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My top 3 reads of the month.

I wish I was more consistent with making these but I have to be in a mood to make stuff on Canva and most of the time, I’m not 😭

Template below if you’d like to use it for yourself. 🥰

Follow me on Goodreads, Fable, and StoryGraph for complete reviews for these titles. Links in comments.

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#march reads #reading wrap up #spring #book blog #book recommendations #contemporary fiction #romantasy #bookblr #credence #brimstone #a witchs guide to magical innkeeping #spring aesthetic #birds 🦜 bees 🐝 flowers 🌷 & trees 🌳

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What if centrism is a dead-end?

Centrist political strategy, especially in the US, is a failed, dead-end programme that benefits the billionaire status-quo.

The "popularist" (poll-driven, "focus on popular issues") pundits insist that the only way to save democracy is to turn politics into focus-grouped corporate marketing that treats voters like consumers of insurance or soup brands. Elite pundits like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias tell us to talk about popular "kitchen table issues" but ignore the fact that the kitchen is on fire and the table is owned by a private equity firm charging you rent for each meal you eat.

Poll-tested moderation is a failed a strategy for the US Democrats and it will fail in Australia as well. It is a slow-motion surrender to a neoliberal status quo, a status quo that is collapsing into far-right extremism.

In 2024, the Democratic Party ran a campaign of caution, moderation and "sensible centrism" -- the popularist requirements of the finance capital class that dominates the upper echelons of the Democrats. Kamala Harris almost immediately distanced herself from her own past progressive stances, courted figures like Republican Liz Cheney, and spoke the language of the sensible centre. She lost.

The facts show that in an age of nationalised, hyper-polarised politics, the mythical voter-support for centrists and moderates is gone. Of the twenty-two Democratic incumbents who lost competitive seats recently, twenty-one were moderates. This is not a coincidence.

James Baldwin wrote that "it is the innocence which constitutes the crime". There is a certain innocence in believing that if we just find the right combination of words, the silver-bullet narrative, the "median voter" will finally turn out and vote for the Democrats en-masse.

But the median voter is a phantom. As political scientist David Broockman notes, many "moderates" are actually people with a mix of intense, often conflicting views. Some want to tax billionaires into oblivion while also holding right-wing views on immigration. Others have progressive views on LGBTI rights while supporting eugenics or wanting to de-fund public education. Real people are complicated and very few people have coherent political ideologies for every issue or topic.

You cannot triangulate toward a point that does not exist.

When a party chooses centrism and moderation, it chooses to maintain the "plutonomy" -- a system where the economy is entirely dominated by the ultra-rich and extracts wealth from everyone else.

Chasing the imaginary centre reinforces the idea that the current distribution of power is the only one possible. These are the stories we tell ourselves in order to live. We tell ourselves that being "reasonable" will win over the opposition.

Meanwhile, while the opposition is busy bribing supreme court judges, executing protestors in the streets, and creating AI-powered surveillance tech-empires with pedophile billionaires.

The result in the US of popularism and centrism has been devastating. The base is actively demobilised and therefore stays home.

In 2024, the turnout gap between Black and white Americans was the widest in three decades. Youth turnout collapsed. These voters did not stay home because the Democrats were too radical. They stayed home because the Democrats offered them more of the same, failed, neoliberal incrementalism. Moderation and centrism is a tool of class suppression.

We see a similar (although different) phenomenon in Australia. Despite compulsory voting, the number of people who do not vote is growing. The centre-right Liberal Coalition collapsed after the 2025 Federal election, and just like in the UK their supporters have shifted to the far-right, anti-immigration One Nation and Reform UK. The massive win for Labor in Australia (and Labour in the UK) is fragile, and was driven by the proletarian precarity and downward mobility of Gen X and millennials.

Historically, parties of the centre-left represented lower-income, working class voters, but since the 1970s they have transitioned into the party of the "highly educated" elite, what Thomas Piketty called the "Brahmin Left". This shift created a political landscape where the "Merchant Right" (the party of business and capital) and the "Brahmin Left" (the party of the professional-managerial class) both benefit from the neoliberal status quo.

When leaders like Kamala Harris or Keir Starmer pursue "sensible centrism", they are essentially speaking the language of that educated elite. This leaves workers and the petit bourgeoisie -- who feel the system is rigged -- with no genuine representative.

The path forward requires that we call things by their real names and actually stand for something. "Moderation" and centrism are just another way to protect corporate and billionaire power, and to maintain the structural control that underpins their wealth. This is as true in Australia, the UK, Canada as it is in the US.

You do not defeat far-right authoritarians by being more reasonable, by appealing to a centre that does not exist. The consensus trap will merely continue to hand power to the billionaires.

If social democratic parties in Australia or elsewhere, continues to bow at the altar of centrism, they will only find their own irrelevance.

Source: What if centrism is a dead-end?

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#book quotes #Wild Women and the Blues #Denny S. Bryce #roaring 20s #historical fiction #contemporary fiction #black history month #book blog #book recommendations #vintage #literature

angelswim64

As someone with an English degree, I cannot overstate just HOW strong of a weapon literacy is against fascism. Engaging with literature from a myriad of diverse perspectives only strengthens empathy AND intelligence. Some book recs I have are listed below!!

Finished my 2nd Black History Month Read a few days ago. 🥰 Miss Honoree Dalcour is still living rent free. She was phenomenal. ✨

If you can tolerate a few plot holes, I definitely recommend it.

Complete review located on my Fable, Goodreads, and StoryGraph profiles!

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#Denny S. Bryce #book recommendations #black history month #historical fiction #bookblr #contemporary fiction #roaring 20s #book blog #Wild Women and the Blues

It is only fitting that I finished this outstanding retelling of The Great Gatsby on the first day of Black History Month. Not only am I thoroughly convinced that this rendition was much more accurate in conveying the illusion of the American Dream that Fitzgerald tried to express, but it did so while highlighting the more harrowing aspects of American life that Fitzgerald had the luxury of ignoring due to the color of his skin.

Lurie stays Fitzgerald’s original course flawlessly in the way that you’re able to see the obvious parallel between James Mann and his obsession with Marguerite and Jay Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy; by touching on subjects such as redlining, state imposed economic instability & poverty, Jim Crow laws, racial discrimination in Hollywood, colorism, etc.—that James as well as every other Black character in the story had to endure alongside James’ obsession with Marguerite—she adds more layers of authenticity which makes the story much more memorable in my honest opinion.

Definitely a must read for any Gatsby/Fitzgerald fans.

Check out my complete review on Fable, Goodreads, and StoryGraph!

#historical fiction #Black History Month #book recommendations #bookblr #book blog #classic retelling

dancingdayss

Man I had some 🔥🔥 reads this month! I decided to branch away from my usual genres thinking I’d be in tact but my emotions were all over the damn place with these and as you can see most of them were worth every moment.

If I had to choose, Divine Rivals takes the top spot. It unraveled me in the best way possible. 🥰 Literary fiction is becoming a fast favourite in my world.

I was slightly disappointed with my chosen “spooky” reads for the month. I was hoping to be scared out of my skin but these barely scratched that itch. My mom is a horror queen. I’ve seen things that had me sleeping on my sister’s floor for months on end lol when I see something tagged as horror, I’m expecting to be terrified. Great stories, just didn’t rise to the expected occasion is all.

Be sure to follow my Goodreads, Fable and StoryGraph profiles for reviews! Links in bio! 😊

P.S. I’ve attached my template for anyone who’d like to use it to make their own. Happy Halloween! 👻

#bookaesthetic #book recommendations #bookblr #reading wrap up #october #bookstagram

hotel-apathy

thesweetiepienovels

Actually, you are enough. Even if you don’t work. Or study. Or go out. Or have friends. Or have family. You’re enough because you exist and your existence is enough to be enough because you are not a product. You are not a sum of output. You are not a task to complete. But because you are something the universe wanted and put here even if you’ll never understand why. Somewhere in the cosmos your existence makes a difference, even if it’s not the way others existences do.