American Politics from 2019 on

[Tero]

He does not know.

[Tero]

Shades of Scopes Trial. NYT article by
Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin, writing in the "New York Times" calls attention to the fact that 2025 is the "centennial" of the Scopes Trial.

"All this strikes the secular cosmopolitan base of the Democratic Party as dangerous babble by people who abhor expertise and intellectualism — often to their own detriment."

But Bryan was not just the Bible quoting defender of rural religious beliefs. He had run for president three times as the "prairie populist."

"Back then, many Bible-believing rural and small-town people supported the progressive populism of Bryan, who had run three times as the Democratic candidate for president. Throughout his career, he denounced corporate power and big financiers like J.P. Morgan while championing crop subsidies, labor unions, a ban on large donations to campaigns and higher income taxes on the rich. That may point a path forward for Democrats grappling with how to reach rural voters today."

"Of course, rural and small-town voters may appreciate the talk of populist-minded Democrats but still decide to stick with the right-wing party that flatters their religious and racial worldviews. Less than a decade after the Scopes trial — during the Great Depression — rural Christians made common cause with liberal Democrats. They voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt and welcomed his New Deal programs that brought electricity to their homes, as well as relief and a measure of security to their families."

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NYT Thomas Friedman

"The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to renewably generate and store electricity — through solar, wind and batteries, in particular.

"And why? Because they view those as “liberal” energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from A.I. data centers."

"In sum, this dog’s breakfast of a bill — rushed through without a single congressional hearing with independent energy experts or even one scientist — is sure to put at risk billions of dollars of investments in renewable energy, mostly in Republican states, and potentially kill the jobs of tens of thousands of U.S. workers."

"So, in one fell swoop, this bill will make your home hotter, your air-conditioning bill higher, your clean energy job scarcer, America’s auto industry weaker and China happier. How does that make sense? "

[Sean Hayden]