Novel Theories of History

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Over at In These Times, David Sirota advances a new theory of American history:

The birthing of the most famous political periods and the success of their transformative agendas almost always hinge on struggles between Radical Teabaggers and Establishment Douchebags. And typically, the teabaggers of a prior era have defined the next epoch’s politics.

The point that Sirota’s trying to get at is another riff on his familiar refrain—progressives need to embrace populism, or, as he puts it in this piece, “stop spending their time ridiculing teabaggery and start co-opting it through their own brand of full-throated populism.” But couching such an argument in the language of UrbanDictionary is a new twist. It’s definitely an attention-grabber.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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