Book Review: We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump by Leah Greenberg, Ezra Levin
This book is a practical, well researched, no-nonsense presentation of the problem, the solutions, and powerful answers to the naysayers. Here you will find the essential way forward to addressing the observations and implementing the theories of all the progressive economists, historians, and other scholars you may have been reading. This is how we get there from here. If your life is TL;DR, go straight to Chapter 6, A Day One Democracy Agenda, and proceed from there. But the first half of the book describes the arc of history so clearly and succinctly that it’s well worth the read, and it provides much more of value for action today and tomorrow than just background.
If you’ve been paying attention, perhaps belatedly, you know it’s taken multiple decades and multiple millions in dark money to create the mess we’re in. But even in this late stage of oligarchic capture of the Republican Party, the final brick is not yet set in what I see as a political version of “The Cask of Amontillado.” The nationalist cultural xenophobes, and religious extremists who haven’t realized just yet that they’ve actually lost their faith, are more unwitting accomplices in their own demise than they are partners with the oligarchs.
Of all the horrifying things Trump is, he did not create his supporters—he tapped into their frustrations, which already existed. And frankly the Democrats themselves helped create Trump supporters (see Thomas Frank’s book: Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?). After Trump, whether sooner (we certainly hope!) or later, his supporters will still be there—unreformed, unless they receive additional information not skewed by Fox and Sinclair, and websites such as the Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, American Spectator, and RedState, as well as reactionary think tanks, of which the Heritage Foundation is only one. The packed courts will still be there. The regressive legislation and regulations (or lack thereof) will still be there. All of it needing urgent correction.
The Indivisible Blueprint presents a viable plan of action to end the oligarchy’s hegemony. It properly emphasizes that this movement is not an arm of the Democratic Party—many Democrats also are far too beholden to deep pocketed donors, and even though some of them talk a good line, in the end they too sell out to big money.
The authors present practical solutions to what may seem to be insurmountable problems. They offer ways to solve issues with the Electoral College, the inherent inequality of Senate representation, creating a truly representative House of Representatives, depoliticizing the courts, freeing social media from capture by forces hostile to democracy, and balancing the overwhelmingly disproportionate influence of right wing media—all without the need for any Constitutional amendments. There is a place for all progressives and other persons of good will in this effort. We can make this happen—we must!
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