Essays that capture the 2010s era of American Politics?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

The 2010s is an interesting era in terms of political communication, so many signifiers and trends have become hard to understand or decipher without pre-existing familiarity with previous memes. There's also a certain coherence to it or desire to overfit the narrative, it's easy to start the era with the 2010s and then draw a directly line to the storming of the us capitol on the eve of Biden's inauguration, with a straightforward story of right-wing radicalization and extremism. This narrative isn't wrong, but I feel it leaves out a lot of nuance and details that make the decade confusing.


I'm trying to find essays that capture the way people felt about politics at the time it was going, what they belived would be happening, what electoral trends were they debating about ?

[pikachu]

If you’re just doing this for fun, you can do worse than old atlas threads.

[Ricardian1485]

"The Flight 93 Election" by Michael Anton was a very influential essay, and pretty much encapsulates why so many conservative intellectuals rallied behind Trump.

[Sumner 1868]

A foreign essay that was discussed a lot in the U.S. left would be Exiting the Vampire Castle by the British socialist Mark Fisher. It even has a Wiki page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exiting_the_Vampire_Castle

Ta-Nehisi Coates 2014 essay on slavery reparations pretty much made the cause semi-mainstream again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

[Benjamin Frank]

A lecture essay by Canadian pollster Michael Adams in 2006

Fire, ice and American backlash: social change above the Rio Grande
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/12708/items/1.0102938

I attended this lecture and a little something is lost without the visuals, however it accurately describes the Americans who had rarely previously voted who became the Trump base - the disengaged. And also that there was some convergence towards traditional Republican voters and the disengaged (or disaffected) on a number of values like acceptance of violence, patriarchy and distrust of academic authority (I'm not sure if that last one is mentioned, but, if not, it was clearly just overlooked.)

The first five minutes or so are introductions.

The lecture is about 1 hour with a half hour of questions and answers.

There are probably other lecture essays from the UBC Vancouver institute that fit the topic as well. https://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/institute/vaninst11.html

For instance:
Right-Wing vs Left-Wing Populism: Lessons from Venezuela and the US Javier Corrales 2019
Trumpocracy: a conversation with David Frum 2018

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

"The Flight 93 Election" by Michael Anton was a very influential essay, and pretty much encapsulates why so many conservative intellectuals rallied behind Trump.

My issue that these conservative intellectuals are a realy small proportion of the poulation, it doesn't realy capture Trumps appeal to the masses.

[Saint Milei]

Anything accurate will come from a controversial figure on the right

[Electric Circus]

Check out Masha Gessen's "Autocracy: Rules for Survival," originally published in the New York Review of Books in November of 2016. It's a window on how many reacted to Trump's election, interesting for both what it gets right (Charlottesville and January 6th made it look prescient) and what it gets wrong (Trump did not use war to bolster his popularity, although the enthusiastic reaction to him lobbing a few Tomahawks into Syria in the following year suggests that this was a missed opportunity that a more engaged version of Trump could have used to great effect).

"The Flight 93 Election" by Michael Anton was a very influential essay, and pretty much encapsulates why so many conservative intellectuals rallied behind Trump.

My issue that these conservative intellectuals are a realy small proportion of the poulation, it doesn't realy capture Trumps appeal to the masses.

It's an attempt to tell a more interesting story than one of voters caught up in a televisual power fantasy that spoke to a vague collection of fears and resentments. Of course Trump's voters weren't really charging the cockpit; they were putting on their headphones and watching Air Force One while imagining themselves as the protagonist.

To be fair, this is in line with what most political editorials do, but the "Flight 93 Election" is a useful introduction to understanding just how wacky it would get at Republican-aligned outfits like Claremont over the next several years.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Are there any suggestions for windows into the Obama Era and Tea Party Movement ? I've found a lot of articles discussing obamas victory and what it means for Americas racial relations but I haven't found much about the embroynic begining of the tea party movement and subsequent elections.

Like I can't find anything that discusses how people felt or their experience regarding the 2012 election.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Not an essay but something I think captures early tea party rethoric.
https://twitter.com/RuNoseP/status/1679494319298736128?t=Mvi6882Dw6cPpc7DBIHLYA&...