Revolution & Revenge: 1950s – Now with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Starr

America's Core Rift: A deep, ongoing contradiction between a changing people and a resisting nation, rooted in slavery, drives current conflicts over identity and power

Beyond Racial Grievance: The current “rage and revenge" extends beyond simple racism, fueled by a working-class catastrophe and a masculine revolt against cultural change

Backlash from Progress: Even successful progressive movements for civil rights and equality paradoxically sparked a powerful, decades-long conservative counter-movement

Judicial Overreach: The Supreme Court's conservative majority is aggressively rolling back liberal rights (e.g., abortion, voting) while expanding corporate and religious power, often disregarding public opinion

Trump: A Consequence, Not an Aberration: Trump's rise is a logical outcome of these deep-seated contradictions and the Republican Party's radicalization, offering "total revenge" to dispossessed Americans

Truth in Decline: Media fragmentation and partisan outlets have eroded shared reality and fueled culture wars, notably seen in the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic

You can check out his recent feature in The New Republic "Sleepwalking into Revenge: The Rise of a Politics of Retribution”

https://newrepublic.com/article/202187/trump-republican-party-rise-politics-revenge%20and%20CNN%20interview:%20https://next.frame.io/share/edf601d7-2f7a-4210-a581-7f1e5f26ba12/view/66785814-10be-47f5-838b-648f32bcd896

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and founding coeditor of the American Prospect magazine. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American History for The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Over a half-century he has written essays and op‑eds for newspapers and magazines as well as books on America’s institutions, history, and politics.

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