I’ve come to resign myself to the fact that the long-awaited tidal wave of justice will never be enough, but one day Something Beautiful will happen and I will be happy.
27.07.2025 02:41
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I’ve come to resign myself to the fact that the long-awaited tidal wave of justice will never be enough, but one day Something Beautiful will happen and I will be happy.
The saga of Detroit in the seventies and eighties is the saga of Mayor Young. A fighter, a risk taker, one fine being labelled "uppity" even as he endorsed Jimmy Carter and dismissed Jesse Jackson as unable to win a national election.
Young is identified as Eudaemonist, or in modern terms, a "fucking lion." He lusted for conflict, loved taking risks and taking on opposition. This, the authors say, made him an effective mayor.
The five types of mayors. Young operated as a mayor in an increasingly polarized city, where different racial groups saw politics as a zero sum game, and policy as something that helped them and took from someone else.
With the advent of the 80s, national news, and political instability, cities (especially black led ones) are judged not just by their residents but by national leaders, who are often keen on punishing spending by black leaders, imposing deep fiscal costs on them.
The paradox of the modern mayor-your voters and who you need to appease are very different. Young's relationship with the (mostly white) press was pretty combative-accusations of racism were notably the only penalty black supporters of the mayor could really place on the papers (which mostly worked)
Mayor Young quickly established himself as a tough, no nonsense law and order type, telling crooks to "hit Eight Mile Road" (the dividing line between the city and its suburbs-the Detroit road system is really interesting btw it's super well planned). His use of black cultural references is noted
A lack of a high ranking black business elite in Detroit meant Young was often dependent on past administration staffers and on bringing in black decisionmakers from other cities. Helps you understand better why diversification of business elite is more important than just the company bottom line.
Holy shit the city has half the population it did in the 1980s-never even realized how stark that was oh my god.
White Detroiters, once Young was in power, generally supported the mayor, who acted extremely generously toward city whites. White Detroiters often felt ignored, but when you really look at it they weren't, and the author observes black power even when gained still needs to accommodate white needs.
Young took over a city in crisis, embattled by the economic crisis of the seventies and then under siege by the Reagan administration, all while fostering a transition in what ethnic groups power was centralized (now black people).
People still talk like this
Let's learn a little more about a mayor of one of the greatest American cities
Any of you guys ever read "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe? I know it's a classic and a lotta high schools read it but we never did-I just finished it tonight and really quite loved it, incredible book.
If I had to rank it like
S: Clinton, Gore
A: Edwards maybe
B: Kerry, Dean, Clark
C: Lieberman, Gephardt, Graham
D: Everyone Else
I think Gore wins flat out tbh he's Kerry without the real baggage. Edwards I'm iffy on he either gets creamed or beats Bush in like a handy upset. I think some of the other ones were solid if weird. Clark doesn't win but he's Kerry tier. Dean is similar to Edwards. Lieb + Gep don't tho I think.
It's really interesting right? Still so crazy Kerry won moderates and Democrats. Reading this and the bio I'm really unsteady as to if somebody else could have won that race.
Oh, and if you want a good book about 2004 in general, check out Larry Sabato's "Divided States of America: The Slash and Burn Campaign of 2004." You can read it on internet archive here! Very much would recommend it.
archive.org/details/divi...
Anyhow hope you enjoyed my exhaustive list of tweets about John Kerry of all people. If you liked that, umm, idk if I'll do it again. Might read a bio of Coleman Young soon so you could get that. Thank you if you read it all, I hope you learned something! If you wanna start over-check it out here!
Overall kind of a bummer-I don't like him nearly as much as I did before reading, but maybe further writing will change my opinion. A modern biography, not written in the heat of a presidential campaign, would fucking rock. Hoping one gets written!
He did clearly have hidden depths-his handling of the Iran Nuclear Treaty shows it, and I think his time in Vietnam did change him in many ways as an actual statesman-perhaps he'd be very different if he'd have won. But his flaws are glaringly obvious-there's a reason Bush could exploit them so well
Reading the book, my assessment of Kerry still stands. He is a man who wanted to be President, and oriented his entire life around that simple fact. Along the way he encountered things that shook his worldview, but he always pushed past that, ignoring it for the pursuit of power.
Here, the book ends-it was written during the 04 election. Kerry once again stood at the National Mall, where he'd first met Ted Kennedy, now endorsing him
"Our campaign is about building a fairer, safer,
more prosperous America—the nation that is again the
great light to all the world." Damn :(
A last minute focus on Iowa, a refound emphasis on his Vietnam experience, and some big gaffes from Dean (who was crucified for being right), helped Kerry surge to victory in iowa as the least objectionable candidate by far. He then won NH by cannibalizing Dean's message as the anti-Bush.
He did have some assets though. Labor backed him up, as did former NH Gov Jeanne Shaheen (y'know, the Senator). He fired his campaign manager Jim Jordan and decided to shake things up, and adapt a tougher tone. Much of his staff was taken from Ted Kennedy too.
Kerry, whose strategy was to style himself as the front runner, suffered from a vague public image, in opposition to Dean who was swiftly becoming "the anti-Bush." His campaign team was riddled with inefficiency-he announced his campaign twice. He was also just a dull motherfucker.
This of course was a big handicap during the presidential race, and helped Howard Dean rise to prominence. Dean started off mushy on his war position, a soft opponent, before swiftly hardening his opposition. He was also handicapped by a brief bout with prostate cancer, which had killed his father.
His thought process on iraq was far more complex, and he was above all else a man who opened himself up to different arguments, malleable to new evidence. This is where he got his reputation as a flipflopper. He claimed his vote for the war was a vote for peace in a tortured exercise.
Kerry emerged as a Democratic supporter of the WOT, with some caution. He's part of the reason the TSA is an arm of the federal government, and airport security isn't just a state issue. Iraq was more complex. Kerry supported Panama and Kosovo but opposed the Gulf War.
Gore talked about Kerry's 2000 bid in a separate interview after he forgoed a 2004 bid. He said Kerry approached him about it, asked what Gore's plans were, said he was thinking about running, and then ultimately forgoed the race when Gore talked him out of it. web.archive.org/web/20240927...