Introducing Democracy Hawk Dispatch
It will delight and enrage anyone fed up with the Democrats' cowardice.
Folks, my former PhD adviser and sometimes-collaborator, M. Steven Fish, has a new Substack out, which I highly recommend. Fish is a political scientist at Berkeley specializing in democracy and authoritarianism.
His most recent book, Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge (Rivertown Books, 2024), written with Laila M. Aghaie, dismantles the conventional wisdom that Trump’s rise was the result of economic discontent and conservative cultural backlash. He instead points to long-term trends in Democratic Party strategy. By forsaking nationalism and abandoning the high-dominance style of their midcentury predecessors, post-Vietnam Democrats created an opening for a rightwing authoritarian like Trump.
To get a sense of what you’d be signing up for, here’s Fish in his own words:
My mission is to end authoritarianism in America. How? By training Democrats to use dominance politics to win elections and crush the MAGA traitors who are tearing down our country.
This Substack—Democracy Hawk Dispatch—is a hub for every lover of democracy and America who’s ready to unleash the Democracy Hawk within and take back our country.
If you’re looking for comfort, consensus, or convention, you’re in the wrong place.
If you’re looking for confidence, conviction, and a way to win—welcome.
As you can see, Fish is an engaging writer with a razor-sharp mind. He is also full of smart, counterintuitive takes. So, please subscribe and support him!
At first I thought this was another crazy idea of yours, like trying to attract paying subscribers by offering a live chat with them, which you jettisoned because nobody's remotely interested in you or anything you have to say. I wonder if this individual has your bloodymindedness and absolutely delusional self-belief, to pour untold energy and time into writing turgid screeds nobody reads for months on end before giving up, rather than giving up after a few weeks or days.