Boethius

And most people don't want to flee their homeland en masse anyways (a little bit of immigration is natural and healthy for the world). The peak of insanity, however, is the US pumping out all these greenhouse gasses, ensuring that people from the global south will need to immigrate in the future, all while wanting to lock down its borders.

I do think a bit of moderation on social issues would help (are we really going to die on the hill of freely available sex reassignment surgeries for minors, especially in the aftermath of Skrmetti?) but otherwise I agree with the general game plan. I do hope you have a bit more hope for our future than your title about "death throes" suggests. You write about a "bold vision for the country that inspires people", so you seem to agree that people need something positive to latch onto. To move forward, both individually and collectively, requires a deeply embodied sense of hopefulness, I suspect.

Black and brown working class people are shifting to the right and have been shifting to the right for a long time now. And honestly, I think it needs to be remembered that democrats were (openly) celebrating the shifting racial demographics for many years because they thought that would mean they would be locked into power for decades to come (oh how the wheels of History grind all of our grand hopes to dust!) So, eh, I think it's best to let the racial and religious stuff sort itself out at the cultural level, and at the political level to focus on the people who are really fucking over the average American -- the bastard billionaire class and the corrupt politicians who are in their pocket.

In speaking about his faith, Obama did not sound like Christian Nationalist. And a surprisingly large number of people who voted for Trump had also voted for Obama (and in 2016 were considering voting for Sanders), so that being white is not a prereq either. I see a path forward for a democratic politician with the proper balance of policies and some rizz.

If stuffing cotton in our ears and screaming on the streets about White Supremacy and Toxic Masculinity and Fascism was ever going to work, it would have worked in 2024 already. So sure, show up to the No Kings protest (as I did) to call out the most egregious (fascistic, if you like) acts of the administration. But also let's please have meaningful conversations on the left about what mistakes we made in the past and how we can do better, and let's do some bridge-building with at least center right people who may have voted for Trump but don't think of themselves as Nazis. A smart strategy is not built on confrontation alone.

"Don't try to placate or reason with MAGA - they're our version of the Nazis, and need to be socially ostracized." "We need to be loud and uncompromising as humanly possible in standing up and denouncing this. Your family and friends who "don't follow politics" need to be confronted" This is how we guarantee that J.D. Vance becomes president in 2028, is my two cents.

Social moderation and economic populism is the way to go, I believe, and it seems like a lot of the NY Times commenters seem to be getting the message on that, so I have hope. We just need to get more people like Rep. Chris Murphy into positions of leadership and power.

My personal take -- and one that is not tethered to the current political landscape by the way -- is that it is possible for a person to take pride in some of the things that their country does for their citizens and for the global community of nations, it's possible for them to be embarrassed or ashamed by some other things, and regardless of what one feels one has the responsibility to try to make the country better serve the interests of both its people and the global community at large. That's my attempt at synthesizing patriotism and globalism, roughly speaking. When I apply that view to being an American in 2025, I am hopeful that we are just going through some growing pains and that the sort of great harm (internally and externally) that people on the left fear will not come to pass. So it's not a matter of being "proud" of where we are at right now, so much as a commitment to do what I can as a private citizen and as a Christian to help the nation move through this chapter of history that feels very difficult.

Eventually countries may have to open their borders to climate change refugees, if climate change gets bad enough. After all, people from areas that are practically uninhabitable will want and need to move as a matter of survival for themselves and their offspring. But if the last 10 years have been any indication, the countries that receive these migrants will experience political stresses that may end up being rather destabilizing or disastrous. As we see in the US, Trump has risen to power largely on the issue of immigration, and his presidency has rocked American political discourse and the political establishment to the core. All of this is to say, that the Pentagon has for some time listed climate change as a top national security threat for a good reason.

Have you read Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches on nonviolence? I have found them to be intriguing.

I found this a helpful perspective in making sense of the LA protests: Zen priest, Peter Coyote, on protest: "I’m watching the Los Angeles reaction to ICE raids with trepidation and regret. Three years ago I taught a class at Harvard on the “theater of protest”— designed to help people understand why so many protests turn out to be Republican campaign videos working directly against the interests of the original protest. A protest is an invitation to a better world. It’s a ceremony. No one accepts a ceremonial invitation when they’re being screamed at. More important you have to know who the real audience of the protest is. The audience is NEVER the police, the politicians, the Board of supervisors, Congress,etc. The audience is always the American people, who are trying to decide who they can trust; who will not embarrass them. If you win them, you win power at the box office and power to make positive change. Everything else is a waste. There are a few ways to get there: 1. Let women organize the event. They’re more collaborative. They’re more inclusive, and they don’t generally bring the undertones of violence men do. 2 Appoint monitors, give them yellow, vests and whistles. At the first sign of violence, they blow the whistles and the real protester sit down. Let the police take out their aggression on the anarchists and the provocateurs trying to discredit the movement. 3. Dress like you’re going to church. It’s hard to be painted as a hoodlum when you’re dressed in clean, presentable clothes. They don’t have to be fancy they just signal the respect for the occasion that you want to transmit to the audience. 4. Make your protest silent. Demonstrate your discipline to the American people. Let signs do the talking. 5. Go home at night. In the dark, you can’t tell the cops from the killers. Come back at dawn fresh and rested. I have great fear that Trump’s staging with the National Guard and maybe the Marines is designed to clash with anarchists who are playing into his hands and offering him the opportunity to declare an insurrection. It’s such a waste and it’s only because we haven’t thought things through strategically. Nothing I thought of is particularly original. It was all learned by watching the early civil rights protests in the 50s and 60s. And it was the discipline and courage of African-Americans that drew such a clear line in the American sand that people were forced to take sides and that produced the civil rights act. The American people are watching and once again if we behave in ways that can be misinterpreted, we’ll see this explained to the public in Republican campaign videos benefiting the very people who started this. Wake up. Vent at home. In public practice discipline and self control. It takes much more courage." — Peter Coyote Zen teacher and author/narrator, with Ken Burns Note: Carry an American flag. As the administration creates a fake emergency to justify a state crackdown, it's important to honor the values and vision of democracy for which we're advocating. When the Enquirer came for pics back in 2017, I smiled a big toothy grin and held a big flag as it felt so empowering and good to stand with my adult daughter, pastors, Franciscans, nuns, kids, parents, grandparents and some women from our women's groups for the values we tried to pass on. After the protest, we sang and marched to a church where we heard poignant witness of immigrants trying to build a better life for their families against insurmountable odds. Many Marines, National Guardsmen and vets are over on Threads and Substack expressinging their disagreement over being used by this lawless administration. Peace, santi and shalom to all. — Leslie Flood Hershberger

I think an interesting perspective is that in the J.D. Vance versus Tim Walz portion of the 2024 election, one of the key battles is over who represents a more authentic vision of American masculinity in today's culture. Some commentary on this can be found, for example, here https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/opinion/masculinity-liberal-conservative.html with maybe the key quote as "The choice is clear. On one side, there’s the enlightened maleness embodied by Harris’s vice-presidential pick and her husband, Doug Emhoff. These are the good progressive dads, Rebecca Traister of New York magazine writes, the “nice men of the left” who do guy things like coach football but also manifest liberal and feminist virtues — like being “happily deferential” and “unapologetically supportive of women’s rights” and “committed to partnership” in marriage and politics alike. Walz especially is being held up all over as a paragon of liberal dadhood: “A regular guy,” Mona Charen of The Bulwark writes, “at a time when the country needs reminding that being a regular guy is actually pretty great.” Then there is the other model, the dark side of the Y chromosome: the toxic masculinity of Donald Trump, the anti-cat-lady conservatism of JD Vance, all of them wrapped together in a package that Zack Beauchamp of Vox describes as “neo-patriarchy.” This is a worldview, he writes, that may claim to allow for more female agency than the older patriarchy but really just wants a “reversal of the feminist revolution,” in which men finally get to be he-men again while their wives stay home and rear four to seven kids." Another piece of media I have found intriguing comes from the Youtube channel "The Elephant Graveyard", whose channel is gaining lots of views after he provided an analysis/review of Joe Rogan's recent Netflix special "Burn the Boats". A distillation of TEG's thoughts can be found at Do this view of 2024 as a showdown between two visions of masculinity resonate with others?

I'm an American who has only spent a few weeks total in the UK over the years, so take my observations with a grain of salt (though similar dynamics are sadly at play here too). It seems like there is disagreement over the proximate causes of the riots -- whether the killing of 3 children by a 2nd generation Rwandan was just the last straw after other incidents involving machete attacks and etc (here I am going off of reports and analysis from the Lotus Eaters podcast) OR it was just the incident that far right instigators were finally successful in exploiting to turn out the protestors. I won't try to resolve this argument, except to say that it's certainly not a peaceful protest! Watching men breaking windows while drinking beers is a terrible look, lol. Now that being said, in moving forward the government can either clamp down on the people protesting (through increased surveillance and restricting movement, as per the video from a soldier that Consept shared) and/or by addressing the needs and concerns of those rioting. Of those needs I think we have identified in this thread (1) Need for physical safety from crimes perpetrated by immigrants (2) Poor economic prospects (3) Preserving English culture I sense (3) is generally out the window -- that battle was fought and lost generations ago. But (1) and (2) might still be on the table. So my question (and God bless you for your patience!) is whether the governing elite has anything concrete and substantial to offer in addressing these concerns, how these two concerns should be balanced, or if the expectation is to bypass addressing these concerns in favor of "managing" the protestors by means of surveillance and control?

How are you experiencing the shift from orange to green in the USA? As an example. I think of the debate over mask use (I don't want to use a mask as I don't feel personally threatened by covid VS I should use a mask to protect those around me). In my own life I feel increasingly "guilty" if I know that some action (like air travel) increases overall carbon pollution, whereas I feel good if I know I am buying a product (like silicon straws) that reduces pollution. So in what ways do you find yourself (perhaps against your individual egoistic self!) moving more towards the overall good of humanity?

I am hopeful there is a sensible middle ground to be found on this issue. Perhaps it will help to bring this from the abstract into the concrete.... So to what degree do people support the following actions that a school might take: in elementary school, allowing a gay/lesbian teacher to talk openly about their spouse in elementary school, reading a book about a child that has two mommies or two daddies in elementary school, inviting a drag queen to read a book to children in elementary school, providing a lesson on gender identity and inviting students to share their pronouns in middle school, teaching about anti-bullying policies (including ones protecting sexual and gender minorities) in middle school, making books available to students on queer people, possibly containing profanity and mild descriptions of sex in middle school, inviting students to participate in school-led pride events in high school, teaching about gay sex and HIV prevention in sex ed in high school, teaching about the civil rights movement for the LGBTQ community