Almost half of Mr. Rachman’s essay was devoted to Polling Numbers, but he, then, admonishes his readers, about the fateful lessons offered by 2016. And quoting Debbie Dingle. He offers his readership this bit of – what to call it? It doesn’t even qualify as political myopia:

The Democrats initially reacted to defeat in 2016 with determination to engage with the woes of the white working-class.

https://www.ft.com/content/78e01581-65e4-4229-ab65-30958a091a94

Hillary Clinton even before the election was screeching about Russian Interference in the American Election:

September 6, 2016  

Headline:Hillary Clinton Accuses Russia of Interfering With U.S. Election

MOLINE, Ill. — Hillary Clinton accused Russian intelligence of interfering with the American election, implying that President Vladimir V. Putin viewed a victory by Donald J. Trump as a destabilizing event that would weaken the United States and buttress Russian interests.

“It’s almost unthinkable,” Mrs. Clinton said on Monday, referring to what she called recent “credible reports about Russian interference in our elections” and citing a hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails in July.

“We’ve never had the nominee of one of our major parties urging the Russians to hack,” Mrs. Clinton said in a news conference. “I want everyone — Democrat, Republican, Independent — to understand the real threat that this represents.”

The comments, Mrs. Clinton’s most extensive yet on one of the more unusual subplots of the presidential campaign, came after a Washington Post report that United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies are probing a wide, covert Russian effort to disrupt the presidential election.

…

This ‘Russian Interference’ produced two American Melodrama’s The Mueller Report and the Adam Schiff Three Ring Circus. Both dismal failures, even as they were the focus of American Media’s fawning attention. Even the Senate Report, of over a thousand pages, recently released…   

Nor did the reader need to be reminded of the latest books, on the American reporter’s  shifting taste in political analysis, in its various iterations, as the some-how touchstones of a political present: 

The book Hillbilly Elegy has been replaced on bedside reading tables by White Fragility. 

Perhaps, in the World of Political Pundits, and the scribblers who present themselves as the descriptors, of the latest confection of the Political Phenominologists, seems to lose  potency, in the accelerated time of the evanescent political moment?

On ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ the  J. D. Vance’s memoir read this L.A. Review of Books essay by Florence Dore, J. D. Connor, Dan Sinykin:

Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling “Hillbilly Elegy”

…

 The runaway success of Hillbilly Elegy means that it is now firmly established as the single most popular attempt to understand the “cultural crisis” underlying Trump’s victory. Rather than urging Americans to read it, as so many of its first reviewers did, we now need to examine why we’ve bothered and what we’ve taken from it.

…

Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling “Hillbilly Elegy”

What is the possible commonality between a memoir of self-emancipation and a book about racism? A description of the shifting character of the political focus of one political pundit? The L.A. Review of Books team provides a clue: 

…

 Hillbilly Elegy’s presence on student bookshelves is but one sign that Thomson has it wrong. Hillbilly Elegy isn’t so much “resonating beyond traditional elites,” as justifying elitism under Trump.

We can begin to understand the book’s subtle plug for elitism when we consider the appeal on college campuses for a book about “hillbillies” and “rednecks.

…

Or has Larry Summers enthusiasm for ‘Hillbilly’, been a deciding factor for Mr. Rachman? 

‘“Reading about @hillbillyelegy is not the same as reading it. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s rise or American inequality should read it.”

On ‘White Fragility’ reviewed by John McWhorter

The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility

The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people.

…

Reading white fragility is rather like attending a diversity seminar. DiAngelo patiently lays out a rationale for white readers to engage in a self-examination that, she notes, will be awkward and painful. Her chapters are shortish, as if each were a 45-minute session. DiAngelo seeks to instruct.

She operates from the now-familiar concern with white privilege, aware of the unintentional racism ever lurking inside of her that was inculcated from birth by the white supremacy on which America was founded. To atone for this original sin, she is devoted to endlessly exploring, acknowledging, and seeking to undo whites’ “complicity with and investment in” racism. To DiAngelo, any failure to do this “work,” as adherents of this paradigm often put it, renders one racist.

As such, a major bugbear for DiAngelo is the white American, often of modest education, who makes statements like I don’t see color or asks questions like How dare you call me “racist”? Her assumption that all people have a racist bias is reasonable—science has demonstrated it. The problem is what DiAngelo thinks must follow as the result of it.

DiAngelo has spent a very long time conducting diversity seminars in which whites, exposed to her catechism, regularly tell her—many while crying, yelling, or storming toward the exit—that she’s insulting them and being reductionist. Yet none of this seems to have led her to look inward. Rather, she sees herself as the bearer of an exalted wisdom that these objectors fail to perceive, blinded by their inner racism. DiAngelo is less a coach than a proselytizer.

When writers who are this sure of their convictions turn out to make a compelling case, it is genuinely exciting. This is sadly not one of those times, even though white guilt and politesse have apparently distracted many readers from the book’s numerous obvious flaws.

…

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/

That these two best sellers  just garner a mention, in passing,  from Mr. Rachman,is evidence of their momentary status as touchstones, in the American political melodrama, that have now faded, but provide an almost highfalutin background, for unimaginative political prognostication.  

Philosophical Apprentice 

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