A Resurgence of the American Berserk
What if the turbulence of the Trump era represents the return of something very old rather than the emergence of something new?
When I began teaching full-time, I announced I would be writing newsletters 1-2 times per week. I believe I’ve succeeded in writing twice weekly ever since with hardly any time off. Well, it’s now time for a little rest and relaxation. I’m taking a family vacation over the next two weeks that will have me publishing just one post per week between now and the week of May 27. Next week’s item will be my first Ask Me Anything (AMA) post since December 2023. I’ll be sending out a call for AMA questions to paying subscribers very soon; my answers will run next Tuesday or Wednesday. The week of May 20, I’ll have an in-depth interview with the author of an important new book. Today’s post, meanwhile, is somewhat unusual, since it’s merely a preliminary gesture at a topic I hope to explore in greater detail and depth over the coming months. Thanks, as always, for being here and supporting my work.
On Wednesday of this week, I saw a tweet that inspired that rarest of things on Twitter/X: Thinking.
It was an exasperated response to some of this week’s news, though the catalyst for a comment like this could have come from any number of stories at any point over the past several years. Here’s the tweet, from New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch:
I know the feeling, believe me. I’ve been roiled by it since 2016. How could this be happening? Is the country having a nervous breakdown? Are roughly half of my fellow citizen insane? Are they ignoramuses? Or is the world itself spinning out of control, careening off the road into a ditch? Might we be approaching a civilizational hinge moment that sends much if not all of the world into a period of full-spectrum decline?
Again, I have these thoughts and feelings. I know where Gourevitch is coming from. But these anxieties do battle in my own mind with other, somewhat less apocalyptic explanations for where our country seems to be headed. I’m not saying these alternatives are happy. But they help me to grapple with the possibility that something else is going on that’s less discontinuous with our history and what might be called our national character.
Here's how I put the point in a tweet I posted the day after Gourevitch’s first appeared:
I can’t fully elaborate on the point in this post. But what I can do is list a few examples of what I had in mind in writing this tweeted response to Gourevitch. Consider this as laying down a marker for a future post (or posts) in which I delve into the topic in greater detail.
A Country on the Cusp of Chaos
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