I am also a baby boomer, but later in the boom. I did not think when I was growing up that America was the colossus. I thought the Soviet Union was at least a coequal power because of its military focus. Although I thought decline was a choice in my heart I thought the country had made it. If pressed, until Reagan and Bush, in my heart I think I believed with Whittaker Chambers that we were probably on the losing side of the cold war (like Athens vs Sparta) but that we should go down fighting. Alternatively I thought that civilization would be destroyed by a nuclear war. And I was far from alone in thinking this. Reagan reversed all that, and Bush consolidated that reversal. Reagan of course was an extraordinary talent, and he didn't fix everything, far from it. But what he did show me at least was that what seemed probably irrevocable wasn't.
My only doubt about your take is your last sentence. I'm not so sure democrats (or more accurately progressives) will regret any of it, even if they find themselves living in ashes and excrement.
Fellow Substacker Sasha Stone has likened them to a cult, and Biden to George Spahn, under whose cover the new Manson girls can run wild in the White House.
Indeed it is. All of their programs and ideas map back to an ideology that has replaced religious faith in their lives. Climate alarmism, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory all have their sacred cows and articles of faith, and insulates their believers from evidence that their ideas don't work.
Abolish shoplifting and vagrancy laws and now your neighborhood grocery store moved away? This is not because abolishing shopping and vagrancy laws was a mistake; it's equity and your disappointment is a feeling of "white privilege."
Change your hiring policies by making race more important than actual experience or qualifications and now your projects are floundering? Not DEI's fault - it's the fault of a capitalist system that doesn't "embrace change."
You transitioned your daughter when she was 12 and now in her 20s she's still depressed, on powerful medications and is having bone density problems unusual for her age? It's not because you did the wrong thing, it's because the "health care system" doesn't respond to the needs of trans people.
This is why KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov said in the 1980s that after a generation or two of "active measure demoralization," you could take a liberal friend to the gulag to see it with his own eyes and he would still not believe it.
I have personally seen this mentality at work in California and it's one of the reasons I moved away.
My point is that our side has been pretending for two decades that we are dealing with the democratic party and normal swings of the pendulum and that the system will correct itself if only we do the usual things.
I no longer believe this. I'm not sure what exactly needs to be done, but I know that we are dealing with a cult that is playing without rules and some serious disruption is called for. Mitt Romney's disastrous campaign was only the most obvious example of not meeting the moment; the failure to stand up for election laws against Marc Elias' finagling during the pandemic another.
We can't count on disaster convincing 30% of the country to go in another direction, and we can't rely on the political conventions, systems and practices that have worked in the past to defeat them.
"My only doubt about your take is your last sentence. I'm not so sure democrats (or more accurately progressives) will regret any of it, even if they find themselves living in ashes and excrement."
Yes, I had some doubts when I wrote that sentence, on exactly the grounds you explain. But ultimately, I thought that, if they have to live for long enough in ashes and excrement, they'll regret it. I was mindful that, as the collapse neared in Atlas Shrugged, Wesley Mouch confided to one of his buddies that he had a hideaway place in the mountains stocked with food. Their nihilism largely but not entirely precludes their ability to think.
First off, this is the best graf I've read in a very long time from anyone, anywhere:
"When I was growing up, if you called someone a liar, that was the start of a fistfight. If you call someone a liar now, it's more likely the start of a conversation about how different people have different perspectives, and we need to be broadminded and tolerant, blah, blah, blah. The idea that there's truth out there, and that we can and should find it and then conform to it, has just disappeared. As I noted, along with Paul, our culture's now-routine acceptance of dishonesty does incalculable damage, and not just because it makes trust impossible. Before long, it makes communication itself impossible. When words can mean anything, when they have no anchor in real world definition, you get all the genuine communication you get with animal noises."
The debasement of the language (with bureaucratic euphemisms like "gender affirming care" and such, and outright made-up words and phrases ("social justice," "environmental justice") that have no real purpose except to confuse and scare people, has debased our thinking and our perception.
I needn't go on - Orwell captured it brilliantly in his 1947 essay "Politics and the English Language," which I re-read every year to keep my balance.
I agree with the descriptive portions of Bill's post. However, I don't think he has explained the despair E.J. Dionne detects.
His circle of colleagues and his readers haven't lost hope because Joe Biden is the president and likely Dem nominee; or because of the state of higher education, which they like; or due to the lack of honesty in society at-large., to which they contribute; or because of America's decline on the international stage, which they welcome. They are despondent because of climate change, issues of race, and Trumpism -- among other standard leftist concerns.
The Trump faction isn't despondent due to dishonesty, either. It has no problem with Trump's dishonesty. It doesn't "take him literally." It excuses his dishonesty because he's a fighter, has good policies, and is their guy. Nor is the Trump faction bothered by his age.
Right. But people who think like Dionne, combined with Trump's supporters (who also aren't much concerned about dishonesty), make up a clear majority of the electorate. Thus, their despair is a significant driver of America's loss of hope.
I am also a baby boomer, but later in the boom. I did not think when I was growing up that America was the colossus. I thought the Soviet Union was at least a coequal power because of its military focus. Although I thought decline was a choice in my heart I thought the country had made it. If pressed, until Reagan and Bush, in my heart I think I believed with Whittaker Chambers that we were probably on the losing side of the cold war (like Athens vs Sparta) but that we should go down fighting. Alternatively I thought that civilization would be destroyed by a nuclear war. And I was far from alone in thinking this. Reagan reversed all that, and Bush consolidated that reversal. Reagan of course was an extraordinary talent, and he didn't fix everything, far from it. But what he did show me at least was that what seemed probably irrevocable wasn't.
My only doubt about your take is your last sentence. I'm not so sure democrats (or more accurately progressives) will regret any of it, even if they find themselves living in ashes and excrement.
Fellow Substacker Sasha Stone has likened them to a cult, and Biden to George Spahn, under whose cover the new Manson girls can run wild in the White House.
Indeed it is. All of their programs and ideas map back to an ideology that has replaced religious faith in their lives. Climate alarmism, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory all have their sacred cows and articles of faith, and insulates their believers from evidence that their ideas don't work.
Abolish shoplifting and vagrancy laws and now your neighborhood grocery store moved away? This is not because abolishing shopping and vagrancy laws was a mistake; it's equity and your disappointment is a feeling of "white privilege."
Change your hiring policies by making race more important than actual experience or qualifications and now your projects are floundering? Not DEI's fault - it's the fault of a capitalist system that doesn't "embrace change."
You transitioned your daughter when she was 12 and now in her 20s she's still depressed, on powerful medications and is having bone density problems unusual for her age? It's not because you did the wrong thing, it's because the "health care system" doesn't respond to the needs of trans people.
This is why KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov said in the 1980s that after a generation or two of "active measure demoralization," you could take a liberal friend to the gulag to see it with his own eyes and he would still not believe it.
I have personally seen this mentality at work in California and it's one of the reasons I moved away.
My point is that our side has been pretending for two decades that we are dealing with the democratic party and normal swings of the pendulum and that the system will correct itself if only we do the usual things.
I no longer believe this. I'm not sure what exactly needs to be done, but I know that we are dealing with a cult that is playing without rules and some serious disruption is called for. Mitt Romney's disastrous campaign was only the most obvious example of not meeting the moment; the failure to stand up for election laws against Marc Elias' finagling during the pandemic another.
We can't count on disaster convincing 30% of the country to go in another direction, and we can't rely on the political conventions, systems and practices that have worked in the past to defeat them.
"My only doubt about your take is your last sentence. I'm not so sure democrats (or more accurately progressives) will regret any of it, even if they find themselves living in ashes and excrement."
Yes, I had some doubts when I wrote that sentence, on exactly the grounds you explain. But ultimately, I thought that, if they have to live for long enough in ashes and excrement, they'll regret it. I was mindful that, as the collapse neared in Atlas Shrugged, Wesley Mouch confided to one of his buddies that he had a hideaway place in the mountains stocked with food. Their nihilism largely but not entirely precludes their ability to think.
Gavin Newsom's candidacy will be a good test of that.
I hope he's the nominee. He's the perfect embodiment of their Party: slick, dishonest and disastrous. Anyone the Rs nominate will beat him.
First off, this is the best graf I've read in a very long time from anyone, anywhere:
"When I was growing up, if you called someone a liar, that was the start of a fistfight. If you call someone a liar now, it's more likely the start of a conversation about how different people have different perspectives, and we need to be broadminded and tolerant, blah, blah, blah. The idea that there's truth out there, and that we can and should find it and then conform to it, has just disappeared. As I noted, along with Paul, our culture's now-routine acceptance of dishonesty does incalculable damage, and not just because it makes trust impossible. Before long, it makes communication itself impossible. When words can mean anything, when they have no anchor in real world definition, you get all the genuine communication you get with animal noises."
The debasement of the language (with bureaucratic euphemisms like "gender affirming care" and such, and outright made-up words and phrases ("social justice," "environmental justice") that have no real purpose except to confuse and scare people, has debased our thinking and our perception.
I needn't go on - Orwell captured it brilliantly in his 1947 essay "Politics and the English Language," which I re-read every year to keep my balance.
I agree with the descriptive portions of Bill's post. However, I don't think he has explained the despair E.J. Dionne detects.
His circle of colleagues and his readers haven't lost hope because Joe Biden is the president and likely Dem nominee; or because of the state of higher education, which they like; or due to the lack of honesty in society at-large., to which they contribute; or because of America's decline on the international stage, which they welcome. They are despondent because of climate change, issues of race, and Trumpism -- among other standard leftist concerns.
The Trump faction isn't despondent due to dishonesty, either. It has no problem with Trump's dishonesty. It doesn't "take him literally." It excuses his dishonesty because he's a fighter, has good policies, and is their guy. Nor is the Trump faction bothered by his age.
I wasn't hoping to explain Dionne's or his readers' despair; if I get lucky, I'll contribute to it.
Right. But people who think like Dionne, combined with Trump's supporters (who also aren't much concerned about dishonesty), make up a clear majority of the electorate. Thus, their despair is a significant driver of America's loss of hope.