Rebecca Solnit
I got very excited that Bruce Springsteen just wrote a ballad about Minneapolis and said that I think we're winning and I know that will flush lots of grumpitude from the shrubberies but here's how I think about how these changes happen.
John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, 24 August 1815, " What do We mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington."
In other words the most important battle really is for hearts and minds (and you don't change them by dropping bombs on them or throwing tear gas at them). And while the Trumpists didn't have a majority to begin with (only a third of eligible voters chose the Trump/Vance ticket), they have steadily eroded what support they have through their malice, destructiveness, arrogance, and idiocy. And open hatred.
They have lost the people. And they seem incapable of doing anything but continuing to do so. And while it's nice Bovino was kicked out of Minneapolis, his boss was Noem, and while it looks like Noem might go, her whisperer was Miller, and while even Miller seems to be in rough waters, it's Trump and Vance who chose these policies and these people and until they go we keep going.
A bunch of writers seem to be suddenly discovering that a crucial question in this conflict is about human nature, and that the Trump Administration's deeply wrong assumptions are not serving them in this moment. I had a head start on the topic from the research for A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, and so my very first newsletter declared:
Underlying all this is an old assumption by many elites, especially the authoritarian and fascist variety, that ordinary people are weak, timid, fearful and pretty much collapse if you say boo to them. They also tend to think we are selfish and operate only out of self-interest because they think we're like them. They are very often wrong in very consequential ways. This misapprehension about human nature has, from at least the Second World War to G.W. Bush's Shock and Awe plans to subjugate Iraq, driven military attacks on civilians. Their idea is that you can break morale and make people surrender through sheer brutality. That somehow ordinary people will all collapse in terror or mental breakdown and be helpless and defeated, which will weaken or undermine the country as a whole.
That book of mine was about how ordinary people react in disaster, and the truth is that most of us are brave, generous, altruistic, creative as we rise to meet the demands of a sudden disaster by rescuing and taking care of each other and re-building the terms of survival as community kitchens, volunteer clean-up teams, and more. We saw this with the L.A. fires... Los Angeles has filled with mutual-aid efforts of many kinds, drawing on the resources and commitments of many communities, many of which are ongoing--a true paradise built in hell.
Or rather the book was about the magnificent ways ordinary people often respond in disaster and the vision of human nature and human desire it gives us--because people don't just do good but they are often deeply moved and even joyful in these times. I read their accounts from the 1906 earthquake, the 1917 Halifax explosion, and the London Blitz; I heard them in person about 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. I found in disaster a window into our deepest desires for connection, community, purpose, immediacy, meaningful work.
Disasters sometimes bring moments when the triviality, the distraction, the fretting about the past and future, disconnect us from the present and our deepest commitments, moments when Martin Luther King's beloved community comes into being. But this book was also about elite panic--the way elites, including government officials and wealthy and powerful individuals assume the worst about human nature and act on their assumptions, convinced they're suppressing a rampaging mob or controlling a bunch of hapless panicky people. What they're really frightened of is the fact that in these moments they're not in control, and the old order they sat atop is destabilized and maybe open to change.
Quote in picture from Adam Serwer's spectacular report/reflection on Minneapolis. And a piece of my essay before last at Meditationsinanemergency.com
