It’s funny, people often dismiss/try to make fun of me for being “just a musician.” Which is weird because (a) musicians are often reasonably bright, and (b) I also have multiple degrees in mathematics. So, take that for what you will.
As for these authors, I am not familiar with their work. But looking veery briefly at Tuchin, I’m not sure he and I disagree all that much.
As stated earlier, I believe that beginning around 1980, the middle class began to collapse due to changes in tax policies and other economic and political positions that favored business and the wealthy. Using the “Southern Strategy” and other wedge issues such as race and sexuality, the GOP convinced working-class people to vote against their own interests.
If you aren’t familiar with this, consider this 1981 quote from Lee Atwater, former RNC chair and advisor to Ronald Reagan, explaining the electoral strategy that built his party:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, n*****.”
The people who most benefitted from unions, pensions, affordable healthcare, etc., were convinced to elect politicians whose political ideology — conservatism — is dedicated to destroying those things. And still is, just read the GOP platform, Project 2025, etc.
None of this should be controversial, when all you have to do is read what they wrote and the laws they proposed. Yes, the Democrats, being a coalition rather than a party, have always been less cohesive and efficient. On the other hand, Republicans were ruthlessly efficient and politically brutal (see especially Newt Gingrich), though in the last few years the brutality has increased as the cohesiveness has frayed.
At this point in history, I don’t know how people are still wrestling with this. Maybe it’s because I lived through it? Most of the confusion comes from young people and non-Americans who weren’t there, don’t have the lived experience, and rely on the internet for their knowledge base.
And the internet is almost entirely bullshit. The fact checking is clear, if you offered me a bet on 10% of the conservative content on social media being accurate, I’d take the under.
As I said earlier, there should be no controversy over historically verifiable events. It’s why I get so frustrated. Nothing that I’m writing here qualifies as opinion. Just read what they wrote, the laws they passed, and which politicians authored them.
“Bothsidesism” is ridiculous in the face of black-and-white history.
