the American Electorate and Recent Elections: Recommended Resistance REading Part 3

I saw it coming. And yet when it happened, I was still angry and numb. No matter what you think of America right now, no matter how bad you think things are or how bad they really are for you, I fail to understand how Donald Trump is the answer to whatever is perceived as wrong.

I want to understand the political landscape. It’s not enough for me to know and name the deep red vs. blue political divide in America between Republicans and Democrats. There’s something going on that is deeper than many of us have been allowing for in our rationalizations, postmortems, Monday morning quarterbacking, and debriefing of the 2024 presidential election. It makes no rational sense that a known charlatan, fraud, convicted criminal, and downright despicable and deplorable human being such as Donald Trump is actually a better person for the job than either Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, but here we are.

I’m not satisfied with the contention that Americans are so misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic that a majority of people would rather have a specimen like Trump be president because he’s a white male than any woman, not to mention a woman of color. There is certainly enough hate and bigotry in America that these prejudices are without a doubt part of the reason for the Trump/MAGA phenomenon but not enough to explain it completely. The Internet is a powerful propaganda tool, and we know that admittedly politically uninformed people voted for Trump by a large margin. We know the corporate consolidation of the media leaves us with very few solid independent and non-biased sources of actual news and information. We know from the rise in popularity of conspiracy theories that American’s ability to think critically is shrinking. But monopoly, technology, and stupidity alone don’t account for the election results either.

I want to fill in the other spaces. I want more data. I want a more complete picture of where we are as well as how we got here, and if possible, the start of a map to the way out. Voting blue is not getting the job done. I’ve voted blue because the alternative is worse, but it’s not like neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism is doing me a lot of good. I know that the perfect candidate, perfect system, and perfect human government does not exist, but we’ve got to be able to do better than this. There’s a long list of things that make democracy better and would make our country better: National health care, free public education through college, equal funding of all school districts, make election days paid holidays and use automatic absentee ballots, early voting, and rank choice voting. outlaw corporate contributions to candidates and parties and political advertising, abolish the electoral college, abolish the senate, reshape the membership and appointment of the supreme court, end the two-party system with easier ballot access for other political parties. All these things would help. Any one of them would help. And we’re in a place where I can’t envision any of them happening in my lifetime. Can politics work again? How? Is it possible to find the political organization and political power needed to move in these directions? Are we doomed to fall into authoritarian kleptocracy?

Here's what I’m reading to gain a better understanding of how Donald Trump is winning elections and perhaps gain some insight into how elect more reasonable, rational, and compassionate leaders. If you're buying books consider used copies or independent booksellers through Indie Bound.

Books helping me understand the current state of the American electorate and recent elections

• The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite by Michael Lind

• Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics by Timothy Shenk

• Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira

• Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird

• The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate by Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg

• The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld

• Why American Elections Are Flawed (And How to Fix Them) by Pippa Norris

• Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart

What sources are you currently learning from to understand the state of American politics?

Hope is Resistance: Recommend Resistance Reading Part 2

Hope is resistance and rebellion and these six books inspire hope and courage, helping you resist tyranny and injustice. Hope is also resistance reading, especially books about hope! Many of us are still circling around somewhere in the stages of grief. Part of what we need right now is hope. Hope isn’t blind optimism. That type of hope is bigoted and useless. Pie in the sky wishing for the privileged is not going to help us.  What we need is a strong courageous hope that comes to life in memories and stories of struggle and survival. Hope is a process as much as a feeling.  Hope comes from a profound trust that there is and can be goodness, love, and justice and doing something to make those things real. 

I recommend to you books that have grounded me in a just and realistic hope.  Three of these books are fiction. These novels and novella are stories that provide you with an opportunity to image how things can be better, and relish the good, the kindness, and the compassion in the world.  Three of the books are non-fiction and focus on hope from the perspective of spirituality, political organizing, and philosophy.

All the books I discuss in these Recommended Resistance Reading posts are generally available at public libraries, bookstores, and through online booksellers. Please purchase them used or from independent or minority owned bookstores, if you’re going to buy a copy.  

Hope springs from these six books

FICTION

• A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

• The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

• Hope Punk: Hope is an Act of Resistance by Preston Norton

A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers is a utopian, not dystopian, work of science fiction about a world that has gone through the worst of ecological devastation and over-reliance on technology run amok and come out on the other side. The story centers on a monk and a robot who form a unique friendship and together explore what it means to be human, to be good, and to be alive.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig is an exemplary work of magical realism that deals with themes including ecological collapse, political corruption, and person integrity.  A mysterious energy or being found in the ocean of a Spanish island sustains and heals the planet and its people. The protagonists fight against political power and corruption that endanger the environment. 

Hope Punk: Hope is an Act of Resistance by Preston Norton is a YA novel about a teenager who battles spiritually abusive Christian fundamentalism with queer family and friends who finds out that hope isn’t just an emotion, it’s a tool of rebellion and survival.  And as all punks know, love and music are such tools as well.  

“Hope Punk” is also the name of an entire genre of science fiction. The term was coined by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland in a 2017 tumblr post that went viral across other platforms as well, where she wrote “The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.”  Grimdark stories are nihilistic, dystopian, amoral, and violent.  In grimdark stories there are no heroes, even the protagonists you might come to root for aren’t great people. The mood tends to be cynical and disheartening.  Nothing matters and what if it did?  Hopepunk is the opposite. And although there’s debate about whether hopepunk is a sub-genre, it certainly is a theme and a trope and vibe.  What makes it punk is the anti-establishment and resistance to oppression present in the work.  Alexandra Rowland further explained her take on hopepunk in essays and interviews. She noted that Hopepunk is a refutation of the glass is half empty lazy nihilism of grimdark. Hopepunk reminds us, as Rowland noted in an interview “kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.”

NONFICTION

• HOPE: A User’s Manual by Maryann McKibben Dana

• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown

• Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility, and the Meaning of Life by Viktor E. Frankl

HOPE: A User’s Manual by Maryann McKibben Dana is self-help workbook for training yourself to be more hopeful. McKibben Dana is a Presbyterian minister and this work does have Christian spiritual references (not too many for a non-Christian reader), but she is careful to provide alternate wording and ways of thinking of things if a Christian approach doesn’t work for you. The books is organized into short chapters of only a couple pages each with questions for reflection at the end along with a practical challenge such as “write a poem that uses the phrase ‘hope draws near when’… or  “take a walk in nature and find an imperfect natural object to remind yourself imperfect is beautiful.”

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown (not a typo, she spells her name this way) is a reflection on the need for joy and pleasure to sustain us, especially in the work of fighting injustice and creating beloved community.  Fun and pleasure are not luxuries reserved for the privileged and powerful, but the birthright of being human.

Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility, and the Meaning of Life by Viktor E. Frankl is a collection of interviews, lectures, and articles spanning decades. All them revolve around Frankl’s central philosophical theme of surviving and creating meaning even in the face of injustice and death.

recommended resistance reading part 1: ten books to help you understand the present moment

10 Books for Resistance Reading

Knowing what's happening and how we got here helps us strategize and make plans for what to do next. I can't say reading these books will make you feel better about the recent election results, but I know they will help you see the reality of the world in which we live a little more clearly. All of these are recent works or classics and until at least January 20, 2025 you should be able to find them easily in a public library, book store, or online. If you're going to buy a copy, consider a used book seller or an independent bookstore.

I consider the books on this list essential recommended resistance reading. They are works of political philosophy, political science, history, and current events. I will add to this resistance library in future posts. I think it make sense to try and put our present moment in a historical context and I think that taken together these books do this. The books are listed in no particular order. They're all great. I know there are a lot of other books one could add to this list, but I kept my list to books I've actually read.

On Tyranny, How Democracies Die, and Anne Applebaum's books are all very short, quick, potent reads, and the physical books are small and thin. I recommend starting with these. The Origins of Totalitarianism and Manufacturing Consent are classics, but they're dense and some find them quite a slog. I had to attempt Arendt three times before finally finishing it, but it was worth it.

• The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

• How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

• Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky

• Tyranny, Inc. : How Private Power Crushed American Liberty and What to do about It by Sohrab Ahmari

• Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World by Anne Applebaum

• Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

• How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future by Maria Ressa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

• Rich White Men: What it Takes to Uproot the Old Boys’ Club and Transform America by Garret Neiman

• Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade

Up next Fiction and Non-Fiction to Keep hope alive.