Roundup

‘Weimar America’? The Trump Show Is No Cabaret

by Niall Ferguson

Popular culture and lazy historical comparisons have elevated Weimar Germany as an analogue for contemporary America. Ferguson suggests reasons to dial back the comparisons; while current events are troubling, US democracy is more stable and stronger than the Weimar Republic.

The Supreme Court’s Starring Role In Democracy’s Demise

by Carol Anderson

The Supreme Court today repeats the shameful actions of the courts in the 1890s, which gave judicial cover to state laws explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black voters, by accepting bad faith arguments that the laws in question were race-neutral. 

The Black Ambition of "A Raisin In The Sun"

by Koritha Mitchell

Lorraine Hansberry's play and the critical response to it offer a lens on American theater's current reckoning with racism and exclusion, as "the play reveals that what has been framed as “integration” is really about getting white people to stop hoarding everything desirable."

The Depression-Era Lessons That Can Solve Today’s Evictions Crisis

by Anya Jabour

Social workers and researchers Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge conducted an important study of evictions in Chicago during the Great Depression and advocated for federal support for a minimum standard of living including housing. The looming eviction crisis demands similar big thinking. 

A Forgotten Campaign To Support ‘Displaced Homemakers’ May Help Women Today

by Suzanne Kahn

A 1970s initiative by feminist Tish Sommers for legislation to help women who had worked at home as caregivers to more easily reenter the paid workforce. Her preferred term "displaced homemaker" emphasized the economic importance of domestic care work most often performed by women and women's vulnerability to economic disruption and provides a useful way to think about solutions to the problems caused by COVID today.

The Roundup Top Ten for September 4, 2020

The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

I'm So Bored with the Lost Colonists

by Michael Leroy Oberg

Speculative energy focused on the fate of the "Lost Colonists" of Roanoke Island might be better spent investigating how Native people responded to their arrival. 

The Terrible Cost of Presidential Racism

by Gary Bass

The emotional displays of prejudice revealed by newly uncensored White House tapes involving Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger help to explain a foreign policy debacle. 

Competing Visions of the American Dream are Driving Democrats and Republicans Apart

by Steven M. Gillon

Biden has declared this election as a battle for the “soul of America.” It is also a struggle to determine what the American Dream will mean for the future.

The Summer Sun Didn’t Stop Covid-19. Here’s Why.

by Janet Golden and Christian Warren

The misguided hope that the summer sun would stop COVID-19 in its tracks is one of a long series of claims made about the health benefits of the sun. They all reflect how magical thinking can leap into the gaps of scientific certainty. 

What Liberals Get Wrong About Work

by Michael J. Sandel

Michael Young, who coined the term meritocracy in the late 1950s—and who used it as a pejorative—observed four decades later: “It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that.”

The Return of American Fascism

by Sarah Churchwell

Trump may lack the discipline and ­grandeur to which the original fascist spectacles aspired, but he doesn’t lack the grandiosity. What makes Trump so clownish is the delusional gap between the claims he makes and the figure he presents. 

Gerald Ford Rushed Out a Vaccine. It Was a Fiasco

by Rick Perlstein

If steady, mature Gerald Ford succumbed to haste when his presidency was on the line, imagine what Donald Trump will do.

Looking Out For Each Other

by Leah Valtin-Erwin

The wrenching transitions that East Germans faced in adapting to western commercial culture after reunification offer lessons for the COVID crisis, and a warning that the burdens of managing social change and stress often fall on retail workers. 

Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice

by Michael J. Sandel

Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university. His campaign may test the pervasive belief that elite academic credentials are a necessity to govern.

The Real Suburbs: Unpacking Distortions and Truths about America’s Suburbs

by Becky Nicolaides

A leading historian of American suburbs points to the fine-grained changes in the L.A. metro area that confound Donald Trump's 1950s version of the suburban dream. Do the suburbs he's pandering to even exist today? (Photo by author)

2020 is a Year for the History Books, But not Without Digital Archives

by Ian Milligan

A Canadian historian suggests that the national government commit to a massive effort to archive the entire .ca domain on a daily basis to enable future researchers to access the full volume of digital artifacts produced by Canadians. 

Opening Up New Avenues to Understanding the Path to War in Iraq

by Joseph Stieb

National security historian Joseph Stieb reviews journalist Robert Draper's account of the drive to war against Iraq in 2003, concluding that Draper explains how the principals built a case for war out of selectively embroidered intelligence, but not why war appeared as a positive option or much of the American political establishment got on board. 

The Harvard Mimeograph

by Dan Bouk

The story of the 1920 census shows how difficult it can be to disentangle the methodology of the Census from the political impact of the results. 

No, America Is Not Succumbing To Fascism

by Helmut Walser Smith

A historian of 20th century Germany says the stark political divisions on display in America today are cause for optimism; four years into Hitler's rule, German society had been molded into conformity with Nazi ideals without room for dissent.