Sunday Hopium - Further Reflections On The Gray And The Brown, White Supremacy And Great Tragedy Of The Southern Strategy

Happy Sunday all. Sundays here at Hopium are rest days, relax, reboot and get ready for the week ahead days. It’s another beautiful, cool late spring morning here in DC. While it has been a little rainy we’ve had a beautiful spring here this year……

Still thinking a lot this morning about my discussion with Ron Brownstein and his seminal article, The Gray and The Brown, as Trump’s tribal “more for me, less for you” agenda strives to radically reduce the tax burden of the wealthy, cut government programs for “those people,” “remigrate” millions of non-white immigrants and disappear innocent men to foreign gulags. There is a ferocity to these early Trump 2.0 days, an inhumanity, a dangerous ends justify the means sentiment, a blinding racial and tribal animus behind all this that remains breathtaking and I will admit at times hard for me to truly understand…..

In a powerful essay in the New York Times this weekend Nick Kristoff (gift link) challenges Trump, Musk and Rubio on their ridiculous evasion of responsibility for what is without question the most inhumane act by the Trump regime so far - the vaporizing of USAID. In this essay he shows photos of two children who have died since their medicine was cut off, and writes:

Trump is right that U.S.A.I.D. needed reform. But American aid overall still saved about one life every 10 seconds, based on estimates by the Center for Global Development.

The transfer of U.S.A.I.D. into the State Department wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea if it were done carefully. But simply shuttering the agency with no transition has been catastrophic. An “impact counter” developed by an economist estimates that about 300,000 people have died so far from the reductions in American assistance, two-thirds of them children. The death toll is said to be rising at a rate of 103 per hour.

I’m not sure it’s actually that high, partly because I’ve seen some laid-off health workers continue to work without pay and some health ministries step up to pick up the slack. And it takes time for children to weaken and die. Yet while nobody knows the true number — partly because the cancellation of programs means that no one is counting the dead — the flat denial of any deaths at all is preposterous.

Rubio chooses not to make the argument that I believe is Trump’s true position: We want tax cuts (disproportionately benefiting the rich), so we need to cut funds in the budget from people who are so marginalized that they can’t complain.

So Evan and Achol died.

To deny the reality of dying children not only insults the memory of children starving to death in Sudan and Yemen and Afghanistan; it also insults the intelligence of Americans.

Understanding the demographic transition that Ron Brownstein and I discuss in our new video has been central to my work for more than two decades now. On this Sunday of reflection, I send along a few of my most important essays about our changing nation, and the very American tragedy of the party of Abraham Lincoln becoming a party that exploits and weaponizes racial fear, and somehow justifies the sending of innocents to foreign gulags and the intentional killing of millions of the poorest people on Earth.

The 50 Year Strategy (2007, Link) - This essay made the case that the emergence of two new demographic groups - Hispanics and Millennials - was giving Democrats an opportunity to build a new, durable majority coalition - if we leaned in and made them central to our politics.

In the four Presidential elections after this essay was written Democrats averaged 51% of the vote, our best showing since FDR’s four elections from 1932 to 1944. This new coalition unraveled in 2024, something Ron and I discuss at lenght in our video.

Forward Or Backward? (2012, Link) - In a long magazine essay I warned that there was growing evidence the American right was recoiling at our increasing diversity and pace of change, and that something akin to a true and dangerous reactionary politics was beginning to emerge in the United States. An excerpt:

So in a very real sense the American election of 2012 is about “forward,” and “backward.” And just like President Obama got this framing right, he is closer to getting the policy response right to the vast changes afoot in the world today than an aging and reactionary American right; which is why he appears headed towards re-election despite challenging times domestically and abroad. It is indeed the great question of American politics now whether and when the Republican Party can modernize and adapt to the new realities of the 21st century, choosing forward over backward. Doing so of course would be good for America, and for the world. But how this happens and who leads them to this better place is still very hard to discern sitting in Washington, DC in the fall of 2012.

Build Back Better - Joe Biden’s Historic Opportunity (2020, Link) - In an essay spelling out my hopes for what President Biden could do if elected, I made the case that it was time for our leaders to formally and aggressively denounce white supremacy in all its forms:

Of all the big things we have to do in the coming years there is one more – to honor and build on the work of FDR American leaders should forcefully denounce white supremacy in all of its forms. We have to make clear that American, Western, liberal, Four Freedom values are universal values, values of all people everywhere, regardless of race, religion or country of origin. They belong to all of us. White supremacy is not just a malicious legacy belief system from our racist and colonial past, it’s also profoundly anti-modern; for who could, after seeing the advances and potential of the people all over the world over these past fifty years ever believe that any race or religion or culture was somehow not capable of extraordinary things, and the people of all nations not deserving of the opportunities and freedoms we cherish. Trump’s white supremacy must be returned, aggressively, to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Yes, my friends, there remains a great deal of work ahead of us, and I remain grateful, every day, to be doing this vital and necessary work with all of you - Simon