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TPM Reader PJ responds to yesterday’s post (“In the Dark Times“) …
I agreed with an awful lot of this post, but what is your warrant for the optimism that positive, political resistance will happen? I mean, I want to believe that, but what we’re facing here is a problem that is, at its base, about two things that are difficult to separate: racism and capitalism. Trump’s racism is well documented and there’s no need to rehash it here, but we both know he’s different from a lot of post-war conservative racist arguers as a matter of degree, rather than kind. Quiet part loud and all that. The Adam Serwer “the cruelty is the point” type arguments get at this dynamic well, but I think we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think there’s a significant coalition of Americans who either buy into the hard (deport the Mexicans, imprison the Blacks) and soft (people should respect the law, people should know better than to do crimes) versions of this argument.