Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
The trick to reading a Robert Caro biography? He writes about places more than people. And, above all, he writes about power. I pointed to this feature in a post on Caro’s book series The Years of Lyndon Johnson. But before Caro wrote about LBJ, he wrote about Robert Moses and New York. I’ll say a word here about The Power Broker: a book about how one builds (and then loses) power in a major US city.
I wrote my last update on the COVID-19 data near the height of the delta variant phase of the pandemic in late August. At the time, case numbers were still rising. Since then, they continued rising until September 2. And then they started an extended decline. Let’s revisit the topic of COVID-19 and see where we’re headed.
Readers looking for my full history of posts on the topic can find links here: March 2020, August 2020, January 2021, August 2021.
In a review of the 2020 Thomas Frank book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Erik Baker lays out a basic progressive theory of the electorate. I’ll set aside, for the moment, the tension between that and the title of this post. Many leftists, after all, still identify as progressives.
It so happens I recently wrote a post that touched on this idea, in part. Here I’ll briefly sketch out Baker’s critique of Frank and why it’s so important for leftist electoral projects.
Not long ago, I read a book on the writing and ratification of the U.S. constitution. I found it useful, and after I read it I wanted to move along to primary sources. It doesn’t get more primary than the The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays many Americans know. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a set of essays in favor of the constitution from three of its key defenders (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay).
So, the thing about these essays is that historians, political scientists, and others have written a ton about them. I’m not repeating all that, nor am I really citing it. I’m doing something much less formal. As I read The Federalist Papers, I found a couple of the essays especially useful. That’s all.
Let’s take a look.
The online version of the DSA Convention, as one might expect, didn’t have the kinds of large crowds, side debates, and raucous noise one might expect at a leftist convention with more than 1,000 delegates. But it wasn’t too far off. I’ll collect here a few thoughts about my experience as a delegate from Iowa City.
The first thing I’ll say is that the DSA Convention was still huge and a bit overwhelming. Delegates received tons of emails and discussion options. We had dozens (hundreds?) of pages of material to read on resolutions, bylaws changes, NPC candidates, and so on. Yes, it was pretty chaotic. But DSA staff did an excellent job putting materials into shape and organizing the online experience.
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