Bravo to Paul Buhle! It’s easy for even great thinkers, like E.P. Thompson and their work to disappear into intellectual ether as new generations move on to new challenges, intellectual and political. Let’s hope your appreciation helps to recover Thompson’s life and legacy for today’s activists who face a far more complex reality than we did. I read Thompson later than most, in the 1990s. By then I had crossed enough streams and encountered enough dead ends to leave me wondering about my understanding of class, marxism, and socialism. Luckily my meet up with Thompson made all the difference in the world. It allowed me to look at theory, history, and practical politics with new eyes and in new ways, which I don’t regret, even though it got me in more trouble than I could have anticipated at the time.

Trump—and the thorough Trumpification of the Republican Party—to borrow Susan Glasser’s phrase, is the main obstacle to resolving the multiple crises facing the country. Or more to the point, to enacting the legislative program of the Biden administration.

Here is an appreciation of Gil Green, written by Michael Myerson. Late for sure, I came to appreciate Gil’s thinking and courage. As chair of the party for 14 years I attempted to advocate, as best I could, many of the concepts and practices that Gil advocated. In the end I (and some others) were unsuccessful in our efforts. As a result, I stepped down from my position in 2014. Two years later I resigned from the party. Actually, I realize now that, even if we had accomplished what we envisioned, it would have likely been too little too late. When the party split in 1991, both sides in this clash were, in effect, setting themselves up to fail.

The program that President Biden is rolling out is impressive in many ways. Of course, the main roadblock to achieving such a program is Republican Senators. A few conservative Senate Democrats aren’t helping either.

Senate Republicans in debating the wisdom of impeaching Trump are telling us to let bygones be bygones even if the bygones are a Trump stamped violent putsch on the nation’s capital in order to disrupt a democratically constituted body – the Congress – and overturn by force a democratic and fair election. With a few exceptions, what Senate Republicans are doing now, only a few weeks from this unprecedented assault on democracy, should disqualify them from office. They are defending the indefensible as well as setting a dangerous precedent for the future. What defines the Republican Party today, what constitutes its organizing principle now and for the future, with or without Trump, is its full bore commitment to minority, autocratic, white nationalist rule.