Dana Blankenhorn

The Enemy is Religious Nationalism

The 2022 election mostly put Trumpism into the rear-view mirror.

What it revealed was the larger political battle of this decade, between secular democracy and religious extremism.

I’m not against God. But there are two problems with religious nationalism.

First, it’s intolerant. Wherever one religion rules, its adherents outlaw any faith but their own. This is true for Hindus in India, for the Russian Orthodox, even for Buddhists in Burma. It’s true for Jews in Israel and for fundamentalist protestants in the United States.

This remains true despite every great religious teacher, from Gautama to Vishnu to Confucius, from Moses to Jesus to Mohammed, all the way to Joseph Smith, teaching first the way of tolerance. Love your neighbor. Care for the less fortunate. Seek the enlightenment of faith for yourself.

It’s the leaders of these faiths, the Popes and the Mullahs, the Rabbis, and the Brahmins, who twist it into something else. There is a reason for this. Those faiths that adhered to tolerance were, over time, wiped out by leaders of the intolerant. This is the true original sin.

The Tragedy of Herschel Walker

There are many tragic figures in the politics of 2022.

For me the most tragic is Herschel Walker.

Democrats don’t see it this way. More’s the pity. That’s because Walker represents the apotheosis of Jim Crow 2.0, a system of institutional racism that has been making its way across the south since I moved here in 1981.

It’s like this. Give blacks some places. Give them their own places, like Atlanta. Use thinly veiled racism to maintain white discipline and control in the suburbs. Use state policy to ghettoize the places with black majorities and encourage corruption. Meanwhile, take some with exploitable talent and raise them up. Coddle them, make them think they’re as good as white, so they become the new system’s avatars, black faces on a white system.

See, we’re not racist, look at X. Whose idiocy justifies the racists’ instincts.  

Ghosts of Our Fathers, Angels of Our Nature

When someone says of the Fascists, oligarchs, religious bigots, and racists of today’s Republican Party “that’s not us,” I shake my head.

That is us. I’m a history major. America has always been a battle between our ghosts and our better angels. There’s nothing Russia or China can teach us in that regard.

• Slavery? We perfected it, in the American South.
• Genocide? We perfected it, in the American West.
• Eugenics? We invented it, in American cities.

The Taliban have been here since the Puritans. Nearly all Christianity’s craziest cults were American-born. The Great Awakening of the 19^th century was just an appetizer.

The Siege of America

Americans have felt under siege for over 13 years now.

The present era of history, the backlash against President Obama and all Americans who supported him, began within days of his election.

It has only accelerated since.

First, Obama himself was declared illegitimate, other, a foreigner. This lie made it easy to define Obama’s supporters in the same way.

Vladimir Putin used this hatred to make Donald Trump President. There is no longer any serious question. Trump was Putin’s man.

Trump created the conditions for a Second American Civil War. It began his first year in office. It only grew hotter after the murder of George Floyd.

Every American, even the most fervent Trump supporters, learned in 2020 that they were a minority among Americans. This broke their faith in the American Constitution, as the Confederacy broke faith with it in 1861. As was true then, government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was redefined to mean only some people.

Many Republicans still support Russia over Ukraine. Others seek to drop their own past into a memory hole, while retaining the essence of Putinism. They believe only those loyal to their twisted, anti-American ideals has a right to rule. They believe women should be slave to a man’s sperm, that blacks should be slaves to whites, that gays should be slave to straights, and that only history reflecting this may be taught. Anyone sympathizing with Obama’s America deserves to be oppressed, forced to repeat lies and made to shut up, forever.

This is what makes Ukraine the real turning point of history. The war in Ukraine is revealing the Civil War within America. The minority is as armed and angry as the South was in 1860.

Imaginary Crisis

One thing I have learned reading American history is that every generation feels it’s in an existential crisis.

Usually, they’re right.

In the Founders’ generation, John Adams passed a Sedition Law against Thomas Jefferson and his supporters. Then James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” lost a war and saw his Capitol burned. America was only saved by Bonaparte’s downfall, which caused Great Britain to lose interest in us.

Jackson Democrats saw Whigs as oligarchs, looking to destroy the poor for the benefit of a few. The death of Whig President W.H. Harrison in 1841 destroyed Nathaniel Hawthorne’s faith in democracy. Abraham Lincoln was a Whig, then 1 in every 50 Americans died during the Civil War, which was nearly lost.

March for Democracy

There is a way to make what I wrote about yesterday real.

March for it.

The King family got us rolling with this. Yesterday’s March for Voting Rights needs to grow in intensity, from now through the November election, everywhere across the country. In blue states, purple states, in the very reddest states.

Marching on behalf of causes is a common political tactic. Its results are proven over time. The problem is that it’s often done haphazardly. It’s not done consistently, strategically, with a definite aim in mind.

This year, democracy is the aim. Marching is how you make it a cause and, ultimately, the wedge issue that destroys the fascist right. (If at this point you want to pretend the fascist streak in today’s Republican Party is just cosplaying, or politics as usual, here’s your hood.)

Atlanta Politics: Still All About Race

For the first time since I moved here 40 years ago Atlanta finally succeeded over the last four years.

It attracted a huge Microsoft development. It built parks. Its population grew.

The reaction by the city’s leaders has been panic.

The reason? Developers moved in near the coming Microsoft offices and built housing for upper-income people who might work there. The white gentrification of the west side, starting at Georgia Tech, has accelerated. Until recently this was the heart of the ghetto, and of the Atlanta machine’s political strength.

The response has been two-fold. First, Atlanta isn’t really fighting Republicans’ efforts to extract Buckhead, with 20% of the city’s population and 40% of its tax base, from the city. Buckhead is nearly all-white. They will complain, but they will let it go.

Arborists on Offense

In cities built in forests, like Atlanta, it’s time for city arborists to go on offense.

For too long, they’ve been playing defense. That is, a developer (or homeowner) would decide to cut down some trees, and there would be a process the arborist could object to. That’s defense.

Offense is something else.

It starts with a much bigger budget. Use the money to hire summer workers who will comb the city on foot and by bike, with cameras, identifying lots without tree canopy. Fine those suckers, preferably through a property tax surtax from which they can’t escape. Those same summer workers can identify lots with a full tree canopy. These property owners can apply for a bonus, again in the form of a property tax abatement. The bonus would be smaller than the penalty, providing money for the arborist’s budget. The workers are also more likely to grow up as supporters of trees.

The arborist should also work with independent groups, like Trees Atlanta in Atlanta, to offer property owners advice on what trees they should plant where. Trees Atlanta can use existing programs to pay for those trees where people can’t afford them. And before poor people start futzing about huge trees falling on their houses, there are plenty of smaller trees to choose from.

We can argue about what defines canopy. Is it just the unbuilt areas of the property, or does it include roofs? Trees over a roof can cut cooling bills. But solar panels on a roof can do the same thing.

The arborist should also work with property owners and non-government agencies to get trees on roofs. Every flat roof can be a garden. Every small roof can have a canopy.

A city that wants to grow, expanding the amount of land that’s built-up, has a responsibility to let arborists go on offense. Otherwise, it’s part of the global warming problem. You don’t want that to be your political obituary. Or the actual one for your children.

Atlanta and Workforce Housing

To survive, cities need to be majority middle-class, even upper middle-class.

Why? Cities cost more to maintain than suburbs. There’s more infrastructure. It’s older.

This means cities need to be attractive to upper middle-class people. That means they must be livable and walkable. If you’re going to increase density, you also must increase parkland. Not just one or two parks on the city margins. You need medium size parks, small parks, and vest pocket parks everywhere. You also need trees. Lots of trees. Anywhere a tree will fit.

This doesn’t mean you limit density. But if you’re going to have block-after-block of four-story buildings you’re going to need some parks within walking distance. Otherwise, you’re building a slum.

Mugwump

Mugwumps were a now obscure group of 1880s intellectuals who wanted honest government. (They were also a 1960s folk group , but that’s another story.)

Mugwumps started political life as Republicans who supported the civil service reform and regulation policies of James Garfield. They wound up switching sides in 1884, dooming any political ambitions, and supporting Democrat Grover Cleveland. (Theodore Roosevelt, who identified with them, didn’t switch in 1884, preserving his political career.)

The term originated with a man named Dana, in this case New York Sun editor Charles Anderson Dana. It sounds like it could have been coined by Mark Twain, who identified as one. It supposedly derived from an Algonquin term meaning “war leader,” and Mugwumps were derided at the time as political fence-sitters, their “mug” being on one side of the divide and their “wump” being on the other.