STEPS TOWARD AN INTEGRAL PROGRESSIVE RHETORIC

The sprint by multiple Republican state governments in the South to reduce or eliminate African American representation in the United States Congress proves that Sam Alito’s assertion in Louisiana vs Callais is false. In this 6-3 decision he claimed that “...vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.”

To some extent, yes. But obviously not enough to provide fair representation to African American citizens. And now thanks to Sam and his buds, the representation provided will decrease significantly. This is exactly what “Make America Great Again” means: back to the pervasive racism and discrimination of the 1950s.

Along with the Trump administration, the six Republican justices on the US Supreme Court continue to enact what historians will call “The Great Regression” in American history. It is nonetheless important to remember that this period of antithesis is the predicted response to perhaps the most significant period of progressive “thesis” since the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the approval of the US Constitution, which established a radical nation firmly situated in mental/modernist consciousness.

All men (sic) are created equal. As Lincoln noted 87 years later at Gettysburg, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Since 1960, as our contemporary reactionaries know very well, American society has been transformed by progressive movements centered in affiliative/postmodern consciousness.

The feminist movement, ongoing still though perhaps without this label, has given women many more options for choosing the map(s) of their lives and for having power in their lives.

The environmental/ecological movement has cleaned up waterways and air and protected millions of acres of natural habitats throughout the nation. It has also protected endangered species and banned many dangerous industrial materials and procedures.

The gay rights movement has allowed lesbians and gays to live openly in their work and family lives, to the extent that gay marriage is now the law of the land.

The Civil Rights movement of the mid-20^th century was more complex. Martin Luther King certainly at times accessed integral/authentic consciousness. At the same time a majority of the African American people that he led were centered in the mythic/conformist/traditional consciousness of the Black Church. Other activists and volunteers in the movement, black and white, were centered in mental/modernist consciousness. Another group, particularly volunteers in their teens and early twenties, were centered in affiliative/postmodern consciousness. One element of King’s integral genius is that he spoke effectively to all of these consciousness stages.

All of these affiliative/postmodern consciousness movements as well as the Civil Rights movement were focused on justice, equity, respect, care, and well-being. While they shared many values in common, in previous decades they tended to be siloed from each other, not integrated, because affiliative/postmodern consciousness encourages focus on a single cause, not on the web of common values shared by all of these progressive causes. Each movement was also flawed and limited at times by the fundamental deficiency of affiliative/postmodern consciousness as a first-tier manifestation. Nonetheless the overall success of all of these movements has transformed American society and the lives of millions of Americans in particular. On the whole these changes are much for the good, although they have created their own set of concerns and problems.

“Make America Great Again” is a regressive war cry for a culture war victory that would make America less democratic, more racist and bigoted, more poisoned by unregulated corporations, and even more unequal financially.

In retrospect it is apparent that the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency triggered the inevitable antithesis. This reactionary push back had to manifest, given the fact that about one-third of Americans are centered in mythic/conformist/traditional consciousness—and traditional consciousness folks despise affiliative/postmodern consciousness. (Of course, this goes both ways.) If it wasn’t Obama, the trigger would have been something else.

One dynamic in the regressive agenda is the claimed “destruction of our lives and our country” by all those damn hippies, commies, “feminazis,” pejorative slang for gays and lesbians, and so on. The “they” who hate us and are ruining the country. All the Americans who are not white and Christian and conservative. All those immigrants. As Trump and his henchmen say, the enemy is within—which is everyone who disagrees with Trump.

The other dynamic is the reduction of the white, Christian majority population in the country, the decline of Christianity, and the projected elimination of the white majority. All of this is synthesized in the meme “The Great Replacement,” coined by a French racist but widely adopted by American reactionaries.

The social and political manifestation of the antithesis to all that affiliative/postmoderns have accomplished from 1960 on was inevitable. The reactionary movement would inevitably have had hierarchical leaders, because mythic/conformist/traditional consciousness requires hierarchy. It would have inevitably been strongest in the most reactionary states, that is, the Confederate states and a few others like West Virginia and Wyoming. Coal states.

Donald Trump did not create this reactionary movement. But he recognized it in its early years; he employed the then new technology of Twitter to nurture what felt like personal relationships with the movement’s participants—at one point he had a Twitter feed of 90 million; and he cultivated the anger and hatred of the movement’s participants to win the Presidency.

As its unchallenged leader, Donald Trump is both a boon to this movement and a detriment. Trump won the Presidency twice and brought control of Congress along with these election victories. It is not evident that any other contemporary reactionary leader could have done this. Trump’s charisma and his gleeful embrace of contempt and hatred appeal profoundly to mythic/conformist/traditional consciousness whites and, as we saw in 2024, some Latinos. Trump’s own mythic/warrior/egocentric consciousness also appeals to deficient mental/modernist capitalists who are delighted by a narcissistic, corrupt President, who provides an IRS, a Department of Justice, and every other federal regulatory entity that will ignore their crimes. Pay enough, and Trump will pardon you even before you are convicted.

In his first administration Trump began his war on the progressive thesis of the past 60 years, but he was restrained both by normative Republicans in his own administration and by his own uncertainty about what he could get away with. The real Trump only emerged in full when he contested his loss in the 2020 election and then sent a mob to assault the American Congress in the US Capitol. It was not just the building they were attacking; they wanted to attack the members of Congress inside the building and prevent the legal confirmation of Joe Biden as President. 147 Republicans in the US House and Senate voted against the certification of Joe Biden’s election when the Electoral College met on January 6, 2021, giving clear evidence that the party of law and order had become the party of Trump and “we don’t care about the law.”

In the current administration, the only restraints so far on the Trump who seeks to destroy not only the achievements of affiliative/postmodern consciousness but also those of mental/modernist consciousness are the district courts and, to some extent, the people. Through its shadow docket, which is itself a corrupt policy of the court, the US Supreme Court has mostly allowed Trump to enact his policies to destroy large elements of the federal government, many policies designed to protect the health and well-being of Americans and the environment, renewable energy generation, the integrity of the US Department of Justice— and many others. The list is too long to include every specific here. History will hold the six reactionary justice on the Supreme Court culpable for their collusion with Trump’s reactionary campaign.

To risk repetition, what is critical to understand today is that the target for Trump’s assault is not just the affiliative/postmodern, progressive gains of the past 60 years. It is also the mental/modernist foundations of the nation’s democratic institutions, as evidenced by:

Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election, his mob attack on the Capitol, and his denial of that election to this day.

Trump’s pardoning and release from prison of all January 6 criminals who assaulted and battered police and threatened members of Congress and the pardons and commutations granted to other January 6 criminals who were not incarcerated.

The pardons and commutations that Trump has given to a wide array of convicted criminals have spared beneficiaries roughly $1.3 billion to nearly $2 billion in court-ordered fines, victim restitution, and asset forfeitures.

Trump’s refusal to appoint Senate confirmed US attorneys: A March 2026 report indicates that only 30 of the 94 federal judicial districts (or 93 positions) have a presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney.

Trump’s recent rejection of compliance with the War Powers Act.

Trump’s threat to the 2026 Congressional elections. “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Trump’s renewed assertions that “he could be President for another eight or nine years.”

The extent of the assault on mental/modernist consciousness in MAGA land is illustrated by the MAGA influencers who call for the repeal of the 19^th Amendment and the call for “family voting”—the man casts two votes.

At the same time that Trump’s base in the Republican Party continues to offer their loyalty in their cult-like identification with him—85% approval from Republicans—Trump’s flaws and limitations, obvious from the start, are intensifying. Trump is a liar. Trump is hateful and vindictive. Trump is obsessed with his own beliefs, even when phenomena show them to be foolish, stupid, and/or disastrous. Trump cannot admit error nor can he learn from it. Trump is ignorant. Trump has surrounded himself this time with sycophants and fools. Even people in his administration who should know better—Marco Rubio, for example—will not cross Trump. Trump is obsessed with his gold decorations, his ballroom, his arch, his garden of statues, and whatever else he can think up to institutionalize his image in Washington and dress it in gold.

For the reactionary movement, what was once strength from Trump’s leadership is now weakness, as Trump deteriorates in real time. As Trump and MAGA decay, progressives have an opportunity to offer the American people a synthesis. Not a return to the DEI movement or the either/or determinism of racist/antiracist or even the admittedly accurate diagnosis of white fragility—these critiques and memes all played an important part in advancing the affiliative/postmodern agenda over the past 25 years, but each one suffers ultimately from the deficient postmodern quality of absolutism. Either you agree with us one hundred percent, or you are our enemy.

This moment in American history requires a new rhetoric and policy that continues to honor and uphold our progressive commitment to increasing justice, equity, inclusion, and respect for all people in this nation and expands our outreach with these values to groups of Americans whom we have tended to ignore and who have been exploited and abused by Trumpism: farmers, young men, Christians, white working class folks. Economic benefits from progressive policies need not be zero sum but can result in benefits for all who need more resources. Greater inclusion for those excluded historically need not lessen the inclusion of those who have been centered historically. Greater equity for those treated unfairly need not result in loss for those who have received fair treatment.

The core argument of the reactionaries is that whenever we treat those with less better, those who have more lose. It’s always zero sum. Progressives need to demonstrate the falsehood of this assertion and provide examples of its contrary; for example, how immigrants since 1965 have enriched both the financial status and the cultural vitality of American society, yet immigrants have not compelled any “native” white Americans to surrender their identities or values.

The disintegration of Trump’s Presidency and the resulting collapse of the value claims on which it was built offers progressives a unique historical opportunity. One progressive who seems to understand much of this is James Talarico. He states on his campaign website for his Senate campaign in Texas:

“There’s something broken in America.

Our economy is broken. Our politics are broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken.

That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way.

The biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom. Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them.

The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and power. So, their cable news networks and their social media algorithms tear us apart.

They divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion so we don’t notice they’re defunding our schools, gutting our healthcare, and cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the oldest strategy in the world: divide and conquer.

But we will not be conquered.

We’re underdogs in this fight. We’re going up against these billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians. We’re going up against a rigged system. And we’re going up against a lot of money.

But I’m a former middle school teacher — I don’t scare easily. And Texans don’t scare easily.

My granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas. He taught me that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments: love God and love neighbor. Because there is no love of God without love of neighbor. Every single person bears the image of the sacred; every single person is holy — not just the neighbors who look like me or pray like me or vote like me.

Those billionaires want to keep us from seeing all that we have in common. They want to keep us from realizing there’s far more that unites us than divides us. Because once we do, we’ll come together — across party, across race, across gender, across religion — to fix what’s broken in our country and take back power for ourselves and our communities.

2,000 years ago, when the powerful few rigged the system, that barefoot rabbi walked into the seat of power and flipped over the tables of injustice. To those who love our country, to those who love our neighbors:

It’s time to start flipping tables.”

What is Talarico doing here? This is a statement that seeks to transcend the gulf between mythic/conformist/traditional consciousness and affiliative/postmodern consciousness, while opening space for mental/modernists. There is both a regression to duality: the “bad guys” are the top, the billionaires and their servants; everyone else is us, the “good guys.” And there is an integral appeal to all of the “good guys”: the majority who are not at the top. There is a call to transcend differences in “party, race, gender, religion” because our commonality is greater than our differences. Finally, there is a simple call for unity: “Every single person bears the image of the sacred; every single person is holy— not just the neighbors who look like me or pray like me or vote like me.” While the “love God” may be off-putting to some, “approximately 90% of American adults believe in God or a higher power. A 2023 Pew Research Center study found that 54% believe in the God of the Bible; an additional 34% believe in another type of higher power or spiritual force.” God is not personified in this statement but is invoked as a moral force.

James Talarico continues to walk in the progressive tradition, but he redefines this tradition to offer inclusion to many more Americans. Whether he wins his election or not, he offers a model for the progressive synthesis we need in this country.

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China’s solar exports hit a record 68.03 gigawatts in March 2026, nearly doubling February’s volume as countries raced to replace disrupted Middle Eastern oil and gas.

Fifty nations logged all-time-high imports of Chinese solar equipment that month, with African countries jumping 176% from February alone. Behind those numbers are governments that had been moving cautiously on renewables and suddenly found solar to be the fastest, cheapest answer on the table. Battery and electric vehicle shipments climbed alongside the panels, hinting at a clean-energy package moving together.

The takeaway is hopeful even amid hard circumstances: when fossil fuels falter, the world now has a real alternative ready to deploy at remarkable speed.