MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2026
How about that "more perfect Union?" Within the American context, "Union" is a mystical concept as well as an historical term.
The historical term is present at the time of the nation's founding. As the leading authority on this topic reports, it's connected to a second mystical concept—the concept of "us the people:"
Union (American Civil War)
The Union is a term used to refer to the central government and loyal states of the United States during the American Civil War. Its military forces and civilian population resisted the purported secession of the slave states that formed the Confederate States of America following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States.
[...]
The term "Union" occurs in the first governing document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The subsequent Constitution of 1787 was issued and ratified in the name not of the states, but of "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union ..."
Union, for the United States of America, is then repeated in such clauses as the Admission to the Union clause in Article IV, Section 3. Even before the Civil War began the phrase "preserve the Union" was commonplace, and a "union of states" had been used to refer to the entire United States of America.
So says the leading authority on this multi-faceted bit of American language.
At the very founding of this nation—such as this nation has been—we see the yoking of two mystical concepts:
"We the People" were adopting the new nation's Constitution for the purpose of forming "a more perfect Union."
That said, the language of "Union" had already been present in the full name of the Articles of Confederation, the forerunner to the Constitution.
Back in 1787, a mystical entity, "we the people," were seeking to form "a more perfect union." Several generations later, President Lincoln came to be hailed in the manner described below:
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
[...]
Following his death, Lincoln was portrayed as the liberator of the slaves, the savior of the Union, and a martyr for the cause of freedom. Political historians have long held Lincoln in high regard for his accomplishments and personal characteristics. Alongside George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the top three greatest American presidents, often as the greatest president in American history.
The martyred sixteenth president was hailed as "the savior of the Union." A bit later in that report, the leading authority quotes the words with which the incoming President Lincoln ended his first inaugural address:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Mystical chords of memory, he predicted, would swell the chorus of the Union. In the incoming president's view, passions must not be allowed to break the bonds of affection which remind us that "we are not enemies, but friends."
Over the course of the next four years, the Union was saved as a legal jurisdiction. That said, have we Americans ever been a mystical "us the people," grouped together by "bonds of affection," forming a mystical Union extending beyond the legalisms which kept us one nation, not two?
Putting it a bit more directly:
Are we a mystical "people" today, bound together in a mystical "Union?"
Are we some such "American people" today? It seems to us that it isn't clear that any such mystical entity still exists. It seems to us that some such mystical entity is unlikely to survive the sociological changes which have brought us to the point we saw enacted again, on cable TV, this past Saturday night.
Briefly, let's be clear:
As a technical / legal nation, the United States isn't going anywhere in the next few weeks or in the next few years. But in the face of the gruesome behavior of major elements of our society, the notion that we form a mystical American people, bound together in a mystical Union, has become quite hard to sustain.
What has brought to this point? We'll examine that question all week. But as a Union has turned into a Babel, deeply unhelpful behavior has long been emerging from all sides—from Red America but also from Blue.
Those mystical chords of memory are hard to spot at this time. All this week, we'll examine the following question in the wake of what happened on Saturday night:
Can anything resembling a mystical union survive the sea in which we, the former American people, are now condemned to swim?
Somerby needs to watch the Ken Burns documentary "The American Revolution" to see why we are a union. One point it makes is that the people who inhabit our country have always been diverse, had different interests. He points out that our government was designed to encompass such diversity -- it is not weakened or destroyed by heterogeneity as Somerby once again argues. We are bound by our respect for diversity and a desire to be united as one people, respecting the rights and needs of all others. And we are bound by the blood that was shed to form our independent nation.
ReplyDeleteSomerby's ongoing belief that so-called Babel is bad is part of what undermines our nation today. Somerby has outright suggested that we need to be more homogeneous. He has objected to diversity long before Trump and ICE came on the scene. He has suggested we need to be more the same as a people, misunderstanding our roots. The same can be said for all of the xenophobes persecuting immigrants and minorities today.
Burns is not an historian, but a business which sells
Deleteimages.
Burns created a series in which many historians comment upon what happened. THEY are the experts on the revolution, not Burns, who put the film together but does not appear in it.
DeleteIf you are trying to suggest that Burns is selling an image that is inconsistent with facts, you need to provide some evidence of that. The historians are speaking on screen and thus have the weight of their reputations as scholars behind their words.
We didn't become a babel. We were a babel from the beginning.
DeletePeople who think the society that inhabits our borders now is anything like the society that inhabited it at any point in history before this millennia, or is in any way more progressed, are stupid people.
DeleteThis millennia, Biden, and Obama to a much lesser degree, were the only presidents to achieve any notable progress.
DeleteThe 2000s are not dramatically different from the 90s and 80s.
From the New Deal forward we experienced unprecedented growth and prosperity, which all came to a halt in 1981, with Reagan's neoliberlism, and only made worse by the Bush's and Trump.
From around 1981 to now, we are experiencing the largest transfer of wealth in history with $51+ TRILLION being redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
At least Musk was able to make millions of dollars selling the people's financial data to China.
Deletethe largest transfer of wealth in history with $51+ TRILLION being redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
DeleteYeah but the main thing is they stopped the epidemic of trans.
Just reviewing Medicare stuff and reminded Biden maxing drug cost at $2,000, making insulin affordable, expanding subsidies for the ACA (obamacare). And Trump and his minions just take a giant fucking dump on its citizens health in the god awful BBB, especially if already poor. What the ever loving fuck is wrong with you Rebublican weirdos and jagoffs?
DeleteSpeaking of Medicare, when Trump took office this go round , Medicare part A had projected solvency to 2052. It lost 12 of those years in this last year due in part to rising hospital costs but also to falling revenue from the shitty bill he and the Republicans passed to lower tax rates on the wealthiest, businesses and social security beneficiaries. Way to go. Nothing is protected from Trump and his ilk bankrupting it in this country.
DeleteLincoln should have let the south go. Slavery would have died a natural death. He preserved a cancerous entity that is killing us today.
ReplyDeleteOnce the war started, he should have made the South the North's parking lot.
DeleteThere are both Democrats and Republicans living in the South. Trump himself is from New York, which suggests bigots come from all over. I blame the people committing the crimes, not the places where some of them live. I also blame the billionaires who care more about money than about our country and its institutions:
DeleteBezos -- Albuquerque NM
Gates -- Seattle WA
Thiel -- born in Germany, grew up in Cleveland OH, now a German-American citizen and a citizen of New Zealand, spent some time in South Africa
Adelson -- Boston MA (Miriam is Israeli)
Musk -- Pretoria, South Africa
Kochs -- Wichita, KS
Woody Johnson -- New Brunswick NJ
Sprecher -- Madison WI
Timothy Mellon -- Pittsburgh PA
Diane Hendricks -- Mondovi WI
Kelcy Warren -- Gladewater TX -- a Southerner!
Timothy Dunn -- Littlefield, TX -- another Southerner
Uihlein -- New Bedford MA
Ruffin -- Wichita KS
Marcus -- Atlanta GA -- another Southerner
The cess in Trump's cesspool comes from outside the South, largely. While Republicans tend to be wealthier than Democrats, the South is still poorer than the North and West areas of our country. These billionaires who supported Trump in looting our country do not live in the poor areas of the country.
Jeffrey Epstein was from New York. Somerby was from Boston, before choosing to live in Baltimore (the northernmost Southern state during the Civil War).
DeleteThe North, the South, the slaves, the non-slaves, all were immigrants or descended from immigrants.
DeleteIf the South had not been defeated - brutally defeated, our country would look something like Israel/Palestine.
DeleteEven with the defeat of the South, the rest of the country was too soft on the South, with Reconstruction failing. When we are soft on right wingers, try to be "friends" with them, acquiesce to them, capitulate to them, disaster happens.
Republicans are all over, but most of their support comes from the South, or those who support the South's ethos, which includes the remnants of the desire to enslave others.
HCR wrote a book about it called How the South Won the Civil War.
Reconstruction failed because Lincoln was killed. The pro-South members of Congress then destroyed efforts at reconstruction. I disagree that Republican support is geographic. Yes, there are red states, but it is the billionaires who are the backbone of the Republican party. The Know-nothings, Nativists, America Firsters, anti-immigration and Eugenicists, and the American Nazis are scattered all over the country, as are militias, Posse Commitatus, anti-government Bundy fans, secessionists and gun nuts. Blaming all kooks on the South is inaccurate. We all know they come from Idaho.
DeleteUnless you consider the Native Americans who were here before the first explorers and settlers arrived on our continent, we are not characterized by any particular group of people, no single language, no single ethnicity, color, culture or religion. We have two native religions (originated here), Christian science and Latter Day Saints (Mormons), and neither is widely practiced. In the colonies, Spanish has been as widely spoken as English. In some states, German is still an official language and French was the official language in the original Louisiana purchase, so we are not bound by a single language. Somerby acknowledges that both black and white people arrived before we were a nation, but slavery also included white slaves and indentured servants (people who worked off debts to earn their freedom) and prisoners transported by European nations. We should all know about this as part of our American history.
ReplyDeleteSo, on what basis does Somerby claim that we cannot be a nation because we are a babel? We swim in a sea Somerby says, but where else would someone swim? Our form of government can transcend the mix of people, but it cannot survive while people break our laws. That is the problem, not the babel but the lawbreakers, the scofflaws, the criminals who do not respect the will of the American people and who pursue their own greed and self-interest ahead of the nation's interests. That is what is wrong with Trump and his cronies. We have a Congress full of cowards who will not enforce the law, remove foreign influences, traitors and lawbreakers and protect the rights of the people, all of us.
We fought a war to prevent white men from tyrannizing black people, because it is incompatible with our values. We amended the Constitution to make it clear that all are included. Trump now disputes that and seeks to exclude some, enrich himself at the expense of the rest of us, and turn our country into a laughingstock and despised nation where we once had allies. Trump needs to be removed using the tools provided by our Constitution, applied by our elected representatives. Somerby has never called for this but the rest of us see it clearly. Some polls are showing 75% of the people in favor of impeaching Trump.
Well said.
DeleteTrump needs to be retained and his agenda advanced into the future in order to save a country from the tyranny of a class of violent, Godless, backward, malign people among us captured by leftist ideology.
DeleteTroll got triggered.
DeleteAs long as the class of violent, Godless, backward, malignant people have access to guns, I see nothing for anyone to complain about.
Delete“So, on what basis does Somerby claim that we cannot be a nation because we are a babel?”
DeleteReally? He said that?
Once again, I’m afraid, I need to point you to the subtitle of this blog, ‘musings on the mainstream "press corps" and the american discourse’.
This whole time, he has been referring to Reds and Blues in the context of what has been labeled the MSM. This does seem to be a case of those who just don’t see what he’s writing about. This is the “Babel” to which he refers. CONSTANTLY. Godamn.
Leroy
Who is the Blue media?
DeleteSomerby can't identify the blue media, constantly.
Delete"the notion that we form a mystical American people, bound together in a mystical Union, has become quite hard to sustain"
ReplyDeleteThis is Somerby's strawman. Many of us see ourselves as a nation of immigrants, bound by the desire to improve our lives and breathe free.
I don't see anything "mystical" about our Constitution. It is very clear about the structure of our government, our laws and our guarantees of freedom. The problem is that Trump is not enforcing (or protecting or abiding by) the Constitution and he is not respecting the powers of the coequal branches (courts, legislature). He needs to be removed before he does more damage.
Somerby, typical of right wingers, uses excessively literal readings when it suits his agenda of manufacturing ignorance.
DeleteI do not understand why any voters would have elected a convicted felon, pedophile, rapist and traitor (puppet of Russia). What were conservatives thinking? We had Biden, who was doing an excellent job as president, but Somerby and others decided to kick him off his own ticket in order to weaken the Democrats so that Trump could win. If those voters are no longer happy with Trump's behavior, they can urge their congress members to impeach and remove him.
ReplyDeleteWe should never have put a criminal into office in the first place. I believe Hillary would have won if Trump had not had the support of the billionaires, Russian oligarchs and Putin to corrupt our election process.
Any government can be corrupted like that, especially by outside influences. It is not our form of government that is to blame, but the collusion of wealthy individuals joining forces to subvert our nation for their own interests. Once this is over, I hope that we will analyze what went wrong and create safeguards to prevent it happening again. Meanwhile, the problem is criminals at the top, too little resolve by whatever honest Republicans remain, and an out of control demented Nazi sympathizer in the presidency. He will be removed eventually but we must all hunker down and wait that out.
This should never have happened. And, it has nothing to do with babel. Somerby himself is part of the problem with his sly bigotry and willingness to advance the right while pretending to care about our nation. He clearly does not.
Spot on.
DeleteEat it.
DeleteSomerby blames "babel" (by which he means diversity). The right is busily blaming Democrats for the shooting on Saturday night. Tiedrich describes it:
ReplyDelete"here we go again.
every time shit goes sideways and some deranged fuckstick gets it in his defective head to use Dear Leader for target practice, the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press trot out the same old bad-faith accusation.
‘Democrats, aren’t you ashamed of yourselves for causing this to happen?’
CNN’s Dana Bash: “and you have, and many of your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president — and do you think twice about that when something like that happens?”
Congressman Jamie Raskin: “what rhetoric do you have in mind?”
Bash: “well, just talking about the fact that he is that he’s terrible for this country and so on and so forth.”
oh, come on. ‘Preznit Fuckwit is terrible for this country’ isn’t heated rhetoric, it’s an objective truth.
in the span of a little over a year, he’s tanked the economy, shredded the Constitution, made a mockery of our laws, alienated our allies, started an illegal war, turned our cities in war zones, and demolished half the White House.
how is that not terrible for the country? and how it is wrong to point this out? what are Democrats supposed to do, just roll over and let it happen?
but beyond that, this kneejerk ‘but what about the Democratic rhetoric’ response is fucking infuriating — because I happen to know of a guy whose ‘heated rhetoric’ switch is permanently stuck in the ‘on’ position.
he threatens to ‘destroy entire civilizations.’ he calls for his political opponents to be jailed — or even executed. he calls immigrants ‘vermin.’ he calls protesters ‘domestic terrorists.’
can you guess who I’m talking about?
yeah, this anus-mouthed asshole. Donny von Schitzenpants."
Dana Bash is using the term "heated rhetoric." Somerby talks about babel, as if our attempts to protest and object to Trump's actions is somehow responsible for the state of our nation, and not the incompetent man the right wing put into office, after the billionaires colluded to torpedo Biden so Trump could run against an under-prepared Harris.
Earth to Somerby: heated rhetoric = babel = this is the Democrats fault for complaining about Trump and letting too many immigrants into what has been a nation of immigrants from day one.
Odd that Somerby asks whether "we the people" still exist. If anything, there is more agreement today than previously about Trump being a terrible president who needs to be removed.
ReplyDeleteGood point, in a way Trump's corruption and crimes have united us.
DeleteSomerby is out of touch.
What is Somerby on about?
DeleteTrump has ruined the Republican party probably for a generation.
Oh, I get it.
Thom Hartmann blames the right wing hate machine:
ReplyDelete"The attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night shouldn’t surprise us. Not only does America have the world’s most active small-arms industry that essentially controls the GOP (the reporters got a taste of what American — and only American — schoolkids experience every few months from their “realistic” active shooter drills), but we also host the world’s largest and most profitable hate-amplification industry.
Algorithms that amplify hate and division in order to “increase engagement” have made Mark Zuckerberg into one of the richest people on the planet, complete with a super-yacht and a doomsday bunker estate in Hawaii; Elon Musk’s X has turned into a sewer of Nazi-style rhetoric while Musk himself has posted, according to The Washington Post, nakedly white supremacist slogans and statements over 850 times just in the past seven months.
The Republican Party writ large has also benefitted from all this, since it was reinvented mid-20th century by Nixon’s racist Southern Strategy and Reagan’s embrace of “states’ rights” as the party of Christian white male supremacy. (The last four Black Republicans in the US House of Representatives are ending their political careers this year.)
Because every rightwing movement in history has been founded on hate and/or xenophobia, the openly neo-Confederate MAGA movement was simply the logical end-point of this turn the Party took a half-century ago. History shows that when the right wants to seize power, it reaches for the oldest weapon in politics: teach people to fear and then hate their neighbors, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.
Finally, the billionaire class and the massive, monopolistic corporations that made them rich benefit from the hate industry because when working-class people are mobilized to hate each other based on race, religion, gender (and gender identity), nationality, or political affiliation they’re far less likely to organize together to demand union rights, benefits, healthcare, education, and/or better wages.
Some even argue that the current state of GOP corruption, billionaire greed, and societal hate in America proves that democracy has run its course. Oddly, most arguing that are the billionaires themselves, or the lickspittle “dark enlightenment philosophers” they celebrate and fund.
Billionaire Peter Theil famously wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” and the CEO of his company Palantir recently released an arguably neo-fascist 22-point manifesto claiming that America must resist “the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism” and — without a trace of irony about today’s billionaire subculture that’s working to capture our government and crush worker’s movements and unions — that “certain cultures and indeed subcultures” are “regressive and harmful.”
https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-the-hate-industrial-complex-keeps-583
Somerby is part of the right wing hate industrial complex himself.
Delete"UNION: Do "we the people" still exist?"
DeleteThe only places where everyone agrees about everything are authoritarian dictatorships where dissent is not tolerated. We don't want to be a non-babel union at the expense of our freedoms.
Of course we still exist as a people and as a union. I'll bet Somerby hunkered down in his bedroom wishing his mommy and daddy would stop yelling at each other, leading to his extreme intolerance of conflict, even the type that resolves disputes. You get union from conflict resolution, not from suppressing disagreements. I get tired of Somerby's "can't we all get along" messages where he seems to urge capitulation on the Democrats to right wing demands. Now he wants us to pity Dear Leader and says nothing about removing a president increasingly few people support. We will continue as a nation, but it is time for our elected representatives to stop Trump's depraved behavior. Everyone is united in our ability to see what Trump has become. He needs to go.
Hartman blames the right for the assassination attempt on Trump. This is as silly as blaming the NAACP for the assassination of MLK
DeleteThere was no assassination attempt. It was a promo for the ballroom.
DeleteStaged.
DeletePoor Democrats forced to choose between the insane "It was staged" and admitting they are a party of mental and moral derangement and violence.
DeleteTroll got triggered.
DeleteIt's the Republican Party that works hand in glove with the marketing arm of America's gun manufacturers to assure every moron has the ability to own a gun.
DeleteExtrapolating that out to the Right is ridiculous.
More guns came thisclose to making America safer on Saturday night.
DeletePerhaps it is time for all citizens to wear body armor.
DeleteYes, 7:01, we’ve all been potential targets of random gun violence for years, but republicans couldn’t care less about that.
DeleteWhat creates and unites an "American people"? Traditionally, IMO, three basic things:
ReplyDelete1. Morality, laws, and behavior based on a Judeo-Christian background
2. English as a common language
3. A Lockean economic philosophy of the individual right to own property, which implies capitalism.
go take a flying fuck, dickhead
Delete"Morality, laws, and behavior based on a Judeo-Christian background.
DeleteI couldn't have blamed the Right for our current predicament any better.
Sorry, we aren't going to take a lecture from a right wing foreign troll like David.
Delete“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
DeleteNothing in there about Judeo-Christian morals, English, John Locke, or capitalism.
Yeah, I see a lot of people camping here in Portland with the property that they own, usually in a shopping cart, which they don't own. They do strike me as subscribers to Locke's philosophy. They all speak English, though; not a single Spanish speaker amongst them.
DeletePS: While there's no official language in the US, I have read that at one time German was being considered as the official language.
On March 1, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14224, officially designating English as the national language of the United States. The order emphasizes English for national unity and amends prior federal requirements for multilingual services, aiming to promote assimilation and reduce non-essential language assistance.
DeleteHe rules by fiat, DiC. What else is new?
DeleteGenius move by Trump to hold onto his base. Miuch better than doing something to bring down the cost of groceries and gas, which his voters don't give two shits about.
DeleteDIC’s existential dilemma will come when, like Tucker Carlson , he has to admit he was mistaken about Trump, but unlike Tucker Carlson, he can’t blame it on the Jews.
DeletePresident Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14224, officially designating English as the national language of the United States.
DeleteWhy would anyone give a fuck?
Is Trump planning to sign an order that Judeo/Christian myth is the official source of morality in the US? And Lockean economic philosophy is the official philosophy of the US?
DeleteTrump does not have the authority to designate an official language for the US. That was determined by courts back when states were resisting printing ballots in multiple languages.
Delete" .. reduce non-essential language assistance."
DeleteAbsolute AI gibberish.
The most religious of all the Western countries happens to be the most violent. Pure coincidence.
DeleteThe Democrat party is a party of violence, seething hate, and mental illness.
ReplyDeleteSqueal louder, snowflake.
DeleteSome of us in the back can barely hear your sobbing.
We'll know the shooter is a Right-winger, when Trump pardons him.
DeleteMeanwhile, the Republican Party continues to run a global pedophile ring.
DeleteAs they do.
America, this past Saturday night: Aw man, so close!
ReplyDeleteAmerica now: Obviously staged.
My understanding is the shooter was upset with the lack of croutons on his salad, so he wanted to use his 2nd Amendment right to persuade the kitchen to add more.
DeleteNot just Americans, the whole world is eagerly awaiting the End of Trump.
DeleteTrump is clinging on because he knows he is headed for that Lake of Fire.
Trolls are freaking out they aren't able to get any mileage from the fake "assassination" attempt.
ReplyDeletewomp womp
Interesting how this WHCD event was like maybe a two day story, and now Americans are quickly moving on, not seeing the relevance.
ReplyDeleteIt's too soon to politicize gun violence.
DeleteWe need to wait at least a couple of months (or approximately 8,000 more gun deaths) before we do so.
I don't make the Right-wing media's rules. I just play by them.
The Republican Party is working overtime to close America's "children dying from measles" gap, with other shit hole countries.
ReplyDeleteIts very simple — anybody who professes not to know that the party of Lincoln is now the party of Jefferson Davis is selling something. 🤫
ReplyDeleteOh Fanny. My sweet, sweet Fanny. Precious, Dear Fanny of mine. I love you to the moon and back. Oh Fanny.
ReplyDelete