Finally, Krugman says, "I don't think this desperate strategy is going to work. But it's all Trump has left. The only thing he can hope for is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror based on nothing real at all."
Nothing real at all? How about all those Democrats in power in Chicago during all those years of homicides in Chicago? Haven't Democrats for years been in power in Chicago and Minneapolis and other cities that have more recently contributed to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement?
If having Democrats in power is so great, why is there today a Black Lives Matter movement? Isn't the Black Lives Matter movement a sign that having Democrats in power is not so great after all?
If all politics is local, then the Democratic politics in big cities has not yet solved the broad array of problems facing African Americans in big cities.
In my lengthy OEN article "Christiana Morgan on Creative Personal Transformation" (dated August 23, 2020), I pointed out that "anti-black bigots today need to experience" the kind of creative personal transformation she describes. But the anti-black bigots among Tweety Trump's most ardent supporters are not likely to experience such creative personal transformation before November - or ever in their lifetimes.
Consequently, for the foreseeable future, anti-black bigots and anti-black bigotry are here to stay. Therefore, the know-it-alls in the Democratic Party are going to have to work out political measures to contain ant-black bigots and anti-black bigotry in the foreseeable future.
But the know-it-alls in the Democratic Party are not likely to do this if they follow Krugman's example of minimizing particular problem areas and escaping into aggregate statistics that misleadingly smooth over particular problem areas.
Incidentally, in my OEN article, I delineate the thought of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). What Krugman, following Richard Hofstadter, refers to as the paranoid style of American politics hearkens back to what Ong refers to as primary oral cultures. No doubt what Ong refers to as our contemporary secondary oral cultures conditions us psychologically and attunes us deeply to the resonances of primary oral cultures in our collective unconscious. For this reason, I suspect that the paranoid style in American politics is not likely to go away anytime soon. So let's let the Republican Party have the paranoid style in American politics.
I can join with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), in dreaming his dream.
I can join with President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) is envisioning America as a Great Society.
No doubt we need optimistic visions of the future to inspire us.
But we also need to be realistic about what the Democratic Party can hope to accomplish should the Democratic Party's presidential candidate manage to win decisively in the Electoral College in 2020.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
