Since we're getting deep and introspective here I think it's important to grasp, as you probably do, that this is a moment decades in the making. I've made the point before here that you find the root causes of our growing social isolation and economic disparities in policies that extend back 40 or 50 years, or in some cases all the way back to the Civil War.

But while I'm sure this explanation will be considered still somewhat distant, I find the *proximate* big-factor cause to ultimately be migration and specificaly the Great Migration of blacks out of the south and into the North and urban areas, starting around the 1920s but continuing past WWII.

From that point forward, and mixed in with huge levels of migration from Central and South America, American politcal leadership largely did not deal with or meaningfully address integration even if some critical statutory civil rights gains were made. From that point forward, with both the mass migration of racial minorities PLUS the lack of politcal will to meaningfully deal with integration -- the groundwork for all of this was building. We're living in world with growing social and economic stratification, and the persecution mentality and oppositional cutlure seen throughout the right-wing (see its paranoia, its anger, its devotion to Fox News and personality cults like Trump) are all artifacts of these large-scale conditions. The reflexively angry, reactive nature of the old white who only knows the world via Fox News is the result of living largely only surrounded by other whites and a failure of civic institutions to meaningfully integrate or address changing social and economic realities such that these people feel largely dispossesed and foreign to the modern world and economy for reasons they can't even articulate but are channeled through Fox News type punditry.

Predicting the future is hard. I am not hopeless. But I am confident this precise problem has to be solved.

On the good news front, I think we can point to historical parallels to this moment (and I have in the past) that got sorted out without revolution or staggering amounts of violence. The 1880s-1910s in the United States (and Europe too, actually) come to mind. Although I think popular history discounts how much street violence and social unrest there was during the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era.

On the bad news front, this book is very apt here and I just finished it. It's by Stanford historian Walt Scheidel. And his basic argument is that the greatest leveler of growing inequality throughout most of human history is actually violence and calamity and society's ability to peacefully extricate itself from these sorts of feedback loops is very hard.

Before the firing, I would have been the first to say that Trump is a likely two-termer as it's very hard not to get a second term. But, I think it's doubtful now since many independents will simply cry foul over the firing of Comey.

https://twitter.com/resnikoff/status/862364667225800707

lol

https://twitter.com/jbview/status/862362281249832962

Well said.

deputy white house spokesperson says comey committed "atrocities"

Lol. Yeah, this event will be a distant myth, if it's remembered at all by independents.

WTF, was he responsible for the Rwandan genocide?

The WH's Mad Hatter approach to vocabulary is exhausting. As I'm sure was their plan from the start.

If the election was next week, sure. But people are stupid. Comey will be long forgotten by 2020.

deputy White House spokesperson says Comey cause of Great Depression, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina. James Comey has always been an enemy of the state.

Has Comey won any chess competitions recently?

Just now on CNN, Richard Painter, former WH Chief Ethics Lawyer is saying this is much more serious than Watergate, as we're talking about treason this time, not a third-rate burglary.

AG should have nothing to so with this because he already lied to Congress and recused himself.

He also just said that he's a Republican, and that if Clinton had won the election and then was under investigation by Comey and the FBI, and then Clinton had fired him, Painter would be calling immediately for impeachment..."we wouldn't stand for it from her and we shouldn't stand for it from him."

Comey did 9/11 as far as we know.

Edit: My pony was killed in the atrocities.

"New evidence links Comey to Bowling Green massacre"

BREAKING: anonymous sources indicate Trump personally witnessed Comey frequenting infamous PizzaGate pizza parlor before deciding to fire

DVaut,

Great posts as usual. I have one question though. Weren't the years 1880-1910 incredibly violent in the U.S.? I've heard this period described as the "Age of Reaction" or even the "Age of Terror" and it was the time of some of the most successful terroristic campaigns in U.S. history, which were racist and fascist in nature.

Okay, I overestimate people's memory.

A lot of ways to reply to this post, but the bolded does hit on something I've been thinking about. Comey had dirt on Clinton and Trump pre-election. He released the Clinton stuff, not Trump. One possible reason is he's republican and was defending his side.
The other is he knew if things went south, the republicans would destroy him, while the dems wouldnt do much. And this was exactly what happened. In fact, not only did the dems not destroy him, but even after he got their guy elected the repubs still dumped him for not showing 100% loyalty.
There was another comment somewhere in the thread that people don't like Dems because they dont have skin in the game. I think this is a good example.
If dems had skin in the game, Obama would have fired Comey when he STARTED investigating Clinton.

https://twitter.com/PreetBharara/sta...20275101368320

https://twitter.com/PreetBharara/sta...57594076622849

Yes. Even past 1910 (see the Ludlow Massacre, the West Virginia Coal Wars which were all ~1910-1915). Lots of political violence, racial terror campaigns in the South, labor unrest and riots, domestic terrorist activities. Two Presidential assassinations. etc.

Gotcha, that's what I thought. I do think it's really important to put this current period of history in context. I can't stress the Compromise of 1877 enough. This REALLY feels like a Compromise of 1877 moment to me.

Even if something is more serious than Watergate, it cannot pass it for some strange reason. Maybe we have decided we don't want to really impeach or have a President resign again. Four years isn't really that long to navigate whatever mess there is. Criminal charges against a sitting President are an enormous distraction for the entire country and we all get hurt.

No, it's much simpler than that. 52% of Congress doesn't believe in democracy. That's what we call a working majority.

Yea, surely criminal charges are a worse proposition than having a lunatic, treasonous nazi moron with his finger on the button for the next four years. Gtfo