As a former student of yours and someone trying to start out my professional life, it is enormously disturbing and disorienting to read this from you. How do I confront world reshaped by a revolution I despise? What are the prospects for people such as ourselves in such a world?
Disturbing in the sense that you think I welcome this revolution? Far from it--what I am trying to articulate here is confidence in my views that the most dedicated Trump voters are in fact aware that they are wishing catastrophe on us, and are committed to a politics driven by spite, vengeance and a sort of brutalist ethos of might-makes-right. I pray they will not win, but I am not going to be backed off my sense that this is one of the animating spirits lurking within this election--it is precisely why I am so terrified by this revolution, because I fear and despise it as much as you do.
As I'll write tomorrow, there's another group of Trump-possible voters who I think believe themselves to be doing something different--including disbelieving that Trump is actually going to do anything of the things he says he wants to do. I have a lot of negative thoughts about this group as well, but I acknowledge that they exist and are different from the people who actually want Trump to do all the bad things he says and who welcome his incompetence in relation to the conventional ways we understand competence in government.
What I meant was, If you are saying this, it supports the idea the danger of Trump is very real and drastic. It fills me with fear and leaves me uncertain what to do next. I am sorry for not being clear! I know where you stand on things Tim, been reading your blog for years!
I don't know. There's the "if we escape this, we need to do something that makes sure this is the last time"--and I have some imagination about that. If not, there is a different mode for figuring things out that borrows from the toolkit of how people survive--and contest--authoritarianism.
As a former student of yours and someone trying to start out my professional life, it is enormously disturbing and disorienting to read this from you. How do I confront world reshaped by a revolution I despise? What are the prospects for people such as ourselves in such a world?
Disturbing in the sense that you think I welcome this revolution? Far from it--what I am trying to articulate here is confidence in my views that the most dedicated Trump voters are in fact aware that they are wishing catastrophe on us, and are committed to a politics driven by spite, vengeance and a sort of brutalist ethos of might-makes-right. I pray they will not win, but I am not going to be backed off my sense that this is one of the animating spirits lurking within this election--it is precisely why I am so terrified by this revolution, because I fear and despise it as much as you do.
As I'll write tomorrow, there's another group of Trump-possible voters who I think believe themselves to be doing something different--including disbelieving that Trump is actually going to do anything of the things he says he wants to do. I have a lot of negative thoughts about this group as well, but I acknowledge that they exist and are different from the people who actually want Trump to do all the bad things he says and who welcome his incompetence in relation to the conventional ways we understand competence in government.
What I meant was, If you are saying this, it supports the idea the danger of Trump is very real and drastic. It fills me with fear and leaves me uncertain what to do next. I am sorry for not being clear! I know where you stand on things Tim, been reading your blog for years!
The danger is real.
I know the danger is real, and I am already thinking of it everyday. thats what i meant by disorienting-how do you even approach a problem like this?
I don't know. There's the "if we escape this, we need to do something that makes sure this is the last time"--and I have some imagination about that. If not, there is a different mode for figuring things out that borrows from the toolkit of how people survive--and contest--authoritarianism.
I know you dont welcome it!! Disturbing in the sense that it fills me with fear