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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · 28d

It is way too easy for these events to happen. It’s terrifying.

Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

To revisit the political theory ‘canon’ after immersing oneself in scholarship in history (esp. economic history), comparative politics, sociology, archaeology, and other fields is to see *everything* with new eyes.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

So much of the excellent work that people in my field have done in recent years to expand our geographic horizons has been heavily dependent on scholarship in other fields that began this work much earlier.

Interdisciplinary research and even simply reading are truly transformative.

Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

Until recently, my academic field—political theory/history of ideas—had a ‘canon’ that cut out the *entire* first half of the record of human political thought.

This ‘canon’ was arbitrarily drawn from 4 times and places *only*: (1) a single century in the ancient Aegean, almost all from Athens…

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · Aug 11

I need folks to know "classics are classic for a reason" re: creative work is not the great argument you think it is, mostly because it leaves entirely unexamined the *reasons* some things persist in culture, of which "quality," subjective in any event, is only one reason and often not the main one.

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Reposted by Doug Thompson

David J. DeVore @devoretext.bsky.social · Aug 11

Greek & Roman historian here. Fact check: true. Ancient Mediterranean historians worth our salt don’t just read about Greeks and Romans.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

Thank goodness for that! One thing I really should have mentioned is that much of the excellent work that people in my field have done in recent years to expand our geographic horizons has been heavily dependent on scholarship in other fields that began this work much earlier.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

One person's rule of law is another person's lawfare. Impossible to adjudicate between these perceptions. Damn all these radical postmodernists and their post-truth moral relativism!

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

... until we bring in data from other regions of Afro-Eurasia that were in close trade contact with W. Europe and then compare and draw connections between them to test whether W. Europe really was the sole origin of every aspect of the concept.

Spoiler alert: it wasn't (paper in process...) (fin)

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

An example: every political theorist *knows* that the origins of "the modern state" lie in Europe. But how can we *know* this if we *only* look for those origins in Europe? The answer is, of course, that we cannot actually know this in that way. This remains an untested hypothesis in the field...

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

Simply reading non-European sources is not enough. We also have to understand how ideas from different regions relate to each other and fit together--through cross-regional *comparison* and by reconstructing direct lines of interregional *connection* in the form of past learning across distance...

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

... even if these data are wildly unrepresentative of the phenomena under investigation. Which in my field they very often were.

Trying to overcome the deeply distorted picture of the history of political thought that this arbitrary sample enabled is *incredibly* difficult...

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

This was a *tiny*, wholly arbitrary sample of globally available texts, a result of pure custom and professional path dependence.

The field was a walking embodiment of the ‘streetlight effect’—a form of observational bias where the researcher only considers data that are ready to hand…

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

… (2) late republican/early imperial Rome (again, about a century); (3) a handful of societies that developed in the wake of the Western Empire’s collapse (almost all a millennium later, after 1500 CE); and (4) the modern settler colonial societies of North America (not S. America, Oceania, Africa)…

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Aug 11

Until recently, my academic field—political theory/history of ideas—had a ‘canon’ that cut out the *entire* first half of the record of human political thought.

This ‘canon’ was arbitrarily drawn from 4 times and places *only*: (1) a single century in the ancient Aegean, almost all from Athens…

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · Aug 11

I need folks to know "classics are classic for a reason" re: creative work is not the great argument you think it is, mostly because it leaves entirely unexamined the *reasons* some things persist in culture, of which "quality," subjective in any event, is only one reason and often not the main one.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 18

That book made me realize that if southern Democrats and anti-New Deal (esp. midwestern industrialist) Republicans were in the same party in 1932, the US would have probably gone fascist. By 1994, their heirs had sorted into the same party, and presto!

In other words, we all need to read this book…

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

Democratizing “reconstruction” moments only happen in the US when the anti-democratization party is totally excluded (1865, 1932) or when the parties are *both* internally split on “race.”

Neither is true in 2025. So what’s the path forward?

Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

Until now, the basic structure of how the US Constitution "works" has been "refounded" 4 times. We are now *very* far into the 5th "refounding." Dr. McMillan Cottom is right. There is no easy path toward quickly & peacefully reversing this.

Why? Let's look at the other "refounding" moments. (1/)

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Jul 2

I’m going to be very honest and clear.

I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime. That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for *me*.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

It's the only way, and Dem leaders can't give up on it, despite the murky future. How they'll respond to the imminent (b/c newly funded) expansion of coercion & detention is another variable...

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

Plus the media environment. Will rural GOP voters assign blame accurately for lost healthcare and recession caused by tariffs, immigration labor shock, & public sector cuts? That seems to be to be the biggest obstacle.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

I agree, but It's so hard to see the path forward to building the required supermajority under current conditions.

Those constitutional moments are so contingent (on economic collapse, total wars, etc.). 2025 lacks the wrecked opposition of 1865 & 1932 & the internal party splits on "race" of 1965.

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

I want to be reassured, but I am not optimistic. The anti-democratization "Jim Crow refounding" took almost a century to reverse. And then the backlash against it (via partisan resorting of voters by attitudes on "race") produced the current moment. What is the path back to democracy? (fin)

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

So where's the pro-democratization supermajority going to come from? It's really not clear right now.

The BBB perversely attacks the well-being of its sponsors' voters. But there is no indication that those voters will assign blame accurately and switch parties in this media environment. (11/)

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

So, here we (very much already) are, in the 5th refounding--not one of the democratizing ones. The problem is that we're not in 1865, 1932, or 1965. The anti-democratization party is not shut out of US politics like 1865 or 1932. And both parties aren't internally split on "race" like 1965. (10/)

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

BUT, it shares features with the violent insurgency against the 1st Reconstruction. Today we have 1 party focused on reversing past democratization events (much like the 1870s-1890s). And the other party (so far) isn't willing or able to defend democracy (with many individual exceptions). (9/)

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

There were enough *pro-Civil Rights* leaders in both parties to make a majority.

Well ... that ship has sailed. The 5th "refounding" is undoing all of the previous 3 democratizing "refoundings." It can't be a return to "Jim Crow + laissez faire," à la 1900. It's something new. (8/)

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Doug Thompson @dithomps.bsky.social · Jul 3

The 2nd Reconstruction was different. It was obviously a democratization event (the end of Jim Crow authoritarianism plus an expansion of what we could vote for, e.g., health care in Medicare & Medicaid!).

But it was only possible because both parties were internally split about "race." (7/)

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