Paul Campos links to this summary-from-30,000-feet by Garrett Graff of the recent political situation.
We can’t know what will happen in the next few years. Economic possibilities range from a boom unleashed by the removal of constraints on business, or depression triggered by cascading waves of layoffs, of anything in between. Political possibilities range from partisan realignment, or the familiar pendulum of partisan overreach followed by a backlash at the polls, or vote suppression, or all sorts of things. The environment could see a move toward disaster or the promise of technological solutions. It’s hard to say. It’s unusual in recent decades for one wing of one political party to control all three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), and traditional non-governmental checks such as labor unions and the news media are weaker than before.
Whether you support or oppose the recent dramatic moves by the Trump administration, it seems clear that this is a time of uncertainty.
And this made me reflect upon what seems to me the last time that it seemed that the United States was coming apart, in the late 1960s. There were mass riots in major cities. Parts of Washington were burned out and didn’t recover for decades. The U.S. was losing a war–that wasn’t supposed to happen–and all this was in the context of the external threat of the cold war. In retrospect we can say that all those crises resolved themselves, and that the bigger problems were issues that were not then widely recognized, notably the decay of the industrial economic base and the exponential increase in energy use, but at the time all this was unprecedented: the government was failing to do its job to keep the peace and keep the country safe. Reading about this period, I get the sense that people felt that anything could happen. The politics were different–back then, there were prominent left-wing revolutionaries; now it is the right-wing revolutionaries who are in the ascendant–but it was the same feeling of things spinning out of control and the idea that conventional politics was failing. This was also the last time before 2025 that one faction of one party had effective control of all three branches of government.
For me, this raises the question of ‘what can/did we learn from that earlier time period?’ Is the lesson that it all works out or that things could easily collapse or that lots of bad policies can result from such times and take years to unravel (things like some of the more extreme regulatory policies)? Given how rare such times are, at least rare in our lifetime experience, what can we learn from that time period? I suspect the interpretation of that period is as polarized as current disputes. So, our “learning” will merely reflect our current polarized views. I don’t even think we could get widespread agreement that things didn’t come apart or did come apart during that time period. What kind of Bayesian learning is possible from that 1960s experience?
The US defaulted on its debt in 1971, likely the same thing is going to happen. This time rather than temporarily removing the ability to exchange dollars for gold, it looks like the plan will be “colored” digital currency. Ie, your bank account numerical value will not change but the fungibility will be reduced. The dollar will have less value because some authority decides how much you can spend on food, fuel, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
Politically at least, there were two big asymmetries. The 60s left had little interest in capturing the Democratic Party. Yes, there were McGovern types, but they were quite moderate by comparison and not affiliated with the revolutionaries, who didn’t run their own candidates. (OK, I was in Madison WI where Paul Soglin was elected mayor, but it was all very much working-within-the-system, even in that case.) Second, to the extent there was even a strategy on the radical left, taking control of government was not a part of it. Even the Leninists weren’t thinking about what they would do with DOD, the Fed, etc. As an activist during that period, I’d have to say that the prevailing notion of “revolution” was pretty inchoate.
The unpredictability part is true though. My 20 yr old self thought the wave would just get wider and stronger, but I was in for a big surprise.
Whenever someone mentions Madison, Wisconsin and the political 1960s, I take notice because I was there. Unfortunately, my memories do not quite overlap with Peter Dorman’s, perhaps because back in my day, yellow margarine was still illegal in that dairy state. My group of friends picketed Woolworth’s when we were supposed to be playing an intramural softball game. Paul Soglin must have arrived after I left in the early part of the decade.
Another asymmetry: radical chic aside, there was no serious money behind leftwing politics, which limited its prospects. I spent some time with people like Murray Bookchin and Stanley Aronowitz (during his activist, pre-academic phase), and those guys lived pretty basically. Take the money spigot away from the far right today, and how influential would it be? Or to put it differently, the confluence between far right radicalism and the self interest of a large part of the investor class is a big problem.
Well, when in the sixties? The decade started out with very well behaved and thought-out civil rights demonstrations, and ended with pretty mindless and largely generational anti-war activities. Governments did some bad things, but nothing like what is going on now, and also did good things (Civil Rights Act, etc.). Another basic difference was that economic inequality was much less, and those of us on the left felt that we could ‘sell out’ and get a decent job if we wanted to.
[I started in Chicago in 1960 working mostly on civil liberties issues, and transferred to Berkeley in 63, so I got a pretty good look at things.]
> Governments did some bad things, but nothing like what is going on now
From the 50’s to say 1990, we had a whole host of horrible things by the US and its allies. I think one thing is some were more covert. Here’s just a list of a few:
MKULTRA
COINTELPRO
Bay of Pigs
Assassination / overthrow of Salvador Allende?
FBI Infiltration of the Black Panthers to induce them to commit crimes (perhaps part of COINTELPRO I guess)
HUAC and McCarthyism
There’s a giant list of regime change operations on wikipedia
Persecution of gay people including prominent case of Alan Turing in UK, and barring and firing 5000-10000 federal employees for being Gay under Eisenhower.
Active overt violence against black people in the Civil Rights protest era
Lynchings with essentially local govt approval in the south
The war on drugs
Incarceration of larger fraction than any other country in the world, and slavery of the encarcerated (forced work camps etc)
Anyway I don’t entirely disagree with you, in that the *character* of the bad things being done now are somehow different from those bad things… but all of them were bad and the US did MANY MANY very bad things post WWII, most of which were not acknowledged until decades later. Today the things are way more overt.
Daniel,
My statement was about the 60s, when we were recovering from McCarthyism, and young people were getting active again, but, yes, governments did lots of bad things in that decade, too, and the Bay of Pigs was scary. At the time, I had been driving a guy around the Mid-West on an anti-HUAC speaking tour (which the FBI tried to sabotage), and remember driving back to Chicago from Des Moines in a car with no radio, wondering whether a mushroom cloud was going to rise up in font of me.
COINTELPRO ran officially from 1956-1971 but similar tactics were likely used both before and after that period. We didnt know about it officially until 1971 when a dissident group burgled the FBI and stole the documents and the Washington Post published them against the FBIs request. Throughout the 60s, FBI targeted many leftist organizations in ways the left may have occasionally suspected at the time but nowhere near as much as they should have.. The Wikipedia page is quite amazing.
Anyway props to you for having been there and resisted all that stuff in person. I mostly wanted to make these secret programs more widely known by readers, because in the past the US awful actions were far more covert than they are today, and it can make things appear to be much worse now vs then when maybe its just more overt now.
Daniel
So you’re going with the Administration’s claim that it is the “most transparent” administration ever? Maybe you’re right – after all, they published 2025 (although Trump denied knowing much about it). And Trump did say he was going to punish all those who did him wrong (although he denied it is about revenge – it is about justice). The more I think about it the more I am inclined to agree that past government actions may have been just as bad if not worse. But I then compare it to the difference between academia and the corporate world. My experience in both is that people sometimes get stabbed in the back. In the corporate world, it usually happens for a reason and the culprit is usually not a mystery. In academia, it seems to happen for no reason of any importance, and is often anonymous.
Dale. I don’t necessarily think it’s the most transparent ever. I do think it’s not afraid to admit it’s doing some pretty bad things because the administration thinks it’s a supreme authority and nothings going to be done about it. My own view is it’s got designs on doing shit that would make what’s happening now look like a walk in the park. Some things we might see they’re not transparent on: full on invasion of Venezuela. National Guard used to remove governors in northern / blue states from office. Disappearing dissident citizens without a trace. Disappearing or executing judges that rule against the administration (we’ve already seen arson on judges houses). Seizing ballots and destroying them. Annexing Greenland. Above ground nuclear tests as a threat mechanism. Tanks rolling into Chicago, Seattle, Portland, LA. Forcible relocation of Palestinians and development of Gaza as a luxury resort.
None of that is guaranteed, but none of it is off the table either. It’ll all depend on what the administration thinks is a good idea at the time.
I think our best bet for survival is that the right wing coalition starts eating itself from within after Trump dies of a stroke. For example the Groypers and the Netanyahu-ites likely start in-fighting pretty quick.
Despite the similarities to Nazi Germany right now, I don’t think the US proceeds similar to Nazi Germany, because it’s too geographically spread out, diverse, and well armed. I do think a major guerilla civil war is possible. For example, as ICE sweeps through areas of Chicago disappearing citizens, people start shooting them on site when they show up in public… Nat Guard are sent to respond. People shoot at them and used improvised explosive devices. stuff like that seems to be plausibly only a few weeks to months away. The administration literally got all the Generals together at once and told them in so many words that in essence that they’re either in favor of shooting at civilians as part of sweeps or should retire.
Stuff may get especially bad once SNAP benefits are fully off the table and people aren’t eating.
I’m hoping that all doesn’t happen. I am not particularly hopeful though.
Every day there are multiple news stories about administrative actions that make me seethe and feel sick. Not really every day – closer to every hour (the most recent was the revelation that only select Republican Senators were given the legal briefing on the justification for the Administrative military actions taken on boats allegedly carrying illegal drugs destined for the US). My memory from the 60s is not great, but I certainly don’t remember the constant barrage of outrageous acts that obliterate any pretense of checks or balances on the Executive Branch. If somebody can document how one party rule operated in the 60s compared with today, I’d like to see that. If the real problem is having one party in control rather than this particular administration, I think that matters in terms of going forward. It is clear that one party rule allows many bad things to happen, but is that always the result? If it is, it seems like a serious defect in our political system – and not much different than the way the Chinese or Russian systems work.
Stated very well Dale Lehman!
Agreed about the hourly outrages — e.g., Kristi Noem claiming that ICE hasn’t busted any citizens, or Dr Oz claiming that the Kaiser Family Foundation had retracted its estimate of the average bump in insurance premiums. On the main point, remember that in the early 60s, the Dixiecrats were still in the Democratic Party, so the party included people from moderate left to pretty far right, and the Republican Party included people like Earl Warren. It was very different and less frightening than today.
I’m not sure about how the 50s stack up. Certainly, a lot of people lost their jobs then, so it must have been pretty scary.
sorry John – I missed this comment of your before I wrote mine – which basically repeat your point.
Dale –
I think a significant difference is that in the 60s, the parties comprised more diverse constituencies. For example, Southern Democrats filibustered civil rights bills under LBJ while still backing his Great Society programs—same party, opposite goals. The implications of one-party rule, even if a given party held the presidency and both houses, were far less clear. There was diversity of view in both parties on a wide range of issues. Now, there’s more diversity among Democrats (e.g., Sinema to Warren in the Senate) but practically none among the GOP or in the party orientation evident in SCOTUS decisions. The six conservative justices, all appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 8 elections, now vote in near-lockstep on culture-war and regulatory cases—unlike the 1970s, when Nixon appointees joined liberals in 7–2 rulings like Roe v. Wade.
While I think you have properly cabined the “lockstep” comment to culture war and regulatory issues (many people don’t and the Supreme Court has a quite diverse set of opinions on, say, criminal law protections for defendants) I really think the Justices are in a pretty ragged lockstep even there. One ot he problems is that many of the decisions touted as favorable Trump are really just preliminary (so-called shadow docket) findings in advance of real decisions and are made without the time the Supreme Court normally gives to these sorts of things. Trump II is still only a few months old (God help us) and the Supreme Court doesn’t move very quickly… but I suspect that there are some surprises in store, particularly from Gorsuch and Barrett; Kavanagh and Roberts are both more institutionalist than culture warriors, and those differences will show up soon as well, I suspect. Finally, there is a sample selection problem — many cases are deemed “culture war” cases in retrospect after the vote. When the Justices have 8-1 or 9-0 decisions on what would have been deemed a “culture war” topic, commentary simply picks aspects of the case and say it wasn’t really a culture war case. If you end up defining the culture war topics by the lineup, you’re going to find a lot more “locksteppiness” than actually exists,
Arghh… I made a much longer comment that got swallowed, but I think you are overstating the ideological split on the court. There is a big sample selection problem in that we judge the ideological splits after seeing the votes. You properly cabin your statement to “culture-war and regulatory cases” but I think even this goes too far. And a lot of the seeming deference to Trump is based not on final decisions but on interim decisions in the so-called shadow docket. But the sample selection problem is real. 8-1 and 9-0 decisions on what might have been deemed “culture-war” cases are simply defined away to not be the “real” culture-war cases, and opinions from Gorsuch and Barrett that find otherwise don’t really count. Finally, those votes that are explicitly institutionalist, not ideological, from Roberts and Kavanagh are memory-holed as well.
This article is a over a year old (which makes it pretty ancient, I guess) but I don’t think things have really changed since then: https://empiricalscotus.com/2024/04/01/charting-the-justices-decisions-cutting-across-ideological-lines/
Truthfully though, the ONLY analogy seriously worth discussing is the analogy of these times in America to Germany of the 1930s/40s….
Shecky:
Here are two other relevant historical analogies:
From 2016: Donald Trump and Joe McCarthy
From 2024: Props to the liberal anticommunists of the 1930s-1950s
There are many possible historical analogies, but the most direct analogy I see is to somebody with bad hair and bad ideas stoking internal divisions to create external enemies, ultimately driving a country to the edge and beyond.
There are definitely reasonable analogies to be made to the 60s as well, but the degree of accumulation of power in a single executive who controls the other wings of government via ties of personal realty and threat/fear of governmental persecution really only has an appropriate analog in McCarthyism, on the soft end, to the end of the Weimar Republic on the hard end.
I see so many people trying to explain the current situation away as some variant of ‘business as usual,’ or something with many benign precedents, and I have to ask: why don’t they see what I see?
Two options: I’m an unhinged crank (probably true regardless), or they’re not willing, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the severity of the moment.
Personally I’d rather be a little too worried about this sort of thing then a little too blase about this kind of thing.
Its closer to FDR, who ran on DOGE then ballooned the government way beyond anyone’s expectations, defaulted on the debt (stage 1 of removing gold from the dollar that was concluded in 1971), then started rounding up Japanese into camps. Served FOUR terms.
Its really like Trump is trying to mimic FDR as his idol. More generally, the historical analogs are to the years/decade preceding a debt default. The rest is a sideshow to that main event.
It’s like FDR on Bizarro World. Bringing on a depression instead of ending one. Shitting on the common man instead of helping him. Ripping up the social safety net. Dissolving the SEC, etc.
Its a mistake to compare what you are reading/thinking/feeling now to post-hoc accounts of FDRs presidency. Instead go back and read what was being written at the time.
The Trump administration is so eerily similar I suspect its on purpose. And why not? If I was president I would look at historical analogs for guidance as well.
Anon:
I agree with commenter F on this one. Roosevelt was indeed attacked on the right as being a dictator, but that’s the point. His policies favored labor over business, and his regulations were angrily opposed by a business establishment which still hadn’t gotten over earlier measures such as the income tax, the abolition of child labor, etc. In contrast, Trump has been actively cutting business regulations, cutting upper-income taxes, pardoning white-collar criminals, etc.–pretty much the opposite of Roosevelt’s stances.
“[Trump’s stances are] pretty much the opposite of Roosevelt’s stances.”
Yeah, the claim of similarity between the two is what Molly Ivins called “up-is-down-ism.” It is a signal that someone is not even trying to get things right.
Rather than contrast the two presidents, I will simply point to “The Business Plot.” Anyone remember Smedley Butler?
Now try to imagine the very same members of the oligarchy who were up on the stage during Trump’s inauguration doing the same thing, trying to overthrow him so that…well…I guess Anoneuoid will have to fill in that last part, because I can’t think of a single reason why an oligarch would oppose Trump.
You can read old newspapers to see it was widely recognized that FDR’s policies were reminiscent of Mussolini/Hitler/Stalin, and not in a negative sense:
https://www.nytimes.com/1933/05/07/archives/vast-tides-that-stir-the-capital-behind-the-tremendous-activity-and.html
At the time, fascism was considered to have the goals of helping the common man and installing public safety nets. Including shuttering various government agencies (FDR campaigned on drastically cutting the government, but then of course replaced the cuts with new agencies). You can find other quotes from Mussolini praising FDR and vice versa.
So I have to disagree. That comment appears to be ahistorical.
Anoneuoid –
I agree that you seem to be not even trying. Seeing you reference the authority of the NYTimes’ political analysis is really quite amusing – especially since you cherry-picked a fringe opinion.
Other commenters have nailed it. FDR was called a dictator by tycoons who hated income tax and child-labor bans; his crime was siding with labor. Trump’s indeed the “Bizarro FDR”: slashing top-tax rates, gutting the SEC’s enforcement budget by 42%, pardoning crypto fraudsters, and axing 1.8 million public-sector jobs in nine months (CBO says 2.1 million more by 2027). One built the safety net to end a depression; the other’s ripping it up to start one.
Anon:
Yeah, please limit yourself to just one trolling comment per thread. One such comment is ok–it can stimulate useful responses–, but more than that just fills us up with slop.
Not a troll Andrew, but I have no problem not mentioning this ever again after this last note.
It has been discussed on your blog before when I did some research into the beliefs of the time. Fascism was simply not viewed in the negative light it is today, here it is according to Orwell:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/10/29/props-to-the-liberal-anticommunists-of-the-1930s-1950s/
Its odd that I easily find citations for my beliefs and “get in trouble” for pointing this out. My mind could easily be changed if someone applied some effort to show otherwise.
Another difference from the 1960s is the role (or absence thereof) of the press. If you watch the mainstream news, the weather gets a chunk of airtime every night and there are the endless drug commercials, but very little political news appears. Nothing on the Republican-only briefing on the military actions (I stand prepared to be proved wrong tonight) and nothing on the use of full restraints in deportations (a matter seeming to only bother Democrats – it seems worth reporting that no Republicans find it worth asking questions about). We know that the media has been threatened by this administration and we are seeing the results. Of course the background difference is that little journalism left (a topic from yesterday’s Senate committee meeting – also not reported on) to begin with. That committee hearing was interesting it itself – the apparent bipartisan concerns about media concentration and executive branch pressure dissolved into Republicans only interested in Biden pressure during COVID and Democrats trying to bring up current administrative pressures that go beyond anything I can recall (reaching apparently deaf ears among Republican members). I think the points made about more diverse views within the parties in the 1960s as well as within the Democratic party today – compared with little within the Republican party today – are valid points.
There is the matter of what gets reported on (nothing about the Senate hearings, for example). And now the concerns about whether the reporting is appropriately “balanced.” Again, I don’t believe this is new. But I don’t recall this degree of media pressure and silence in the 1960s. Maybe I just don’t recall it.