FarRight on Marti Abernathey

I’m Tired of being Nostradamus

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:42:39 +0100

Ya know, it’s really fucking irritating to be right. I’ve known for a while what’s coming. Trans people told you, black people told you, marginalised people told you years ago this would happen. But it didn’t impact you, so you didn’t listen.

Donald Trump isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom of the problem. If he had a heart attack and died today, the United States would find another fascist to take his place. Trump’s style of politics is gaining a foothold (Reform in the UK, the AfD in Germany, the National Front, etc.) in the world for a reason.

Income inequality is being fuelled by ghoulish capitalists who invest a lot of capital to make the majority afraid of the wrong people (immigrants/trans people/black people), so they can continue to feed themselves more and more wealth without criticism or restraint.

The Big Ask

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:54:36 +0100

I like what Cory Doctorow posts on here a lot. I agree with his prescriptions to the problems a lot too. However, what’s lacking is context regarding why these solutions may not come to fruition.

It’s hard to call a government that allows participation from only two parties a democracy.

What we have now resembles what the French term “démocrature” describes. According to Wikipedia (translated), this term is a blend of seemingly contradictory concepts. Démocrature refers to a political regime that, despite having a democratic electoral system, operates more like a dictatorship, often suppressing the rule of law. Essentially, it is a facade of democracy.

This concept is frequently used to describe countries that maintain the formal appearance of democratic institutions while being governed by a small group or individual, often in undemocratic ways.

The United States legislature does not follow the will of its people they follow the will of business. This isn’t conjecture, it’s supported by facts. If you understand how politics in Washington DC works, you know that money moves policy.

Historically, this has been a consistent pattern. Significant changes to exploitative business practices often followed violent protests. Workers' rights, as we know them today, were secured through sacrifice and struggle. Peaceful protests alone have seldom been enough to alter the harsh realities imposed by the ruling class. From the French Revolution to the Haymarket Riots to the Civil Rights Movement, violence has frequently preceded meaningful change.

In the last 40 years, voting has not significantly impacted income inequality or wage growth. Given this track record, it’s a tall order to expect people to have faith in a system that has repeatedly let them down.

The Trading Game and Gary Stevenson

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 08:50:21 +0100

I just finished reading Gary Stevenson’s book The Trading Game 📚 and I wanted to offer some thoughts about the book.

I watched this interview with Gary on Novara Media:

and it’s what pushed me to buy the book. I thought that the book was going to be about economic theory. I expected it to explain how the economy works. It definitely was not that. Instead, it was a superb story about a young poor boy with a knack for numbers. He grows into a troubled teen who finds his way to the London School of Economics. Eventually, he becomes an adult from Ilford who achieves financial success as a trader with Citibank.

In my recent writing, I’ve talked a lot about reactive versus reflective people. From Stevenson’s book, I gathered that he is highly reflective. He has encountered many emotionally reactive people who don’t self-reflect. In the book he points out that people in the financial market are akin to most people in life. Many people don’t question the system. They just know that they exist in it. They’re trying to find financial safety, self-respect, or ego, but they never self-reflected on the why. They simply accept that they live inside it. They never think “hey maybe the system doesn’t work”, or “hey perhaps the system needs to be destroyed”, or “perhaps this system shouldn’t exist.” Most of the people in the book do not question the status quo.

If you’re in the market for a fast-paced, well-written look at the financial markets and the people inside them, it’s a great read.

The book and the interview had me thirsting for more from Gary. I’ve subscribed to his social media channels. He talks about politics and the economy. He explains what needs to happen and why it happens. He discusses the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Where Stevenson goes missing, is in the details of what needs to be done.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How do we change that? The rich have all the resources. There are only a few levers that the poor can use to turn things around. Ultimately, there are three levers the poor have at their disposal:

withholding their labor (through something like a general strike)
severely limiting consumption

The wealthy have all the other levers. They have all the material wealth to use against the working class. They also control politicians, police, the media, and the state to affect laws and policies.

It’s not just Gary, but the folks of “alternative media” like Owen Jones, Novara Media, etc. rarely allude to the first two levers, but especially the last one. If the imbalance of power continues, it is increasingly going to become a more common choice. More of a desperate choice. For a long time, society mostly kept these people at bay because those in power understood the need for balance. This balance involved government responsibility, the rich and the poor, and the working class and the one percent. There were barriers preventing them from extracting too much wealth. Those barriers are mostly gone now.

Stevenson’s analysis of what has happened, and what is happening is spot on. But much like his peers in the alternative media sphere, he speaks of these actors neutrally. He describes them in a very benign way. They are not cast as violent thugs or people acting knowingly and with purpose.

Billionaires should not exist. The existence of billionaires is violence. People who presently are billionaires should be taxed to the point that they are not billionaires. It is unethical to extract wealth in such a reverse Robin Hood manner. That shouldn’t exist, and the framework that allows that to happen shouldn’t exist either. But it does.

One major aspect of the war in Gaza (or Ukraine, or Iraq, etc.) was that most people wanted it to end. Many people support Israel’s right to exist, but most were not cheering for this conflict to continue. But it did because the wealthy wanted to enrich themselves, and they continue to enrich themselves, regardless of public perception. The situation in Gaza continues to unfold in public. The truth has been revealed. There is no pretense of international law or rules-based order. The rules have been revealed for what they truly are. There are laws for friends and laws for enemies. How many times do we need to watch this play out? Protesting doesn’t work. Voting doesn’t work. At the end of the day, how do you change things if those don’t work? That’s the question that can’t be asked directly. If asked, it must be posed gently to avoid alerting or upsetting the rulers.

The revolution will not be televised. But it won’t be had by gently asking those with their boots on our necks to stop, either.

Understanding Migrant Sex Workers' Struggles: Reading "Not Your Rescue Project"

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 04:04:38 +0100

I'm reading "Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice" There are books that I get a hold of that I have to read more than once, and this is one of those books.

"When most people think about migrant sex workers, they think of them not as humans, but as objects of grave moral concern. Not as powerful and capable community members, but as social problems."

You can insert the homeless, sex workers, transgender people, or any other oppressed minority there, and it still works. The people at the center of any of these issues aren't the main focus of the saviors. They are seen as objects to save. The debates rarely include real voices of the people involved.

Like other working-class people, migrant sex workers suffer poor working conditions under capitalism. When migrant sex workers face exploitation at work, this is labor exploitation.When they face abuse at work, this is labor abuse or violence against workers. When they are forced to sell sex (or to sell sex in ways that they do not want to), this is forced labor. Their problems are worker problems.

The book explains a lot of the history of anti-trafficking laws in the USA, and it's roots in white supremacy:

Chinese migrant women were also some of the first targets of anti-trafficking laws, under which they were subjected to immigration investigations on whether they were being trafficked “for lewd and immoral purposes.” In 1910, the US Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act to target sex-trafficking rings and to protect white girls from forced prostitution that they were lured into by “foreign immigrant traffickers.”

and

They face racist immigration restrictions and hostility from white supremacist countries that view them as permanent outsiders and expect them to be servile and impoverished, performing the backbreaking jobs that white people don’t want, without a right to citizenship, labor protections, or full participation in democratic governance. White supremacy frames migrant sex workers as a social problem and as a dangerous threat to Western values, families, and border security.

and explains how the anti-trafficking industry is a tool of the state to enact violence upon migrant sex workers:

Criminalization through anti-trafficking policies allows the state to emerge as the great “rescuer,” while leaving migrant sex workers more susceptible to violence and exploitation. Mimicking the “white slave panic” of earlier eras, today’s trafficking discourses are framed in the language of “modern-day slavery.” This white supremacist saviordom is a gross and glaring appropriation of Black liberation struggles to enable the very thing that abolition is opposed to: increased criminalization and violence.

The premise of anti-trafficking laws is that because vulnerable women and girls are “trafficked” against their will, they must be “sent back.” Like the oxymoron of feminist jails, these are supposedly “feminist deportations.” This state violence is gender-based violence. And ironically, this kind of coerced “rescue” seems a lot like actual trafficking. The purpose of anti-trafficking measures, then, is not to support migrant sex workers but to increase policing and to restrict the free movement and labor of migrant women.

That migrant sex workers suffer under capitalism in the same way that all working class people do.

Under conditions of poverty, limited opportunities, and social inequality, workers make choices about their best options. This includes migrant sex workers. Other labor activists do not need to prove that workers are capable of consenting to their labor, even though capitalism forces everyone to work to survive.

It’s not that sex work is necessarily good, it’s that it can often be better than other work. The jobs available to low-income racialized migrants in other sectors are some of the worst jobs in the world. Work in agricultural, manufacturing, construction, warehouse, and domestic labor sectors is notoriously poorly paid, punitive, relentless, exploitative, and dangerous.

When the alternative is deportation, arrest, and poverty, millions of migrants are coerced into brutally exploitative labor contracts. Migrant worker activists including, Harsha Walia, have described these conditions as modern indentureship, and in some cases, “systemic slavery.” The conditions of these work permits are deceptive, coercive, and unfree.

And discuss what a danger that "anti-trafficking" NGOs are to migrant sex workers:

In reality, anti-trafficking nonprofits do not combat human trafficking, violence, exploitation, and coercion in the sex industry; they facilitate, enhance, and expand state violence.

They are aligned not with a social justice movement fighting gender-based violence and “modern slavery,” but with right-wing and carceral feminist movements that are opposed to racial, social, and economic justice.

The anti-trafficking industry must be delegitimized, defunded, and abolished. It is designed for social control, and because it is founded on white supremacy, sexism, and state violence, it cannot be reformed.

and how SWERF/TERF feminism is and has always been a right of center operation that has held hands with conservative evangelicals.

Feminist anti-trafficking organizations work with these extremist anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ groups and with anti-trans feminists. One of the larger feminist, anti-trafficking and anti–sex work organizations in the US is World Without Exploitation (WWE), which leads campaigns against the decriminalization of sex work across the country and works in coalition with far-right Christian organizations, including NCOSE and Exodus Cry (whose founder describes Planned Parenthood as “Planned Assassination”).7 WWE is a US-based project of the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, the first anti-trafficking NGO of the modern era, which was shaped and formerly led by Janice Raymond, one of the leading architects of both trans-exclusive feminism and sex work–exclusive feminism.

Anti–sex work feminists are not “abolitionists.” They are prohibitionists who advocate for a type of criminalization and law enforcement that they claim is feminist.

Anti–sex work feminists do not join migrant sex workers in their campaigns for fair working conditions or safe migration, but instead organize against those campaigns.

They call for more rights for sex workers

Migrant sex workers must have control over their movement—and that means the power, resources, and information they need to reduce the risks and vulnerability that accompany different stages of migration.

No migrant workers, including sex workers, should be forced into exploitative temporary work visas, nor should they have their mobility tied to any employer.

and call the trafficking non-profit industry for what it is... an arm of the state who perpetuate harm of migrant sex workers, not rescue them.

In a time of escalating fascism, this book urges us to refuse right-wing, fear-mongering moral panics. Lam and Gallant drive home that the issue we should be concerned with is not trafficking or victim narratives (what they say function as “a concealed form of state violence”) but, rather, the control of migration, the criminalization of sex work, the exploitation of labor relations within capitalism, and the circuits of empire that manufacture vulnerability.

It was an eye-opening read from people organizing on the ground, helping, collaborating, and listening to migrant sex workers.

The Rise of Far-Right Leaders in Western Democracies: British Politics is Driving me Crazy Edition

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 14:26:13 +0100

Hi, my name is Marti Abernathey and I’m an American that’s settled in the UK. I’m happy here, but lately British politics and the thinking around it from the general public is gas-lighting me. From Davie Moo’s TikTok:

@daviemoo
Replying to [@Glen](https://micro.blog/Glen) Forde #fyp #foryou
♬ Cool modern chill out, 10 minutes(1001927) – 8.864

Did anyone else notice political shifts to the right around the world? Am I the only one seeing this? Donald Trump, a far-right populist, took the White House. The AfD, a far-right populist party, is strengthening in Germany. Le Pen’s National Front, a far-right populist party, is growing in France. In Canada, Justin Trudeau just barely escaped a no-confidence vote. Yet, he is way behind in the polls to Conservative, far-right populist Pierre Poilievre. There’s already far-right populist Giorgia Meloni in power in Italy.

And yet, the UK Labour Party can’t seem to see the writing on the wall. I wrote about this after the US election in November. A month out from that post:

and Starmer’s approval rating is plummeting:

If you dig into the polling from More in Common, it’s even worse than it looks.

More Britons prefer the last government than the current one

30% of the public think it would be better now if the Conservatives had won the election, compared to 24% who

think it would have been worse and 25% who think it would be the same.

Britons are also now more likely to say they prefer the previous government (34%) than the current one (31%)

and:

Labour have not convinced the public they represent something different
● The public are more likely to say sleaze and corruption has stayed the same (36%) or got worse (33%) than got better (17%) since the change of government.
● And the government is still not seen to have a clear direction – the public are more likely to think Labour does not have a plan for what they intend
to achieve in government (44%), than that they do (32%).

If this downward slide continues, Labour’s unpopularity will increase significantly. The swing will be strong. It will influence the electorate’s choice. They will choose leaders like Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage for the prime ministership. Like the Democrats in the United States, Labour will rely solely on the ‘don’t vote for the fascists’ rhetoric. Much like in the States, that rhetoric will fail. Not because it’s untrue, but because they stood by and did nothing except point.

Neo-liberalism has been dying for a long while now, and this is a sign of that death. Labour could revitalize the UK economy. This can be achieved with a dose of adrenaline through bold progressive policies in the coming years. Alternatively, it can do nothing and watch the UK descend into fascism.

What Trump’s Election Tells Us About Global Politics

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:10:00 +0100

I’m an American living in the UK, and my wife is Brazilian. in both the UK and in Brazil, I’m seeing people say they can’t believe that Trump won the election. This is an extremely myopic view.

Fourteen million voters picked the Reform party in the UK just a few months ago. Many Brazilians would vote for Jair Bolsonaro if they could (he’s been barred from running for political office until 2030). There are far right governments in power in the EU. These include Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic. In Germany and France, far right parties are growing. This trend is also seen in other areas of the world.

This isn’t some anomaly that the United States happened into. It’s the failure of neoliberal policies over the past 54 years. There’s a growing wealth gap and it seems to get bigger every year. The response of politicians is to do some version of this meme:

Democrats were advised in this past election by Labour politicians like Jonathan Ashworth. The Labour Party that is cutting fuel allowances for pensioners. They refuse to lift children out of poverty. They are raising tuition fees while continuing to look after corporate interests. If they continue down this path of pain, they will face serious challenges. They will find themselves in a very similar position that the Democrats are in now.

If there’s no change in the wealth gap, people will vote this way even more. This isn’t something unique to the United States. If wealth inequality continues to widen, so will the rise of fascism.

The Dilemma at the Center of the UK Labour and USA's Democratic Party

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 12:47:04 +0100

I'm an American living in the UK for the last six years. When I lived in the United States, I was involved with Democratic politics on a state and national level. Reflecting on that experience has made me conclude that the Labour Party and the Democratic Party share many of the same traits.

In the USA, it's "vote blue no matter who", and in the UK, it's similar, "Anyone but the Tories". There's an undercurrent of thought that leftists can't win, so you should just support the most left party and try to move the party left. In real-time, that isn't the case. In Nevada, the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) won every seat in the Nevada Democratic Party's leadership positions. They did what their opposition in the leadership always told them to do, win elections. How did they react? They stripped the party of its financial resources and then quit. Here, you can read a complete takedown of the whole thing at the Intercept and their sister audio podcast version.

Labour has a similar version of this story. In 2015 Jeremy Corbyn was elected to be the leader of the Labour party. In 2017, Labour outperformed expectations (winning more of the popular vote than Blair in 2005) and brought the Labour party just shy of gaining power. Teresa May called this election to coalesce power around her Brexit deal. The loss of seats for the Conservatives was enough to oust Teresa May as Prime Minister. They had to find a "magic money tree" to stay in power.

During Corbyn's rein as the leader, the Forde Report found that there were forces within the party itself that were attacking Corbyn:

"The factions ended up in a cycle of attack and counterattack, with each side assuming that the other was acting in bad faith (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not) and responding in kind."

That there were Trotskyist witch hunts:

"I was advised that the bellringing was conducted by the 'compliance' unit and represented the successful suspension or expulsion of a member – often surrounded by the description of such members as 'trots'".

and that there were factional, racist messaging by senior party staff:

"We find that the messages on the SMT [senior management team] WhatsApp reveal deplorably factional and insensitive, and at times discriminatory, attitudes expressed by many of the party's most senior staff. The substance of the quoted messages is concerning – and totally inappropriate from senior staff of a purportedly progressive political party"

These factions were DESPONDENT at the idea of a Corbyn-led party taking power:

"WhatsApp transcripts included in the original 2020 dossier analysed by the inquiry had suggested that some staffers became despondent as Labour climbed in the polls during the election campaign despite their efforts."

Looking at both political parties through the lens of recent history shows their moderate base operates both when in and out of power. They're only focused on holding on to the reigns of power (at all costs) while not changing much while in power.

Right now, POTUS Joe Biden, who campaigned on being able to work with Republicans, cannot get legislation through Congress that the Democratic Party controls. As Peter Daou points this out at Direct Left:

This is Joe Biden’s actual record:

NO minimum wage hike

NO serious student debt cancellation

NO effective pandemic strategy (more deaths than Trump)

NO medicare for all — or the promised public option

NO more Roe v. Wade

NO filibuster reform, just speeches

NO voting rights protection, just more speeches

NO court expansion, just a sham commission

NO end to racist policing

NO end to gun violence

NO end to deportations & abuse of asylum-seekers

NO end to cages for migrant children

NO end to brutalizing Afghanistan and Yemen

NO end to droning civilians without repercussions

NO end to huge military budgets (bigger than Trump’s)

NO end to arming and coddling oppressive regimes

NO meaningful climate action

NO end to oil drilling and fossil fuel subsidies

NO end to poverty, hunger, and homelessness

NO end to billionaires pocketing trillions

That’s just a partial list of Biden’s broken promises — and broken moral compass. Corporate Democrats like Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi have always relied on performative opposition and theatrics to pacify their supporters while preserving the status quo.

UK Labour is now leading in the polls (even though they said they'd be leading by 20 points-- and they aren't) and may win the next general election. That may sound great, but as Biden has shown, if you don't lead a party of change with ideas that you implement, you won't be able to get anything done and "nothing will fundamentally change."

Things might not be that bad if that was all that would happen. But the promise of "hope and change" and to "fundamentally transform" America by Barack Obama that didn't materialise led to the election of Donald Trump. This lack of political movement had consequences.

Saying that you "must vote blue, no matter who", if it were in the context of a personal relationship, would be considered gaslighting, DARVO-like abuse.

Performative opposition is the name of the game for both of these supposedly liberal political parties. They have nothing to offer except more of the same, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. This kind of do-nothing politics will eventually lead to radical change or hyper-nationalist fascism, resulting in much innocent bloodshed.

Examining 'Twilight of Democracy': A Critical Review

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 18:42:23 +0100

Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends by Anne Applebaum

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I can appreciate this Applebaum's perspective, but a few things bother me. She centres herself as the unchangeable middle who is free from movement, ideological grift, or opportunism. I want to break down some of what she said here.

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: "Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to those who cannot tolerate complexity: There is nothing inherently "left-wing" or "right-wing" about this instinct at all. It is anti-pluralist. It is suspicious of people with different ideas. It is allergic to fierce debates."

But that's precisely what she does:

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: "This, of course, is the argument that anti-American extremists, the groups on the far-right and far-left fringes of society, have always made. American ideals are false, American institutions are fraudulent, American behavior abroad is evil, and the language of the American project—equality, opportunity, justice—is nothing but empty slogans. The real reality, in this conspiratorial view, is that of secretive businessmen, or perhaps 'deep state' bureaucrats, who manipulate the voters into going along with their plans, using the cheesy language of Thomas Jefferson as a cover story."

She asks for complexity but can't find it within herself to look for it herself. She can't frame her argument without flowering it with words like "anti-American extremists" or groups as "fringes" or contaminating her statement by saying that the view is "conspiratorial."

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: "Whatever it takes to overthrow these evil schemers is justified. In Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground inveighed against 'the Justice Department and White House–CIA types.'"

Um, FRED HAMPTON? The FBI murdered him. This isn't a conspiracy; you can find it on something as tame as the History Channel. Herbert Hoover targeted civil rights leaders, American involvement since WW2 in overthrowing Central and South American governments isn't a conspiracy, it's documented historical fact.

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: "This form of moral equivalence—the belief that democracy is no different, at base, from autocracy—is a familiar argument, and one long used by authoritarians. Back in 1986, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a scholar, intellectual, and Reagan's UN ambassador, wrote of the danger both to the United States and to its allies from the rhetoric of moral equivalence that was coming, at that time, from the Soviet Union."

Again, she can't just quote Kirkpatrick; she uses the flowering of the language to influence the reader. It suggests that Kirkpatrick is put out as an expert that can be relied on and centres Kirkpatrick much as she does herself. This is the same Kirkpatrick that downplayed the rape and murder of four nuns in El Salvador (saying "the nuns were not just nuns, they were political activists") and supported murderous dictators in Central and South America. Kirkpatrick popularised the term "moral equivalence" to not look at the USA's history because if you do, it's a trail of genocide, slavery, and imperialism and that continues to engage in it to this day.

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: "Guns, weapons, even nuclear warheads were dangerous to democracies, but not nearly as dangerous as this particular form of cynicism: 'To destroy a society,' she wrote, 'it is first necessary to delegitimize its basic institutions.' If you believe that America institutions are no different from their opposite, then there is no reason to defend them. The same is true of transatlantic institutions."

I told my partner I was writing this, and she said, "the scientific method also applies to humanities; history, sociology and political science." In Kirkpatrick/Applebaum's view, you have to accept that American institutions are different without any analysis.

She also wrote: Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism "Buchanan's pessimism derives partially from his sense of white decline but also, like some of those diametrically opposed to him on the left, from his dislike of American foreign policy. Over the years he has evolved away from ordinary isolationism and toward what seems to be a belief that America's role in the world is pernicious, if not evil."

and

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism AA: "In 2002, he told a television audience, using language that could have equally come from Noam Chomsky or a similar left-wing critic of America, that '9/11 was a direct consequence of the United States meddling in an area of the world where we do not belong and where we are not wanted."

She quotes this but does not engage with the criticisms of Buchanan or Chomsky in any meaningful way, and she dismisses them without any counter-argument. Chomsky/Buchanan is absolutely spot on in their analysis of why 9/11 happened. Bin Laden himself: "There is America, full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that. What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation [the Islamic world] has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds."

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: "And this is what Trump has proven: beneath the surface of the American consensus, the belief in our founding fathers and the faith in our ideals, there lies another America—Buchanan's America, Trump's America—one that sees no important distinction between democracy and dictatorship. This America feels no attachment to other democracies; this America is not 'exceptional.'"

"This America has no special democratic spirit of the kind Jefferson described. The unity of this America is created by white skin, a certain idea of Christianity, and an attachment to land that will be surrounded and defended by a wall. This America's ethnic nationalism resembles the old-fashioned ethnic nationalism of older European nations. This America's cultural despair resembles their cultural despair."

America has been at war in some form or fashion since its founding, minus about 30 odd years. The "Founding Fathers" were slave-owning misogynists. The "spirit of Jefferson" isn't democratic at all (he was a rapist, after all). The "spirit" she's talking about is almost a religion, and it's on what MAGA is built. That's just it, she can point to Trump and say why he's terrible, but she can't or won't do the deep dive into the important questions "why" questions like why he exists, why he's popular, why people follow him and his horrible ideas.

The reality is that people have been suffering in some form or fashion because of the neoliberal politics that's been dominating since the 1970s. Wages have been stagnant while income inequality rises. The stagnation results from those policies, and Trump is built on top of Ronald Reagan's legacy.

View all my reviews