is that we are in a confused and confusing political-historical moment. It’s important to untangle that for anyone who is concerned about the country and civic life. It’s even more pressing for a news organization.
We owe a great deal to the insights and knowledge we gain from the social sciences, with their modeling, systems creation and statistics. But at core humans are a story-telling species. We organize the world around us through storylines, narrative arcs, the actions of individuals, the interplay of actions and reactions through time. This isn’t to embrace a “great man” theory of history. It’s not a comment on how history works. It’s a statement about how our brains apprehend, understand things – how we take the discrete facts we find and put them together into something that tells us something. Nor is it to relativize contending ‘narratives’, something that has long been the province of certain parts of the academic world and through a strange alchemy is now also pervasive on the right. Some narratives are truer than others. Many are deeply false. It is simply that we understand most intuitively through storylines, through the progression of events and the actions of people.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have created a special section at Dodger Stadium for fans who are fully vaccinated. A few other teams have introduced similar set asides. This is a good idea and we need more of it. The reward for being vaccinated should be to get back to life as usual as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Now that vaccines are pretty widely available for people 16 and over there’s no reason you should need to be seated near or with others who’ve chosen not to get vaccinated when you’re enjoying a ball game.
From TPM Reader ST …
Asking the question about how we’re all coping with the post-Trump era helped clarify for me the continuing unease I feel.
From TPM Reader BS …
I had hoped that this time might be different. That on the rebound from Trump, we might see some truly transformational legislation. That the filibuster would be scrapped, D.C. would be granted statehood, the right to vote would be protected and expanded, and the courts would significantly unwound from their recent rightward corkscrew. Mainly, though, I had what I knew to be an irrational hope that there would be action on climate sufficient to fit the moment.
From TPM Reader JB …
I always wanted to believe Trump was a last desperate charge of Old White Men in a losing a 50 year (or 150 year) war to retain their monopoly on power. Demographics are against them. Young people lean against them. Women lean against them. Black and Brown people lean against them. Cities against. Coasts against. The educated against. They know it. They fear it. They hate it. Voting for Trump was supposed to be a giant fuck you on their way out — half curse, half joke. But he won, it went to their heads, and they tried to end the game before losing it.