Tad Stoermer: Disillusioned With America? That’s Actually a Good Thing

If you have 12-minutes to spare, this is a timely and insightful video commentary by historian Tad Stoermer, author of A Resistance History of the United States and the forthcoming A Public History of the American Revolution.

In relation to the current situation in the United States, Stoermer insists that “disillusionment is not a collapse to be managed or a mood to be talked out of before the next election.”

Instead, disillusionment is best represented by “a comfortable person losing the ability to un-see what the people without his protections always knew.”





Related Off-site Links:
This Revolutionary Moment: A Conversation With Tad Stoermer – Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (July 1, 2026).
America’s Founding Rot: The Hollow Virtue at the Heart of Our Political Culture – Resistance History with Tad Stoermer (April 20, 2026).
We’ve Never Had the Democracy We Think We’re Losing: A Review of Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them – Tad Stoermer (TadStoermer.com, April 4, 2025).
A Resistance History of the United States: An Interview With Tad Stoermer – Darius Mirshahzadeh (The Greatest Machine, March 11, 2025).
What I Should Have Said About Hope – Tad Stoermer (TadStoermer.substack.com, April 4, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Carlos LeMar Dixon: Without Revolutionary Action, We’re Just “Entertaining the Kings”
• “Performative Resistance Alone Won’t Change Anything”
• Butch Ware: “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Norman Solomon: Quote of the Day – June 16, 2025
• Chris Hedges: “Most Revolutions Succeed Not Through Violence But Through National Strikes”
• Marianne Williamson: “We Must Challenge the Entire System”
• “Organized Sustained Systemic Resistance and Self-Defense Are Our Only Options”
• Memes of the Times – June 25, 2026