Kerry 🇺🇸

You can't understand American history if you use the left/right frame. It entered the American political discourse very late, and until the 60s, it almost exclusively translated to communist/anti-communist. 19c Americans did not define themselves in relation to communism.

And for many years after the war, the (mostly GOP) establishment went out of its way to talk about how the war had validated democracy and the principles of self-government, and was in fact a source of success/stability. As the Dems got back into power, Copperhead rhetoric became prevalent.

Ultimately, young smart people like to seek each other out—and, without even consciously realizing it, engage in activities with each other that their dumber peers can’t do. Socially playing with “difficult social theories” is such an activity. This was much of the appeal of critical theory, esp its “fancier” contintental philosophy and Frankfurt School layers, before say 2010. In fact I think this is the primary explanation for why critical theory has been so fashionable among Ivy League undergrads. But when ideas become “mass movements” they have to be dumbed down quite a lot, as illustrated by the “crab museum” plaque below. And the result is that the new crop of young smart people find these ideas repulsive—the way mentally sharp young nerds have always found whatever is mainstream, dumbed-down, and “pop” to be repulsive. So the young and bright go back to square one to find a completely different set of values and ideas (not necessarily political) to play with, a set of ideas which is “exclusive” in some new and different way.

Coverage of the 1863 draft riots in NY.

This is what I mean about the Civil War *not* being seen as a failure of democracy. At least on the GOP side, the rhetoric was that various enemies were falsely trying to claim this was the case, and that vigorously prosecuting the war to restore the Union would disprove this.

I would have expected a crab museum to be the one place I was safe from being lectured to about British colonialism.

"If Obama had spoken about his race more frequently, conservatives would not rely so heavily on the singular example. His remark about Martin being Black like him has been endlessly repeated by conservatives because it was the exception rather than the rule." Exactly.

"The Commercial concluded that ‘‘Grant is a safe sort of President,’’ explaining, ‘‘There is no occasion for alarm just now about too great a development of Nationalism or Caesarism. Grant is not of the stuff that Caesars are made of.’’"