Us and Them

As Michael Kazin, the Co-Editor of Dissent has recently pointed out in a Times Op Ed there has always been cultural a civil war in the United States In that Op-Edh he points to the Scopes Trial of 1925 as emblematic of that war, pitting a largely rural population of Biblical believers against “urban liberalism.” Kazin’s argument is that “we” must understand “them” and their contemporary rage against “our” domination of mass media, public education, and higher education in general. In short, the concept of “understanding ” pushes in a unilateral direction”: “higher” to “lower”.

Before coming to terms with this self-criticism, though, we have to look at the Scopes Trial more carefully than is afforded by Kazin’s brief summary. Wikipedia describes it as follows:

“John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had offered to defend anyone accused of violating the Butler Act in an effort to challenge the constitutionality of the law.”

In other words, Dayton, and certainly its high school, was no more representative of “urban liberalism” than one of those counties that went 80% for Donald Trump. (Today its population is around 7000.) Scopes and the ACLU were represented by Clarence Darrow, the most famous criminal defense lawyer of the Century; the Butler Act was represented by William Jennings Bryan, on three occasions the Democratic candidate for President, and Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, and also an unyielding believer.

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes trial, 1925

Scopes was convicted and fined $100, and the verdict overturned “on a technicality.” Bryan, in other words, had carried the day with an unique defense of Biblical literalness. It was a show trial by any standard; and “liberalism,” however one defines it, had lost.

What then does Kazin’s example tell us about contemporary “liberalism.” From where we stand in today’s worlds of cross-purposes, the impetus for the legislation and subsequent trial, was the demand of the majority that legislated the Butler Act to control a curriculum subject in a public school, thus paving the way to penalize anyone who defied that determination. It stood for a populism that, like today’s, was “popular” only if you agreed with its avatars root and branch: and could be quite punitive if you didn’t.

To return, then, to Kazin’s plea to the Democratic Party, which by his standards (and mine too) would be the Party of AOC and Bernie Sanders: that would be a real over-simplification. Sanders and I both had an education at Brooklyn schools that were dominated by Left-Wing New Dealers; the manager of his first race for Mayor in Burlington, Vermont mutual friend, an academic and activist who eventually–so I’ve been told — would join the CPUSA.

What does this potted biography tell us? It tells us nothing about the cultural war to which Kazin adverts: except that how people respond to the world around them is always variable. But about the US-Them there’s a lot that needs to be said before we take his prescription seriously.

So, first: The most powerful force in the world of public communications these days is neo-Nazi, insurrectionist conspiracy-mongering, Jew-hating, forces on the Internet, bankrolled by billionaires who spend their excess money to turn it into more money at the expense of the rest of us–including especially stomping on the neediest to bankroll their domination further. Their movement has declared a vicious, incredibly cruel war on those who defy it, and especially are of the wrong skin-color or medical need, or even gender.

As for the world of journalism, the most powerful engine of communication is Fox News, which would have fit right into the Soviet Union, in which the subsidized newspapers were Tass (““News”“) and Pravda (“Truth”), about which the underground joke was “there’s no news in the truth, and no truth in the news.”

That is also the world of Fox News, on which every day and night lies are spun about the world around us–“us” being everyone who is not a member of that world; plus the various radio voices who spin those lies out to a mass audience, which might, or might not, recognize itself in Kazin’s description. But the constant litany of propaganda is a world of discourse that any observer might find grotesque or even horrific: except that “they” don’t.

I’m sorry to say, then, that we’ve been here before: every day in fact. That self-criticism is commonplace now among Democrats in the wake of the devastating loss of 2025. Like me, Kazin describes himself as a Democratic Socialist. However, the problem with this approach is that we can pursue it by criticizing our strategy, or making an ethical case against our opponents: but we can’t do both: they cancel each other out. Which is it to be?

Here are two examples of real problems that “we” face. First is the Right to Life that passes as a belief like any other. But that is not the case. In practice is not an ethical belief but rather a merciless ideology of civil war. It creates and enforces penalties: all too often fatalities. Do we really want to say that we are the “elite” and “they “the people?” There’s really no comparison. And honesty?

In pursuit of evangelical hatred, Trump and his puppets in Congress have defunded Planned Parenthood — a back door abortion ban dressed up in bureaucratic cruelty, also striking women who seek testing for cervical cancer, or any other danger to reproductive organs, and can find it nowhere else.

“So when 200 or more clinics face closure, when birth control and testing for dangerous sexual conditions disappear overnight; and Black, Brown, LGBTQ+, and rural communities are hit hardest;what then?

The Problem

As another Op-Ed puts it, “Democrats Lost Voters on Transgender Rights. Winning Them Back Won’t Be easy. The party’s vanguard position got ahead of voters in 2024, and the internal debate now underway reveals an uncertainty on how to adapt.” To repeat:, you can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth.

If proper treatment of transgender seekers were allowed by the representatives of “them,” the medical procedure is not more dangerous than any other. The worst that can happen to someone who’s lost out to a transgender woman is to finish second in some athletic contest: is that the equivalent of being denied medical care that you desperately need. Please! So what then, Democrats?

Kazin’s Op-Ed is part of that debate. Unfortunately, he appears not to recognize that, unlike the kind of polite debate that Dissent usually features, the opposition to the provision of these various needs is stacked with malice, lies, more malice and more lies; and outpourings of hatred that would have been unimaginable on what we used to think of as carriers of mass communication. Is it really the case, then, that mass media of communication, or public education, are dominated by “us,” with our liberal biases, to the exclusion of “working class?”

No, Kazin’s “them” live within an ecosystem that operates in a constant state of crisis and grievance, thus convinced that the worst possible stories are real; and unwilling to consider alternatives.

Education, public or higher, is a target for “rage”: yes, the President’s rage, as well as that of his defeated combatant, Ron DeSantis; a rage that turns into a one-sided propaganda war on the scale of the Scopes Trial, during which the opposition to the Teacher’s Union and attacks on librarians, are conjoined with opposition to any textbooks that tell the truth about the Civil War, and hysteria about transgenderism is mobilized in a desire for power: why that should be respected in any way is impossible to work out. If you believe strongly in a non-punitive ethical value, how can you pretend otherwise?

The hatred of higher education–also supposedly generating “rage”–is simply at the core of the President’s hatred of non-white non-citizens; and any policy of any kind that amounts to a rejection of his madness; while the Party of Jew-hatred becomes the scourge of presidents and faculty who represent “us,”emulating the Nazi and Stalinist approaches to higher learning….

As for the world of mass communication, as I’ve noted, Fox News, the most successful of all its televised purveyors is a propaganda outlet that spouts daily lies without remorse — along with the Conservative Talk shows that dominate talk radio. To be sure, National Public Radio and All Things Considered, that never propagandize or promote hatred, are always under attack by Republican legislators as being “liberal;”: do we want them to stop representing “us”? and speak more to ‘them?” Where does that end?

Conclusion

As another Op Ed writer put it, “It’s safe to say that President Trump and the Republican Party are deploying a new form of political propaganda, updating a dark art for the platform era. But it’s also a signal that a new kind of political style is enveloping conservatism — one that is ruthless, inflammatory and designed for maximum viral reach.” And it is the output of the most unhinged and corrupted elite in the history of the Republic: so it is time to drop that misleading language of “us” and “them.”

And yet, after all of this hate-mongering, something unique is also happening. “In the past year, Americans have grown less negative about the big issues, with the share of those wanting to see immigration decrease now totaling 30 percent, compared to 55 percent in 2024, according to the new survey conducted by Gallup. A record high of adults in the United States — 79 percent — now believes immigration is a “good thing” for the country.”

We can believe, even, that the same development will begin to take place with the decimation of Medicaid. Surely what’s beeen happening on the streets is a mass outpouring of …rage: Not only about policies, but also about the assault on democracy: and not putting up with those who are supporting that: And its about time.