Post by @bss@social.coop

2026-07-27 13:17 UTC

I regularly see posts by older liberals that still lament the loss of what they think was working before Trump. They continue to write as though the economy and government were largely okay and that it was Trump that broke things. That's the problem with the #Democrat Party and liberals in the US, especially the older demographic that were fairly comfortable in their retirements. For them, it worked well enough that they could ignore the fundamental injustices. Their take seems to be "Yes, but it mostly worked. It was mostly stable. We improve things gradually over time. If it hasn't been working for you, just work harder, wait your turn, trust us, it'll get better for you." For these folks the #US as formulated isn't broken and #capitalism works. That's the problem of the white middle class. Howard Zinn documented in A People's History that even before the signing of the Declaration of Independence the ruling class were planning to use the middle class. 1/ #Politics #WhiteSupremacy

Replies (1)

@bss@social.coop 2026-07-27 13:22

Zinn: "In the 1720s, with fear of slave rebellion growing, white servants were allowed in Virginia to join the militia as substitutes for white freemen. At the same time, slave patrols were established in Virginia to deal with the “great dangers that may . . . happen by the insurrections of negroes. . . .” Poor white men would make up the rank and file of these patrols, and get the monetary reward. Racism was becoming more and more practical. Edmund Morgan, on the basis of his careful study of slavery in Virginia, sees racism not as “natural” to black-white difference, but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control. “If freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done. The answer to the problem, obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt.” 2/

Open ##4138019