Christopher Schroeder

Category: national

  • Making Our Own Mandate

    Almost 7 in 10 (68.6%) eligible Americans did not vote for Republican presidential candidate, which belies all those mandate claims. That reality must be repeated by Democrats over and over and over.

    An emerging concern is the extent to which elected officials will allow the legislative usurpation by the executive branch as illustrated in the birthright citizenship order for example or the IG firings or the funding halt memo. These and all other such efforts must be challenged by Democrats and Republicans.

    Surely everyone who cares about this country will eventually recognize the threat posed by this administration both at home and abroad. Until then, liberals must quickly find some credible leaders, and get them to the front of their stages.

    Our future — both as a nation and even in its global contributions the world — depends upon that.

  • Holding Hope

    Last week affirmed an uncomfortable reality: more American voters chose an insurrection instigator to lead us.

    People can legitimately disagree I believe over legislative intervention for example or judicial activism. At the same time, they need some shared principles, such as the belief that convicted criminals are unfit for public office.

    Other politicians have committed crimes. Propaganda especially today can be convincing, or at least challenging.

    At the same time, everyone had access to the facts. Multiple officials, including the person whom he selected to be his senior military advisor, and the highest ranking military member, warned us that he is a fascist.

    As a result, the next four years will be a regular reminder that some, including his Republican enablers, are willing to reject accountability and other shared political principles. This reality represents a challenge to American democracy.

    Now isn’t the first time I realize that these principles have been challenged, or that such inconsistencies were acknowledged. Such conditions have existed since the founding of the United States when for example only some, and not all, people were considered equal.

    The lack of progress is perhaps more discouraging. Even more alarming could be the effects of outcome, such as withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, which endangers our future existence, or pardoning the Silk Road founder and other convicted criminals, which reinforces the racial biases in the legal system.

    Regardless, hope can be found beyond our borders. South Korea for instance finally arrested and later indicted its president, who initially resisted such efforts and others.

    This situation is most likely messier than it might seem, but it illustrates that accountability despite its absence here is still possible. Some in other words still insist upon foundational democratic principles, which given the political differences might make this message even more heartening.

    Liberals must find better leaders. These leaders must be people who can convincingly and consistently challenge these conditions and all others that threaten the narrative of the United States both at home and abroad and who can call for basic political principles articulated in foundational documents and landmark rulings.

    Until then, we must hold onto hope wherever we can find it.

  • A Need to Read?

    Gloria Edim’s (2024) new memoir is a project in search of a problem.

    The book is a series of thematic chapters loosely organized in chronological order. These offer clusters of experiences, and the ways that reading helped her think through and about these.

    Edim’s claim to fame is the the Well-Read Black Girl organization, which began with a birthday t-shirt from her ex- that enabled her to escape her social isolation and connect with others. She used these casual conversations to launch a book club with friends, which she has developed into an organization that uses storytelling to advocate for social change.

    An account of its origins, and a justification for such a life, might make for relevant reading. The latter could be especially engaging in this era of digital culture, and its attendant challenges to previous justifications for reading, and the humanities.

    The problem is that it never quite gets there. Instead, it focuses more on who Edim has become and how she got there, which is obviously important to her but not necessarily at least as the way these are treated in this book to others.

    A second problem, which emerged after I finished it, is missing information. The timeline is somewhat unclear although I had attributed that to artistic choice. However, it omits details that if included could create challenges at least to the story as presented and promoted in it.

    A good example is her missing father, and he and their subsequent reconnection in Nigeria play prominent parts. However, the book is somewhat unclear that he had previously left for Nigeria, and that her mother and she had reportedly accompanied him when she was younger and frequently visited him, which suggests a somewhat different perspective on for example the house he built there, and left after his death for her brother and her.

    This issue, which is more a challenge for the genre, has little impact on the central limitation. That for me is how books justify their existence, and made this one less satisfying than I expected and hoped.