Background Briefing: December 26, 2022

On By gram

 

How the American Majority Can Thwart the Tyranny of the Minority

We begin on this interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to look back on the major stories we covered in 2022 and how they evolved starting today with the radical right capture of the Supreme Court by a small secretive cabal of moral authoritarians funded by plutocratic dark money. We start with a broadcast of Background Briefing from June 15, 2022 on how the American majority can thwart the tyranny of the minority with the Supreme Court poised to take away women’s reproductive rights, gun safety rights in blue states, environmental protection to deal with global warming and voting rights empowering voter-suppression by partisan Republican legislatures. Joining us was Samuel Moyn, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University. He has written several books in his fields of European intellectual history, human rights history and law, including The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. His latest book is Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. 

 

Billionaires Behind Dark Money Can’t Openly Sell Their Terrible Ideas to a Public That Doesn’t Want Them

Then we go to a broadcast from August 22, 2022 about how the billionaires behind dark money can’t openly sell their terrible ideas to a public that doesn’t want them. We examine further how, to quote Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, “Let’s be clear: the creepy billionaire interests behind the massive dark-money machine would rather hold power in the smoking ruins of American democracy than live in a healthy democracy where they can’t sell their terrible ideas to a public that doesn’t want them”. Joining us was Nancy MacLean, a Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. An award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century United States, her books include Behind the Mask of Chivalry, Freedom Is Not Enough, and most recently, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.

 

Having Bought the Supreme Court, American Oligarchs Are Now Trying to Buy the Legislative Branch

Then we go to a broadcast from October 16, 2022 about how having bought the supreme court, American oligarchs are now trying to buy the legislative branch with the massive influx of dark money into the Republican senate races which, in spite of what Mitch McConnell referred to as a problem with the quality of their candidates, could overcome the outrageous deficiencies of Herschel Walker, Ron Johnson, JD Vance and Mehmet Oz with Leonard Leo’s avalanche of money. Joining us was Jared Yates Sexton, the author of The Man They Wanted Me to Be and The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore as well as three collections of fiction. His latest book is American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People. He also has a forthcoming book, out soon, The Midnight Kingdom a History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis, and he has an article at jaredyatessexton.substack.com, “At Long Last, Let’s Call This What It Is.” We look into how the American oligarchy, having already bought the Supreme Court, is trying to buy the legislative branch and could succeed if Democrats do not show up at the polls in record numbers on or before November 8.