The Backlog is kind of like that Snake Game. It keeps growing, even as its tail is constantly getting eaten.
RE The Defector Mailbag.1 I honestly believe history education should focus more on storytelling.
Not that lame-ass bleeding-heart lib-style "ordinary people" stuff that's always about minorities and/or the downtrodden, because We Must Always Be Telling Their Stories No Matter How Much It Bores Children Who Aren’t Ready For It To Tears, Turns Them Off Of Diversity, And Doesn't Actually Explain Much About History.
I'm talking about the more genuine Game-of-Thrones-style stuff. Mike Duncan, for instance, should just plain be required reading and writing the damned textbooks - he's Woke Enough, he Has The Facts Straight, but he also is entertaining AF and tells a damned good story.
I’ve started listening to The Bulwark podcast lately. It’s basically a bunch of Never Trumpers carping about Democrats fucking up, which really makes the proceedings interesting because I’ve been siloed off in progressive Pod Save America land for so long.
What’s got me curious is whether these Never Trumpers really do have the potential to save Democrats from themselves, or will they just be spoilers who can’t be moved enough to offer advice in a format that more progs will actually listen to? Because honestly, the progs DO need it right now, but there’s a critical trust gap.
One thing everyone, right, left, and center, are getting wrong right now, is that the distinction between moderates and centrists — which PSA and The Bulwark have indeed been doing a good job calling out — isn’t exactly a bright line! Yes, centrism is an identity-driven position, while moderation is ideology-driven, but there’s a lot of overlap. They have meetings! And this is also an aspect in which the truism about the “mushy middle” is indeed true (!) — none of them really understand themselves as having a solid philosophy, so they just pick and choose from the cafeteria of “middle” politics.
The point here is that even if we catch Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema making the exact same moves, we can’t assume they’re for the exact same reasons. And accordingly, getting them to do what we want instead may also require completely divergent strategies.
One thing that often happens in revolutions or times of turmoil is that the Overton window can shift very rapidly and unexpectedly. Some who originally code as extreme leftists, can end up getting cast out or worse as “counter-revolutionaries” merely because they weren’t willing to go as far as their erstwhile allies.
The reason I’m curious is that I’m wondering, what would “the shift” look like in America? Why would one happen?
To wit, here’s the passage that inspired this thought:
“My kid’s AP American History text is heavier than a fucking gravestone and it still didn’t have enough space to recap every facet of every major story in the nation’s history. It’s not possible.”
If you want another somewhat useful conservative take on themselves, check out the stream of Fox News Sunday with chris Wallace. He is sometimes a lapdog of the GOP as you would expect, but every so often he asks the questions of the more extreme (or ridiculous) conservatives that can be very illuminating. The guests he gets wouldn’t be caught dead on any other media considered any closer to the left than Fox News, so it can be interesting to hear it straight from the horses mouth.