@WR Bergman, your perspective is valid (particularly as you cite JFK and Obama) -- but only for as far as it goes. It overlooks (or obscures) the consolidation of secular hierarchies ostensibly based on rationalism or "expertise" -- which have become, by far, the most salient manifestations of Authority and Hierarchy in contemporary societies. (Have you ever dealt with a hospital?) It doesn't account for the condition observed by Kafka, or for "Brave New World."
I'm no Trumpster -- but here in Oakland, Chinese grandmas keep getting mugged, drivers get carjacked (or "bipped" while sitting in their cars, stopped for a light), and families (regardless of "color") feel unsafe. People travel thousands of miles (bypassing even Mexico City) to crowd the US border, and we're told that they're merely fleeing their countries of origin, seeking "asylum" (entering the country illegally, presumably in the same sense that shoplifting is merely "undocumented shopping"). Voters in multi-ethnic California keep repudiating "affirmative action"....
Meanwhile, we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," as the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
We're in our own Era of Stagnation -- where we're told that what we truly need to fear is "white supremacy" or "cisheteropatriarchy" -- as our nomenklatura insults us with names like "AAPI" or "Latinx." (As a gay male, for that matter, I'm insulted by the term "queer.") So who's touting "grievance" and "hate," and who's banking on resentment and fear?
"And when they come for you..."? Looks like a protection racket to me.
I haven't forgotten a goddam thing. Yes, indeed, the human condition is tragic. Consider W.H. Auden's perspective: "You cannot conquer Time..."
‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’
Damon is indeed onto something -- something more complex and nuanced than you seem to realize -- and this ain't no cocktail party!
The discourse here (and in places like it) is itself about remembering -- and it will be remembered (and taught) -- unfortunately, as part of a great, unfolding tragedy.
The protagonist or tragic hero (complete with hubris) is the human species itself. Your own notion of who needs to die (or of what ideas or identities need to be suppressed) will be remembered as part of the problem. Whether the memory will be encoded as Scripture or as DNA (or in AI) -- or all of the above -- I don't know. That's above my pay grade. ;-)
"that doesn't simply involve telling voters that they're wrong. Or racist. Or xenophobic. Or that their concerns are morally illegitimate and their worries make them bigots."
The problem is that those things are only true for some people who oppose immigration. Others have plenty of legitimate reasons to favor reduced immigration such as the impact of immigration on the wages of citizens, housing prices, security, or simply the difficulty of assimilating large numbers of immigrants. In a democratic society, immigration is an issue that should be fair game for debate and up for policy changes, as much as tax rates or many other things. However, when you have a political establishment that acts as if any and all doubts to current immigration policies are rooted in illegitimate bigotry, it is little wonder that more and more people distrust them.
In addition to the never ending wars and the bailouts that followed the economic crash of 2008, immigration is another issue in which the establishment has showed itself as blatant hypocrites against the populist right. For instance, in the United States, the establishment correctly points out that populist right does not always respect the rule of law. Yet the same establishment has turned a blind eye for years to millions of illegal immigrants who have broken immigration law. Some Democrats even become upset if one uses the term "illegal immigrant," even though it is a simple factual description. This leaves the impression that the rule of law is only important for these folks in selective and self-serving cases. Meanwhile, in Europe, the political establishment understandable worries about the anti-democratic tendencies of the far-right. Yet for decades, it has happily welcomed large populations of Muslim immigrants, even as some of those immigrants hold views that are completely incompatible with democracy and western culture, with crime and terrorist attacks multiplying in Europe over the last few decades as a result.
A few months ago, I thought Biden had the 2024 election in the bag. But I am growing increasingly pessimistic and think Damon is correct that Trump is probably going to win. Biden has made mistake after mistake and the Democrats continue to foolishly assume that running someone who is "not Trump" is enough to win. The populist right probably will do well in Europe in the coming years as well, regardless of what happens in upcoming French parliamentary elections. As much as I dislike the populist right, I can certainly understand why the center-left and center-right political establishment has lost so much credibility. If these folks are seriously interested in beating back the populist right and defending democracy, they need to actually listen to the people for a change without dismissing all their concerns on issues such as immigration as rooted in irrational bigotry.
There are plenty of politicians willing to make an economic case against migration. But Republicans have overwhelmingly preferred to go with an open racist.
"Plenty of politicians"? Name a few on the Democratic side who have in the last several years have proposed serious limitations to immigration for economic reasons or otherwise. And I don't mean any of the Johnny come lately types who backed the bill earlier this year because they realize this is an election year and they are in trouble with the public on this issue. The fact of the matter is that the Democrats have chosen to listen to their activist base on immigration instead of the concerns of the general public.
In other matters, Democrats have long overused the "racist" charge against those to the right of them. To give one example, in 2012 Biden alleged that Mitt Romney's economic policies would put black people back in chains. Biden also called changes to election laws in Georgia "Jim Crow 2.0." So when someone comes along (Trump and the populist right) who actually is openly racist, Democrats shouldn't be surprised that some people write them off as crying wolf. It doesn't help either that Democrats have open and virulent racists in their own ranks, namely those who protest in favor of Hamas or who at least are willingly to make common cause in protests with those who favor Hamas. Pro-Hamas protestors in this country have effectively staged the equivalent of multiple Charlottesvilles in the last several months. Yet instead of doing the right thing and treating them as if they were the KKK or neo-Nazis engaged in protests, e.g. treating them as beyond the pale, Biden and the Democrats have sought to appease these folks. Again, because they are part of their activist base.
"Pro-Hamas protestors in this country have effectively staged the equivalent of multiple Charlottesvilles." Indeed, their slogans (and demands) often boil down to "Jews will not replace us." All that's missing are the tiki torches.
Btw, this has been true since local Arabs were staging anti-Jewish riots in the 1920s -- when Jews were returning from Exile in peace, buying their own land -- long before any "Nakba." What goes around comes around.
Among our foundational tendencies is the belief that we’re better than we actually are: the devolution of Christians into Christian Nationalists with its Weimar echoes being an example.
The way that you make your argument primarily about the receding power of the appeal of universalism makes your opening invocation of Matthew Arnold all the more poignant--because as far as post-WWII liberal universalism departed from any kind of explicit reliance upon Christian universalism, the connections were still obviously there, as George W. Bush's Reaganite version of liberal internationalism made obvious. So if your story about accepting right-wing populism as part of the new normal of democratic politics is also, unavoidably, a story about the decline of the Christian faith, or at least a decline of the way Christian universalism was (consciously or unconsciously) employed by the Cold War political class, then all sorts of frightening questions become unavoidable.
For example, why don't you include the 1964 Civil Rights Act along with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act in your list of Might-Have-Beens? Why has that particular echo of Christian universalism stuck without much backlash (unless that's wrong too, and everything online leftists and the New York Times and Marjorie Taylor Greene--in a very different way, obviously--say about the centrality of defending white people to Trump's movement is correct?), while the attempt to import that distant echo of a religious universalism across state borders (or, in reference to your claim that American liberals have gone too far on "a range of social and cultural issues," across the gender line) has generated this new normal? Maybe one could argue that it goes along with your insistence that "generosity and openness to others can and should be cultivated" but it "takes considerable effort" and needs to be sought incrementally; that the civil rights movement did the slow work necessary to not make sure (white) people didn't become too angry about that iteration of Christian universalism in politics, but subsequent movements (particularly involving immigration and LGBTQ issues) didn't do that work? Like I said, lots of questions.
"The civil rights movement did the slow work necessary to not make sure (white) people didn't become too angry... but subsequent movements (particularly involving immigration and LGBTQ issues) didn't do that work?"
As a gay male, I don't see any massive groundswell of demand for reinstating sodomy laws, or for delegitimizing same-sex marriages. In that sense, the work was done.
The problem arises once such initial (universalistic) goals have been achieved -- i.e., when particularist ("anti-assimilationist", would-be radical) "queer" elements lay claim to the continuity of the movement -- as when the civil rights movement morphed into the demand for Black Power.
The backlash arose after the ensuing riots, and (in the face of claims that BLM represented a broad-based "reckoning" on race and the character of the American Dream), the overreach and the backlash continues.
You make some fair observations, Mitchell. I suspect that those who know the history better make push back on some of your formulations (did the backlash to the civil rights movement really only emerge only after the riots of 1967 and 1968? is the current iteration of the movement for LGBTQ rights, with the focus on trans rights, really "anti-assimilationist"?), but I also suspect that what you're describing is pretty much where Damon would land.
Thanks for the recognition! I know the history; as a lifelong activist (at age 74), I've lived much of it. (The historiography is itself controversial!) The differences are a matter of emphasis (or framing); i.e., of interpretation. :-)
Neil Howe (with Bill Strauss) wrote a book in the 90s that Al Gore loved so much - he bought 49 copies for his fellow Senators. It is said to have deeply affected Steve Bannon’s thinking on the world’s changing mood. It was The Fourth Turning. Neil just released The Fourth Turning Is Here last year. It, essentially, outlines the generational moods (and their recurring archetypes) that drive history. “History shapes generations in their youth and generations shape history as adults”. It confirms that neither time nor progress is linear - but cyclical. There are only a few moods that generations have throughout history and they act accordingly. These turnings (like seasons) are on a historical clock of 20-25 years each. A “High” (social and political cohesiveness, an “Awakening” (a society renews its inner values of culture and religion with a focus on individuals), an “Unraveling” (the culmination of focus on individuals and destruction of the order’s institutions and legitimacy) and the fourth turning is “Crisis” - where a society realizes the old outer order (of politics and institutions) are dead and decaying and must be refreshed. The danger (and crisis) of history’s Fourth Turnings - in western societies seen in 1930s, 1850s, 1770s - is that this contest to recreate political power (deligitimized in prior Unraveling) is that great power attracts great power-seekers. In the 30s it was Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Tojo. Today it is Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogwan. Fourth Turnings “almost always are marked by all out war, civil war, or revolution” says Howe. And if you see those other Fourth Turning decades above - it won’t be hard to spot that.
What this means, to me, is what Damon is saying is true. To the shock and horror of political scientists and pundits (yes Mr. End of History Fukuyama) - these cycles are “social winter” over and over again. We modern westerners revolt at the idea that time and history are cyclical vs linear - but the facts of history keep pointing to these generational archetypes and their recurring responses, en mass, to world order conditions are roughly the same throughout time.
If Howe is correct (and he has his detractors) - then our Fourth Turning will turn violent. We never know how destructive winter will be - but it always arrives to kill off the prior season’s plantings. Always. And it’s youth driven. Just as Damon says. Today’s most extreme factions - on both sides - are YOUNG.
The Squad = AOC, Omar, Talib
Freedom Caucus = Gaetz, MTG, Hawley
The revolutionary far left on today’s university campuses, the climate extremists. Forces of our youth driving extreme change in order to recreate a decayed world order. Though soaked in blood in the inevitable fight - unless we must all rally to defend each other from a world war against a foreign foe like Xi or Putin (as we did against Hitler and imperial Japan).
This is what’s happening. It’s winter. It’s inevitable. It’s how the seasons of time and forces of nature work beyond our pundits, politicians, and activists. It is set in the stars. We merely play our role in this preset drama. This is our Act in a very old play.
As Damon points out, "we are living through the end of something." At the most profound level we are witnessing the end of an epoch started by the printing press and spans the age Liberalism and Industrialism. Damon also points out that "(w)e can try to bury our heads in the proverbial sand, pretending the future is poised to deliver a return to a vanished past. Or we can accept where we find ourselves today and work to build something decent within it." To me that means we recognize that we are entering an historical phase where the institutions of the past are crumbling or obsolete, creating massive discontent from rank-and-file society, and the institutions of a new era have yet to be formed. That leaves us in a "soft shell" phase in history where, like a crab or lobster that wilts away it's old shell and is must vulnerable before it grows a new one. It is during this "soft shell" phase that a shellfish is at its weakest and predators thrive. Hopefully we can get past this soft shell phase.
Very thought provoking. I hope we can get out of this phase without damaging ourselves too much. I hope the rising generation of politicians is heeding the concerns you’re raising.
I think this post is an extraordinarily succinct and accurate capture of what is happening and where we are. There are no signs at all that either a Trump or Biden victory will address a substantial change in our direction, and that has to happen at some point, sooner or later.
Two other points.
One, I have read a lot regarding why Biden's approval & poll numbers are so bad. To all of it my response has been, "Yes, but..." Not this time. I think Damon absolutely cut to the chase with this: "...the incumbent president is a (very cautiously) walking embodiment of a waning and faltering consensus that’s rapidly withdrawing with more of a whimper than a roar."
Like many I had read his book and been very impressed with it. His opposing Trump in 2016 made sense. I took his flip to supporting Trump in 2020, etc. as a shocking bolt from his previous perspective. It seemed so clear that he had "sold out" in some way. But in Douthat's interview I heard him speaking very much from his stance in his book and 2016. And what I took away from that interview seems aligned with what Damon describes here in this post. Moreover, I came away wanting to have a long conversation with Vance.
Damon, I think your take on the Douthat-Vance interview would be a great follow-up to this post.
"Particularistic attachments aren’t like an ideological virus invading and harming an organism from the outside. They emerge organically from the human soul. I naturally love myself more than others, my family more than other families, my community more than other communities, members of my church more than those of other churches, and fellow citizens of my own country more than those from other countries and cultures and civilizations. These sentiments can and should be tempered. Generosity and openness to others can and should be cultivated. But that work cuts against the grain of our nature. It takes considerable effort. It needs to be undertaken wisely, recognizing its limits and alive to the danger of backlash."
A very Straussian sentiment. But he was right and so are you.
Is our new normal (far-right particularisms as a major force) happening because universalist modes of thought were thriving but are now receding? Or is it because universalist premises (human equality, dignity, rights) got enough traction in the West-dominated 20th century to make their implications clearer in the globalized 21st century?
The worldview that Trump voices crudely––that there are great countries and shit-hole countries, that there are genetically gifted populations and genetically weak populations, that men lead and women assist––was implicit in both the dominant common sense and the politics of the US and Europe for at least two centuries. Christian universalism itself largely operated as affirmation that Euro-Christians were the essence of a free humanity and could beneficently lead other peoples out of darkness.
By the 60s, though that commonsense real was contested in materially effective ways––decolonization, civil rights, women and gay folks balking at their subordinate place in the former commonsense reality, etc. Historically speaking, these are recent movements. No one knew whether they represented superficial social ripples or else a fundamental reordering of what counts as reality.
There are fundamental economic conditions that are triggering anger. But I suspect a lot of scorn, anger and disgust on the right is a reaction to seeing the former description of reality no longer affirmed in everyday life. Their reactions look like racism and misogyny to those who accept a new commonsense (of course you can't displace or absorb weaker peoples, of course gay couples are just as legitimate as straight ones). But to those on the right themselves it's that the commonsense order of things is being denied and distorted by bad actors, and getting away with it. Maybe the culture wars and the political upheaval that accompanies them are a lot more existential than they appear, and that economic and political levers can only do so much to mitigate them.
@NancyB frames this as a paradigm shift? I'll offer an alternate perspective, as a gay male:
I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there's nothing "Queer" about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and (as my parents raised me) I’m proud simply to be myself. I never signed up to "smash cisheteropatriarchy" in the name of some Brave New World.
A parallel perspective can be applied in all the instances @NancyB mentions. The key is the fundamentally liberal principle that self-determination is inherently an individual (rather than collective) right -- augmented by Isaiah Berlin's notion of pluralism.
Does one truly need to be senile to believe that? I'm 74, and I lament to my cat. "Lucy, I don't think we're in Woodstock anymore" -- but as long as I'm still alive and kicking, I'm not giving up!
It's strange that you seem to understand my comment as advocating for particularism/identity rather than liberal universalism. That's exactly backwards.
The liberal values of human rights, dignity, and equality for all––regardless of ascriptive identity–– got a foothold for the first time in the later half of the 20th century in some societies. That was the basis for exactly what you are pointing to regarding the dignity to just "be oneself": a universal right to self-determination means that those it can't be legitimately withheld from anyone (as it had been for individuals who fell into particular groups).
What you are misdescribing as "collective rights" are really just rights claims by previously excluded people seeking individual rights. People had to mobilize under things like "gay rights" precisely because those groups had been disqualified from being self-determining individuals *on the basis of sexuality.*
The "self-determination for all individuals" idea has gotten a lot of traction in the US and Europe, and I think the rise of rightwing populism (far right parties in Europe, Trumpism in the US) is in large part because individual rights actually were granted more widely, in the law and in a lot of sectors of the culture. It's not a coincidence that one of the key hallmarks of populism (see: Russia, Poland, increasingly in the US) is a demand for a return to traditional/religious gender roles and a subordination of gay people.
I don't think I've misconstrued your position. We're viewing these issues at a differing focus (particularly in terms of means vs. ends), and we thereby differ in our approach.
I've been a lifelong activist -- but I've always approached the question of "gay rights" as a matter of personal (individual) freedom (expanding the scope of male sexuality, at that!) rather than in terms of any notion of "social justice."
The "social justice" approach has metastasized, to the point where it's come to jeopardize the hard-won, widespread acceptance we've ALREADY gained. Among the queerer-than-thou contingent, even same-sex marriage is itself derided as "heteronormative." There was no "bathroom bill" in North Carolina until the City of Charlotte passed a local ordinance enshrining the (contentious) notion of "gender identity" (rather than leaving well enough alone with private stalls). While Florida passes draconian laws denying parents the right to make medical decisions regarding their own children, California denies parents the right to know the "gender" (or even the name!) by which their own children are identified at school.
We can't let ourselves be defined (as a "community") by our adversaries. The enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my comrade.
"And when they come for me?..."
If they ever even hint at reinstating "sodomy" laws, you'll find me already out on the barricades -- along with people like Andrew Sullivan and Jamie Kirchick (and [I hesitate to say!] perhaps even Peter Thiel or Richard Grenell).
Meanwhile, I don't care to be forever beholden to anyone running a protection racket, or to any would-be arbiter of the Oppression Olympics. I've also learned some very painful lessons about all the nuances that this involves as a Jew.
I'm busy watching my own back, thank you very much. And I only pull up the ladder behind me when someone's clutching at my heels, dragging me down.
That said (and on those terms), I appreciate your support. :-)
PS: The dignity simply to be myself was imparted to me by my parents, and is a function of my own agency. It's not something conferred on me by the State (as long as the State does not obstruct its exercise) -- let alone by any would-be "expert" who'd presume to define the parameters of "behavioral health."
I understand the distinction you are calling "approach." But I still think it still misconstrues the substantive question of liberal universalism as I claimed it.
When there were sodomy laws in the US, it was unjust. Civil justice was missing, although to most people it was simply the real or proper order of things. The laws were changed only because more people in society came to recognize the lack of justice in laws that arbitrarily denied some people's individual rights. Hence the universalism. As horrible as the word seems to be for some ears, the effect could be called "social justice," because a broad enough swath of people––under no risk themselves from sodomy laws––consented to live in a different society.
"And when they come for me?...." Maybe as far as you are concerned, adequate justice was achieved when sodomy laws became unconstitutional, and it is of no concern vis a vis your individual rights when, say, lesbians are denied parental rights exercised by other parents. To have concern for someone else's individual rights would spill over into the dreaded "social justice."
It's a coherent position, but of course it is a particularist one (gay men cannot be deprived of their individual rights; lesbians can without my objection) and not a liberal universalist position.
Your reference to "protection rackets" suggests you think that the social justice concept, at least as "metastasized" today, demands that you accept any and every claim anyone makes that their individual rights are being harmed. But it doesn't––no one has to accept, let alone agitate for, claims they find false.
When someone's claims are false, then if I ignore or reject them it doesn't harm social justice. That's substantively different than when individuals are arbitrarily deprived of rights that I and everyone else can exercise.
My view is universalist, to the same extent as yours. If lesbians are denied parental rights, I can empathize (as an individual!), and support them. But (as you note), I retain the prerogative (also as an individual) not to accept claims I find false.
Much of the time, we might arrive at the same destination -- but I'd rather be in the driver's seat, rather than being told that I must ride a bus.
This post really hit me. It inspired me to finally become a paid subscriber.
For the past several years, I've felt like I've been speaking a dying language--and that I'm losing the meaning it once had for me. It's disorienting and heartbreaking. I don't know if I'm ready to admit that the world has changed or what it means for me. I not only grew up speaking the language of American liberalism (for lack of a better way of putting it)--but I also love it and deeply identify with it. But this post was helpful. It felt like an act of mourning, a reality testing that acknowledges the new world in which we find ourself, and the old one that is passing away.
The post referenced Tocqueville. It made me think about a line that Hannah Arendt liked to quote from him where he describes what he feels like to live at the end of aristocracy and the beginning of modern democracy. “Since the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.” And finally, let me share a brief passage from Arendt where she reflects on beginnings and endings, which I think resonates with this post. In her essay "The Tradition and the Modern Age," she write "the beginning and the end of the tradition have this in common: that the elementary problems of politics never come as clearly to light in their immediate and simple urgency as when they are first formulated and when they receive their final challenge . . . The beginning, in Jacob Burckhardt’s words, is like a “fundamental chord” which sounds in its endless modulations through the whole history of Western thought. Only beginning and end are, so to speak, pure or unmodulated; and the fundamental chord therefore never strikes its listeners more forcefully and more beautifully than when it first sends its harmonizing sound into the world and never more irritatingly and jarringly than when it still continues to be heard in a world whose sounds—and thought—it can no longer bring into harmony. A random remark which Plato made in his last work: “The beginning is like a god which as long as it dwells among men saves all things” . . . is true of our tradition; as long as its beginning was alive, it could save all things and bring them into harmony. By the same token, it became destructive as it came to its end—to say nothing of the aftermath of confusion and helplessness which came after the tradition ended and in which we live today.”
Oof. As a Catholic-Jewish person in the United States the collapse of support for universalist strains of culture and politics scares the living bejesus out of me. Israel seems further down this path than the US is with seemingly less hope of turning back. As a student of the 1920s, it is clear that the Catholic Church is going back to their old playbook of Fortress Catholicism. It will be much smaller, but this is how institutions last 2000 years. The lesson for Jews though was that high-walls don't protect you from the nationalist right in the ways that it can sustain Catholicism in unfriendly times. As a person who dabbled in the Bircher right of the 90s, they still basically played inside the walls of liberalism in a way that the left and right no longer do. What do you do when there is nowhere to run?
I do not think it solely responsible, but I wouldn't forget several generations' heavy and unrelenting spending by some of the extremely wealthy on the promotion of movements they believe will free lions like them from the laws meet solely for oxen rest of us.
I will get no satisfaction from their discovery, quick or slow , that 'property rights' at their level are not at all natural, and in a power-universe stripped of all norms and mystifications intimately dependent on the whims of those in power…not least because I may have been killed or impoverished long before that time.
I completely understand and empathize with the feelings underlying this post, but I also am not sure what purpose it serves in its current form. It accurately describes real and substantial failures of governance over the last 70 years but leaves out the way that the understandable backlash to those failures has been stoked, warped, and channeled by people who know better into largely unrelated culture war grievances as a distraction from not only continuing but escalating economic inequality. It validates the reliance on vibes over job performance in evaluating candidates for the most powerful office in the world while making only passing reference to Trump's manifest psychopathy and none to his obvious cognitive impairment or blatant, historic corruption. From my reading, leaving all of these things out suggests that support for Donald Trump is a natural and rational response to what voters have experienced. It's not. There's an entire conservative media industry that's been building up to this narrative for decades, and that's not the same thing as calling the consumers of that media dumb or bigoted. When you flatten everything down to "neo-liberals were dumb and mean so obviously Trump" you let a lot of really terrible actors off the hook and foster a wildly over-broad mistrust of institutions. It's so much more complicated than that, and I worry that you're playing into the hands of the "burn it all down" crowd.
I certainly understand being depressed at a time like this, Lord knows I'm medicated, but this just feels intended to demoralize. To what end?
Good question. I completely agree with your response and get the strange impression that Damon is actually feeling pulled towards Trumpism (though of course he denies this) and appears at a loss for any plausible counter attack, or reason to formulate one. His recent posts have all led in this direction and seem intended to demoralize. I’ve always loved Dover Beach, but do not look to the poem for political guidance.
I feel like I need to say this every now and then to my readers: My writing is not an act of politics. It is not "intended to demoralize" or to motivate action. It is an act of attempted understanding. I'm here to tell you what I think is the truth. I hope you would accept it in whole, in part, or not at all on that basis, not presume that my aim is to get you to vote one way or the other, or support a candidate or another. I'm not going to write posts about how, actually, Biden is awesome and you'd have to be a moron not to see it. I'll sometimes say Trump is terrible, but not as part of an effort to get you not to vote for him, but as a way of distinguishing between what I think is an especially pathological version of the political tendency he expresses, out of a wish that we could do better.
In that spirit, I didn't invoke "Dover Beach" for political guidance. I invoked it because it evokes a feeling that I experience looking at the political world as it is today. Not the way I wish it was, but the way I think it is. Again, agree in whole, in part, or not at all, but I hope you will read it in that spirit.
You've done a brilliant (and eloquent) job of diagnosing the problem, but in the end tell us only that "We can accept where we find ourselves today and work to build something decent within it." If you cannot offer any guidance, that leaves us empty-handed.
I'm left only with my sense that the human condition is tragic -- invoking W.H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening":
"You shall love your crooked neighbor / With your crooked heart..."
Is that all we have left to guide us? Is it enough?
Fair enough. To be honest, my criticism was not entirely fair -- your response doesn't surprise me. But your fatalistic tone of the past few weeks does disturb me (I understand it's honestly come by and well thought-out). Perhaps if I'd ever been a Reaganite/neoconservative,I'd feel sadder at the fading of that ideology and its mores. Still, I always considered myself an American patriot and no longer really can.
What I've seen the past 8 years has convinced me of one thing -- the pure will to destruction is incredibly strong and hard to erase once it has traction. There seems to be a joy in cruelty and undermining things which I don't think can be explained completely by social and economic grievance. We should not underestimate this.
"The backlash to those failures has been stoked, warped, and channeled by people who know better into largely unrelated culture war grievances as a distraction from not only continuing but escalating economic inequality"?
The Trumpsters and their ilk are not alone in having stoked, warped, and channeled this discontent! On the so-called "progressive" side, we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," while the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
I’ve seen this as a theme in your comments here, and I wish I had the energy to fully engage on it for the umpteenth time.
Is the progressive left flawed? Yes. Is their approach to their cause and even the cause itself counter-productive and off-putting at times? Certainly. Is it in any way comparable to the existential threat of the forces uniting in the Trumpist tent? No. Simply, no.
This false equivalency is the bane of our time, giving cover to truly dangerous forces in order to file petty cultural grievances. The blame for what Damon is describing is not equal. At least 1/3 of our fellow citizens no longer share a reality with the rest of us (if they ever did), and you’re doing their work when you indulge this feckless bothsidesism. There is real danger here, and it’s not pronouns or cancel culture or misguided college kids “supporting” Hamas (though this generation does pose a serious threat as they age into power depending on where we go next).
I urge you to wake up and recognize the true peril we’re confronting.
If the most compelling "vision" the the Democrats have to offer at this point is the sort of protection racket you're running, you risk handing the election to Trump.
Your characterization of "petty cultural grievances" is only further symptomatic of the problem. It's an insult to the very voters you (we?) need to win.
But don't take my word for it. Ask Andrew Sullivan. Or Jamie Kirchick. Or (perhaps above all) James Carville (with whose understanding Bill Clinton had his "Sister Souljah" moment),
My fear is that Trump is setting us up for riots in Milwaukee -- which the Democrats will characterize as "mostly peaceful protests" -- only to be followed by more of the same when the Democrats meet in Chicago.
When it comes time to say, "told you so," it'll be too late.
I don’t know what you mean by protection racket, and I’m not a Democrat. I’m not trying to “win” anything.
You’re acting as if what we’re confronting is a policy dispute, and competing visions of traditional governance. The terms you are speaking in are too small for the moment. Would defeating Trump be helpful? Yes, but only as a sort of remission that doesn’t truly address the cancer he represents. This is the change Damon is speaking of, and griping about pronouns and SJWs is a red herring of a deep, rich crimson.
This is an epistemic reckoning, and it’s likely to be many elections before we have the luxury of indulging (yes, I’ll say jt), petty cultural grievances.
The "cancer" that besets us is oligarchy itself -- which, in its advanced state, also operates through the bureaucracies of nonprofits and NGOs -- and leaves Joe Sixpack feeling like he's living in a Kafka novel. The "epistemic reckoning" is spiritual (and deeply cultural) in nature, worldwide in scope, and confronts humanity on an apocalyptic scale. "Petty," my ass!
"Spiritual"? Yes, "the planet" (as we've evolved to live on it) is in danger. But if the world is overcrowded, and if a person's right to swing their arms ends where someone else's nose begins, the answer is not to put everyone in a straitjacket, while blaming their unease on delusion or "superstition."
I suggest reading "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and (yes!) maybe a little Kafka.
"Conspiracy theory"? Not quite. In fact, compared with what we face as a species (whose [overcrowded] ecological niche is INFORMATION), "structural racism" and "gender identity" (or even "A Handmaid's Tale") are themselves merely about "petty cultural grievances."
Thanks, Sam. Reading the responses to the thread has been fascinating as I sort through the bundle of splinters that are my own thoughts on the matter.
Like you I return to the inescapable fact of the Conservative movement’s and Religious Right’s dual collapse, and the way they have turned their backs on long held values and first principles in the name of political power.
Though I have generally disagreed with those politics and that strain of Christianity, I respected their commitment and their faith. As a bullshit postmodernist I feel both vindicated (so they were just making it up!) and deeply concerned at the inevitable nihilism that many will choose in a post-Truth environment.
Great piece by Noah Millman on his ‘Gideon’s Substack’ — it serves as an amplification of Damon’s piece, and to someone degree a critique. Basically argues for the inseparability of populism and demagoguery — making Trump’s loathsomeness a requirement for the job, not a regrettable defect getting in the way of a purer expression of populism.
I don’t agree that universalism cuts against the grain of human nature. I think we naturally oscillate between universalism and particularism and must learn to live with the tension.
@WR Bergman, your perspective is valid (particularly as you cite JFK and Obama) -- but only for as far as it goes. It overlooks (or obscures) the consolidation of secular hierarchies ostensibly based on rationalism or "expertise" -- which have become, by far, the most salient manifestations of Authority and Hierarchy in contemporary societies. (Have you ever dealt with a hospital?) It doesn't account for the condition observed by Kafka, or for "Brave New World."
I'm no Trumpster -- but here in Oakland, Chinese grandmas keep getting mugged, drivers get carjacked (or "bipped" while sitting in their cars, stopped for a light), and families (regardless of "color") feel unsafe. People travel thousands of miles (bypassing even Mexico City) to crowd the US border, and we're told that they're merely fleeing their countries of origin, seeking "asylum" (entering the country illegally, presumably in the same sense that shoplifting is merely "undocumented shopping"). Voters in multi-ethnic California keep repudiating "affirmative action"....
Meanwhile, we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," as the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
We're in our own Era of Stagnation -- where we're told that what we truly need to fear is "white supremacy" or "cisheteropatriarchy" -- as our nomenklatura insults us with names like "AAPI" or "Latinx." (As a gay male, for that matter, I'm insulted by the term "queer.") So who's touting "grievance" and "hate," and who's banking on resentment and fear?
"And when they come for you..."? Looks like a protection racket to me.
I haven't forgotten a goddam thing. Yes, indeed, the human condition is tragic. Consider W.H. Auden's perspective: "You cannot conquer Time..."
‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’
Damon is indeed onto something -- something more complex and nuanced than you seem to realize -- and this ain't no cocktail party!
The discourse here (and in places like it) is itself about remembering -- and it will be remembered (and taught) -- unfortunately, as part of a great, unfolding tragedy.
The protagonist or tragic hero (complete with hubris) is the human species itself. Your own notion of who needs to die (or of what ideas or identities need to be suppressed) will be remembered as part of the problem. Whether the memory will be encoded as Scripture or as DNA (or in AI) -- or all of the above -- I don't know. That's above my pay grade. ;-)
"that doesn't simply involve telling voters that they're wrong. Or racist. Or xenophobic. Or that their concerns are morally illegitimate and their worries make them bigots."
Even if all those things are true.
The problem is that those things are only true for some people who oppose immigration. Others have plenty of legitimate reasons to favor reduced immigration such as the impact of immigration on the wages of citizens, housing prices, security, or simply the difficulty of assimilating large numbers of immigrants. In a democratic society, immigration is an issue that should be fair game for debate and up for policy changes, as much as tax rates or many other things. However, when you have a political establishment that acts as if any and all doubts to current immigration policies are rooted in illegitimate bigotry, it is little wonder that more and more people distrust them.
In addition to the never ending wars and the bailouts that followed the economic crash of 2008, immigration is another issue in which the establishment has showed itself as blatant hypocrites against the populist right. For instance, in the United States, the establishment correctly points out that populist right does not always respect the rule of law. Yet the same establishment has turned a blind eye for years to millions of illegal immigrants who have broken immigration law. Some Democrats even become upset if one uses the term "illegal immigrant," even though it is a simple factual description. This leaves the impression that the rule of law is only important for these folks in selective and self-serving cases. Meanwhile, in Europe, the political establishment understandable worries about the anti-democratic tendencies of the far-right. Yet for decades, it has happily welcomed large populations of Muslim immigrants, even as some of those immigrants hold views that are completely incompatible with democracy and western culture, with crime and terrorist attacks multiplying in Europe over the last few decades as a result.
A few months ago, I thought Biden had the 2024 election in the bag. But I am growing increasingly pessimistic and think Damon is correct that Trump is probably going to win. Biden has made mistake after mistake and the Democrats continue to foolishly assume that running someone who is "not Trump" is enough to win. The populist right probably will do well in Europe in the coming years as well, regardless of what happens in upcoming French parliamentary elections. As much as I dislike the populist right, I can certainly understand why the center-left and center-right political establishment has lost so much credibility. If these folks are seriously interested in beating back the populist right and defending democracy, they need to actually listen to the people for a change without dismissing all their concerns on issues such as immigration as rooted in irrational bigotry.
There are plenty of politicians willing to make an economic case against migration. But Republicans have overwhelmingly preferred to go with an open racist.
"Plenty of politicians"? Name a few on the Democratic side who have in the last several years have proposed serious limitations to immigration for economic reasons or otherwise. And I don't mean any of the Johnny come lately types who backed the bill earlier this year because they realize this is an election year and they are in trouble with the public on this issue. The fact of the matter is that the Democrats have chosen to listen to their activist base on immigration instead of the concerns of the general public.
In other matters, Democrats have long overused the "racist" charge against those to the right of them. To give one example, in 2012 Biden alleged that Mitt Romney's economic policies would put black people back in chains. Biden also called changes to election laws in Georgia "Jim Crow 2.0." So when someone comes along (Trump and the populist right) who actually is openly racist, Democrats shouldn't be surprised that some people write them off as crying wolf. It doesn't help either that Democrats have open and virulent racists in their own ranks, namely those who protest in favor of Hamas or who at least are willingly to make common cause in protests with those who favor Hamas. Pro-Hamas protestors in this country have effectively staged the equivalent of multiple Charlottesvilles in the last several months. Yet instead of doing the right thing and treating them as if they were the KKK or neo-Nazis engaged in protests, e.g. treating them as beyond the pale, Biden and the Democrats have sought to appease these folks. Again, because they are part of their activist base.
"Pro-Hamas protestors in this country have effectively staged the equivalent of multiple Charlottesvilles." Indeed, their slogans (and demands) often boil down to "Jews will not replace us." All that's missing are the tiki torches.
Btw, this has been true since local Arabs were staging anti-Jewish riots in the 1920s -- when Jews were returning from Exile in peace, buying their own land -- long before any "Nakba." What goes around comes around.
Protesting too much?
Among our foundational tendencies is the belief that we’re better than we actually are: the devolution of Christians into Christian Nationalists with its Weimar echoes being an example.
The way that you make your argument primarily about the receding power of the appeal of universalism makes your opening invocation of Matthew Arnold all the more poignant--because as far as post-WWII liberal universalism departed from any kind of explicit reliance upon Christian universalism, the connections were still obviously there, as George W. Bush's Reaganite version of liberal internationalism made obvious. So if your story about accepting right-wing populism as part of the new normal of democratic politics is also, unavoidably, a story about the decline of the Christian faith, or at least a decline of the way Christian universalism was (consciously or unconsciously) employed by the Cold War political class, then all sorts of frightening questions become unavoidable.
For example, why don't you include the 1964 Civil Rights Act along with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act in your list of Might-Have-Beens? Why has that particular echo of Christian universalism stuck without much backlash (unless that's wrong too, and everything online leftists and the New York Times and Marjorie Taylor Greene--in a very different way, obviously--say about the centrality of defending white people to Trump's movement is correct?), while the attempt to import that distant echo of a religious universalism across state borders (or, in reference to your claim that American liberals have gone too far on "a range of social and cultural issues," across the gender line) has generated this new normal? Maybe one could argue that it goes along with your insistence that "generosity and openness to others can and should be cultivated" but it "takes considerable effort" and needs to be sought incrementally; that the civil rights movement did the slow work necessary to not make sure (white) people didn't become too angry about that iteration of Christian universalism in politics, but subsequent movements (particularly involving immigration and LGBTQ issues) didn't do that work? Like I said, lots of questions.
"The civil rights movement did the slow work necessary to not make sure (white) people didn't become too angry... but subsequent movements (particularly involving immigration and LGBTQ issues) didn't do that work?"
As a gay male, I don't see any massive groundswell of demand for reinstating sodomy laws, or for delegitimizing same-sex marriages. In that sense, the work was done.
The problem arises once such initial (universalistic) goals have been achieved -- i.e., when particularist ("anti-assimilationist", would-be radical) "queer" elements lay claim to the continuity of the movement -- as when the civil rights movement morphed into the demand for Black Power.
The backlash arose after the ensuing riots, and (in the face of claims that BLM represented a broad-based "reckoning" on race and the character of the American Dream), the overreach and the backlash continues.
As with capital-"B" Black, so, too, with "queer."
You make some fair observations, Mitchell. I suspect that those who know the history better make push back on some of your formulations (did the backlash to the civil rights movement really only emerge only after the riots of 1967 and 1968? is the current iteration of the movement for LGBTQ rights, with the focus on trans rights, really "anti-assimilationist"?), but I also suspect that what you're describing is pretty much where Damon would land.
Thanks for the recognition! I know the history; as a lifelong activist (at age 74), I've lived much of it. (The historiography is itself controversial!) The differences are a matter of emphasis (or framing); i.e., of interpretation. :-)
Neil Howe (with Bill Strauss) wrote a book in the 90s that Al Gore loved so much - he bought 49 copies for his fellow Senators. It is said to have deeply affected Steve Bannon’s thinking on the world’s changing mood. It was The Fourth Turning. Neil just released The Fourth Turning Is Here last year. It, essentially, outlines the generational moods (and their recurring archetypes) that drive history. “History shapes generations in their youth and generations shape history as adults”. It confirms that neither time nor progress is linear - but cyclical. There are only a few moods that generations have throughout history and they act accordingly. These turnings (like seasons) are on a historical clock of 20-25 years each. A “High” (social and political cohesiveness, an “Awakening” (a society renews its inner values of culture and religion with a focus on individuals), an “Unraveling” (the culmination of focus on individuals and destruction of the order’s institutions and legitimacy) and the fourth turning is “Crisis” - where a society realizes the old outer order (of politics and institutions) are dead and decaying and must be refreshed. The danger (and crisis) of history’s Fourth Turnings - in western societies seen in 1930s, 1850s, 1770s - is that this contest to recreate political power (deligitimized in prior Unraveling) is that great power attracts great power-seekers. In the 30s it was Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Tojo. Today it is Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogwan. Fourth Turnings “almost always are marked by all out war, civil war, or revolution” says Howe. And if you see those other Fourth Turning decades above - it won’t be hard to spot that.
What this means, to me, is what Damon is saying is true. To the shock and horror of political scientists and pundits (yes Mr. End of History Fukuyama) - these cycles are “social winter” over and over again. We modern westerners revolt at the idea that time and history are cyclical vs linear - but the facts of history keep pointing to these generational archetypes and their recurring responses, en mass, to world order conditions are roughly the same throughout time.
If Howe is correct (and he has his detractors) - then our Fourth Turning will turn violent. We never know how destructive winter will be - but it always arrives to kill off the prior season’s plantings. Always. And it’s youth driven. Just as Damon says. Today’s most extreme factions - on both sides - are YOUNG.
The Squad = AOC, Omar, Talib
Freedom Caucus = Gaetz, MTG, Hawley
The revolutionary far left on today’s university campuses, the climate extremists. Forces of our youth driving extreme change in order to recreate a decayed world order. Though soaked in blood in the inevitable fight - unless we must all rally to defend each other from a world war against a foreign foe like Xi or Putin (as we did against Hitler and imperial Japan).
This is what’s happening. It’s winter. It’s inevitable. It’s how the seasons of time and forces of nature work beyond our pundits, politicians, and activists. It is set in the stars. We merely play our role in this preset drama. This is our Act in a very old play.
Oh, the Black folks hate the "white" folks
And the fascists hate the wokesters
And the Hindus hate the Muslims...
...and everybody hates the Jews
As Damon points out, "we are living through the end of something." At the most profound level we are witnessing the end of an epoch started by the printing press and spans the age Liberalism and Industrialism. Damon also points out that "(w)e can try to bury our heads in the proverbial sand, pretending the future is poised to deliver a return to a vanished past. Or we can accept where we find ourselves today and work to build something decent within it." To me that means we recognize that we are entering an historical phase where the institutions of the past are crumbling or obsolete, creating massive discontent from rank-and-file society, and the institutions of a new era have yet to be formed. That leaves us in a "soft shell" phase in history where, like a crab or lobster that wilts away it's old shell and is must vulnerable before it grows a new one. It is during this "soft shell" phase that a shellfish is at its weakest and predators thrive. Hopefully we can get past this soft shell phase.
Very thought provoking. I hope we can get out of this phase without damaging ourselves too much. I hope the rising generation of politicians is heeding the concerns you’re raising.
Damon and all of you good people,
I think this post is an extraordinarily succinct and accurate capture of what is happening and where we are. There are no signs at all that either a Trump or Biden victory will address a substantial change in our direction, and that has to happen at some point, sooner or later.
Two other points.
One, I have read a lot regarding why Biden's approval & poll numbers are so bad. To all of it my response has been, "Yes, but..." Not this time. I think Damon absolutely cut to the chase with this: "...the incumbent president is a (very cautiously) walking embodiment of a waning and faltering consensus that’s rapidly withdrawing with more of a whimper than a roar."
My second point is very related, but kind of heads off in a different direction. Ross Douthat's interview with JD Vance blew my mind. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/jd-vance-interview.html
Like many I had read his book and been very impressed with it. His opposing Trump in 2016 made sense. I took his flip to supporting Trump in 2020, etc. as a shocking bolt from his previous perspective. It seemed so clear that he had "sold out" in some way. But in Douthat's interview I heard him speaking very much from his stance in his book and 2016. And what I took away from that interview seems aligned with what Damon describes here in this post. Moreover, I came away wanting to have a long conversation with Vance.
Damon, I think your take on the Douthat-Vance interview would be a great follow-up to this post.
Thanks.
michael johnson
"Particularistic attachments aren’t like an ideological virus invading and harming an organism from the outside. They emerge organically from the human soul. I naturally love myself more than others, my family more than other families, my community more than other communities, members of my church more than those of other churches, and fellow citizens of my own country more than those from other countries and cultures and civilizations. These sentiments can and should be tempered. Generosity and openness to others can and should be cultivated. But that work cuts against the grain of our nature. It takes considerable effort. It needs to be undertaken wisely, recognizing its limits and alive to the danger of backlash."
A very Straussian sentiment. But he was right and so are you.
Is our new normal (far-right particularisms as a major force) happening because universalist modes of thought were thriving but are now receding? Or is it because universalist premises (human equality, dignity, rights) got enough traction in the West-dominated 20th century to make their implications clearer in the globalized 21st century?
The worldview that Trump voices crudely––that there are great countries and shit-hole countries, that there are genetically gifted populations and genetically weak populations, that men lead and women assist––was implicit in both the dominant common sense and the politics of the US and Europe for at least two centuries. Christian universalism itself largely operated as affirmation that Euro-Christians were the essence of a free humanity and could beneficently lead other peoples out of darkness.
By the 60s, though that commonsense real was contested in materially effective ways––decolonization, civil rights, women and gay folks balking at their subordinate place in the former commonsense reality, etc. Historically speaking, these are recent movements. No one knew whether they represented superficial social ripples or else a fundamental reordering of what counts as reality.
There are fundamental economic conditions that are triggering anger. But I suspect a lot of scorn, anger and disgust on the right is a reaction to seeing the former description of reality no longer affirmed in everyday life. Their reactions look like racism and misogyny to those who accept a new commonsense (of course you can't displace or absorb weaker peoples, of course gay couples are just as legitimate as straight ones). But to those on the right themselves it's that the commonsense order of things is being denied and distorted by bad actors, and getting away with it. Maybe the culture wars and the political upheaval that accompanies them are a lot more existential than they appear, and that economic and political levers can only do so much to mitigate them.
@NancyB frames this as a paradigm shift? I'll offer an alternate perspective, as a gay male:
I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there's nothing "Queer" about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and (as my parents raised me) I’m proud simply to be myself. I never signed up to "smash cisheteropatriarchy" in the name of some Brave New World.
A parallel perspective can be applied in all the instances @NancyB mentions. The key is the fundamentally liberal principle that self-determination is inherently an individual (rather than collective) right -- augmented by Isaiah Berlin's notion of pluralism.
Does one truly need to be senile to believe that? I'm 74, and I lament to my cat. "Lucy, I don't think we're in Woodstock anymore" -- but as long as I'm still alive and kicking, I'm not giving up!
It's strange that you seem to understand my comment as advocating for particularism/identity rather than liberal universalism. That's exactly backwards.
The liberal values of human rights, dignity, and equality for all––regardless of ascriptive identity–– got a foothold for the first time in the later half of the 20th century in some societies. That was the basis for exactly what you are pointing to regarding the dignity to just "be oneself": a universal right to self-determination means that those it can't be legitimately withheld from anyone (as it had been for individuals who fell into particular groups).
What you are misdescribing as "collective rights" are really just rights claims by previously excluded people seeking individual rights. People had to mobilize under things like "gay rights" precisely because those groups had been disqualified from being self-determining individuals *on the basis of sexuality.*
The "self-determination for all individuals" idea has gotten a lot of traction in the US and Europe, and I think the rise of rightwing populism (far right parties in Europe, Trumpism in the US) is in large part because individual rights actually were granted more widely, in the law and in a lot of sectors of the culture. It's not a coincidence that one of the key hallmarks of populism (see: Russia, Poland, increasingly in the US) is a demand for a return to traditional/religious gender roles and a subordination of gay people.
I don't think I've misconstrued your position. We're viewing these issues at a differing focus (particularly in terms of means vs. ends), and we thereby differ in our approach.
I've been a lifelong activist -- but I've always approached the question of "gay rights" as a matter of personal (individual) freedom (expanding the scope of male sexuality, at that!) rather than in terms of any notion of "social justice."
The "social justice" approach has metastasized, to the point where it's come to jeopardize the hard-won, widespread acceptance we've ALREADY gained. Among the queerer-than-thou contingent, even same-sex marriage is itself derided as "heteronormative." There was no "bathroom bill" in North Carolina until the City of Charlotte passed a local ordinance enshrining the (contentious) notion of "gender identity" (rather than leaving well enough alone with private stalls). While Florida passes draconian laws denying parents the right to make medical decisions regarding their own children, California denies parents the right to know the "gender" (or even the name!) by which their own children are identified at school.
We can't let ourselves be defined (as a "community") by our adversaries. The enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my comrade.
"And when they come for me?..."
If they ever even hint at reinstating "sodomy" laws, you'll find me already out on the barricades -- along with people like Andrew Sullivan and Jamie Kirchick (and [I hesitate to say!] perhaps even Peter Thiel or Richard Grenell).
Meanwhile, I don't care to be forever beholden to anyone running a protection racket, or to any would-be arbiter of the Oppression Olympics. I've also learned some very painful lessons about all the nuances that this involves as a Jew.
I'm busy watching my own back, thank you very much. And I only pull up the ladder behind me when someone's clutching at my heels, dragging me down.
That said (and on those terms), I appreciate your support. :-)
PS: The dignity simply to be myself was imparted to me by my parents, and is a function of my own agency. It's not something conferred on me by the State (as long as the State does not obstruct its exercise) -- let alone by any would-be "expert" who'd presume to define the parameters of "behavioral health."
I understand the distinction you are calling "approach." But I still think it still misconstrues the substantive question of liberal universalism as I claimed it.
When there were sodomy laws in the US, it was unjust. Civil justice was missing, although to most people it was simply the real or proper order of things. The laws were changed only because more people in society came to recognize the lack of justice in laws that arbitrarily denied some people's individual rights. Hence the universalism. As horrible as the word seems to be for some ears, the effect could be called "social justice," because a broad enough swath of people––under no risk themselves from sodomy laws––consented to live in a different society.
"And when they come for me?...." Maybe as far as you are concerned, adequate justice was achieved when sodomy laws became unconstitutional, and it is of no concern vis a vis your individual rights when, say, lesbians are denied parental rights exercised by other parents. To have concern for someone else's individual rights would spill over into the dreaded "social justice."
It's a coherent position, but of course it is a particularist one (gay men cannot be deprived of their individual rights; lesbians can without my objection) and not a liberal universalist position.
Your reference to "protection rackets" suggests you think that the social justice concept, at least as "metastasized" today, demands that you accept any and every claim anyone makes that their individual rights are being harmed. But it doesn't––no one has to accept, let alone agitate for, claims they find false.
When someone's claims are false, then if I ignore or reject them it doesn't harm social justice. That's substantively different than when individuals are arbitrarily deprived of rights that I and everyone else can exercise.
My view is universalist, to the same extent as yours. If lesbians are denied parental rights, I can empathize (as an individual!), and support them. But (as you note), I retain the prerogative (also as an individual) not to accept claims I find false.
Much of the time, we might arrive at the same destination -- but I'd rather be in the driver's seat, rather than being told that I must ride a bus.
This post really hit me. It inspired me to finally become a paid subscriber.
For the past several years, I've felt like I've been speaking a dying language--and that I'm losing the meaning it once had for me. It's disorienting and heartbreaking. I don't know if I'm ready to admit that the world has changed or what it means for me. I not only grew up speaking the language of American liberalism (for lack of a better way of putting it)--but I also love it and deeply identify with it. But this post was helpful. It felt like an act of mourning, a reality testing that acknowledges the new world in which we find ourself, and the old one that is passing away.
The post referenced Tocqueville. It made me think about a line that Hannah Arendt liked to quote from him where he describes what he feels like to live at the end of aristocracy and the beginning of modern democracy. “Since the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.” And finally, let me share a brief passage from Arendt where she reflects on beginnings and endings, which I think resonates with this post. In her essay "The Tradition and the Modern Age," she write "the beginning and the end of the tradition have this in common: that the elementary problems of politics never come as clearly to light in their immediate and simple urgency as when they are first formulated and when they receive their final challenge . . . The beginning, in Jacob Burckhardt’s words, is like a “fundamental chord” which sounds in its endless modulations through the whole history of Western thought. Only beginning and end are, so to speak, pure or unmodulated; and the fundamental chord therefore never strikes its listeners more forcefully and more beautifully than when it first sends its harmonizing sound into the world and never more irritatingly and jarringly than when it still continues to be heard in a world whose sounds—and thought—it can no longer bring into harmony. A random remark which Plato made in his last work: “The beginning is like a god which as long as it dwells among men saves all things” . . . is true of our tradition; as long as its beginning was alive, it could save all things and bring them into harmony. By the same token, it became destructive as it came to its end—to say nothing of the aftermath of confusion and helplessness which came after the tradition ended and in which we live today.”
Oof. As a Catholic-Jewish person in the United States the collapse of support for universalist strains of culture and politics scares the living bejesus out of me. Israel seems further down this path than the US is with seemingly less hope of turning back. As a student of the 1920s, it is clear that the Catholic Church is going back to their old playbook of Fortress Catholicism. It will be much smaller, but this is how institutions last 2000 years. The lesson for Jews though was that high-walls don't protect you from the nationalist right in the ways that it can sustain Catholicism in unfriendly times. As a person who dabbled in the Bircher right of the 90s, they still basically played inside the walls of liberalism in a way that the left and right no longer do. What do you do when there is nowhere to run?
I do not think it solely responsible, but I wouldn't forget several generations' heavy and unrelenting spending by some of the extremely wealthy on the promotion of movements they believe will free lions like them from the laws meet solely for oxen rest of us.
I will get no satisfaction from their discovery, quick or slow , that 'property rights' at their level are not at all natural, and in a power-universe stripped of all norms and mystifications intimately dependent on the whims of those in power…not least because I may have been killed or impoverished long before that time.
I completely understand and empathize with the feelings underlying this post, but I also am not sure what purpose it serves in its current form. It accurately describes real and substantial failures of governance over the last 70 years but leaves out the way that the understandable backlash to those failures has been stoked, warped, and channeled by people who know better into largely unrelated culture war grievances as a distraction from not only continuing but escalating economic inequality. It validates the reliance on vibes over job performance in evaluating candidates for the most powerful office in the world while making only passing reference to Trump's manifest psychopathy and none to his obvious cognitive impairment or blatant, historic corruption. From my reading, leaving all of these things out suggests that support for Donald Trump is a natural and rational response to what voters have experienced. It's not. There's an entire conservative media industry that's been building up to this narrative for decades, and that's not the same thing as calling the consumers of that media dumb or bigoted. When you flatten everything down to "neo-liberals were dumb and mean so obviously Trump" you let a lot of really terrible actors off the hook and foster a wildly over-broad mistrust of institutions. It's so much more complicated than that, and I worry that you're playing into the hands of the "burn it all down" crowd.
I certainly understand being depressed at a time like this, Lord knows I'm medicated, but this just feels intended to demoralize. To what end?
Good question. I completely agree with your response and get the strange impression that Damon is actually feeling pulled towards Trumpism (though of course he denies this) and appears at a loss for any plausible counter attack, or reason to formulate one. His recent posts have all led in this direction and seem intended to demoralize. I’ve always loved Dover Beach, but do not look to the poem for political guidance.
I feel like I need to say this every now and then to my readers: My writing is not an act of politics. It is not "intended to demoralize" or to motivate action. It is an act of attempted understanding. I'm here to tell you what I think is the truth. I hope you would accept it in whole, in part, or not at all on that basis, not presume that my aim is to get you to vote one way or the other, or support a candidate or another. I'm not going to write posts about how, actually, Biden is awesome and you'd have to be a moron not to see it. I'll sometimes say Trump is terrible, but not as part of an effort to get you not to vote for him, but as a way of distinguishing between what I think is an especially pathological version of the political tendency he expresses, out of a wish that we could do better.
In that spirit, I didn't invoke "Dover Beach" for political guidance. I invoked it because it evokes a feeling that I experience looking at the political world as it is today. Not the way I wish it was, but the way I think it is. Again, agree in whole, in part, or not at all, but I hope you will read it in that spirit.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for being here, too!
You've done a brilliant (and eloquent) job of diagnosing the problem, but in the end tell us only that "We can accept where we find ourselves today and work to build something decent within it." If you cannot offer any guidance, that leaves us empty-handed.
I'm left only with my sense that the human condition is tragic -- invoking W.H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening":
"You shall love your crooked neighbor / With your crooked heart..."
Is that all we have left to guide us? Is it enough?
Fair enough. To be honest, my criticism was not entirely fair -- your response doesn't surprise me. But your fatalistic tone of the past few weeks does disturb me (I understand it's honestly come by and well thought-out). Perhaps if I'd ever been a Reaganite/neoconservative,I'd feel sadder at the fading of that ideology and its mores. Still, I always considered myself an American patriot and no longer really can.
What I've seen the past 8 years has convinced me of one thing -- the pure will to destruction is incredibly strong and hard to erase once it has traction. There seems to be a joy in cruelty and undermining things which I don't think can be explained completely by social and economic grievance. We should not underestimate this.
And thanks for making ‘here’ a place to be.
"The backlash to those failures has been stoked, warped, and channeled by people who know better into largely unrelated culture war grievances as a distraction from not only continuing but escalating economic inequality"?
The Trumpsters and their ilk are not alone in having stoked, warped, and channeled this discontent! On the so-called "progressive" side, we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," while the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
I’ve seen this as a theme in your comments here, and I wish I had the energy to fully engage on it for the umpteenth time.
Is the progressive left flawed? Yes. Is their approach to their cause and even the cause itself counter-productive and off-putting at times? Certainly. Is it in any way comparable to the existential threat of the forces uniting in the Trumpist tent? No. Simply, no.
This false equivalency is the bane of our time, giving cover to truly dangerous forces in order to file petty cultural grievances. The blame for what Damon is describing is not equal. At least 1/3 of our fellow citizens no longer share a reality with the rest of us (if they ever did), and you’re doing their work when you indulge this feckless bothsidesism. There is real danger here, and it’s not pronouns or cancel culture or misguided college kids “supporting” Hamas (though this generation does pose a serious threat as they age into power depending on where we go next).
I urge you to wake up and recognize the true peril we’re confronting.
If the most compelling "vision" the the Democrats have to offer at this point is the sort of protection racket you're running, you risk handing the election to Trump.
Your characterization of "petty cultural grievances" is only further symptomatic of the problem. It's an insult to the very voters you (we?) need to win.
But don't take my word for it. Ask Andrew Sullivan. Or Jamie Kirchick. Or (perhaps above all) James Carville (with whose understanding Bill Clinton had his "Sister Souljah" moment),
My fear is that Trump is setting us up for riots in Milwaukee -- which the Democrats will characterize as "mostly peaceful protests" -- only to be followed by more of the same when the Democrats meet in Chicago.
When it comes time to say, "told you so," it'll be too late.
I don’t know what you mean by protection racket, and I’m not a Democrat. I’m not trying to “win” anything.
You’re acting as if what we’re confronting is a policy dispute, and competing visions of traditional governance. The terms you are speaking in are too small for the moment. Would defeating Trump be helpful? Yes, but only as a sort of remission that doesn’t truly address the cancer he represents. This is the change Damon is speaking of, and griping about pronouns and SJWs is a red herring of a deep, rich crimson.
This is an epistemic reckoning, and it’s likely to be many elections before we have the luxury of indulging (yes, I’ll say jt), petty cultural grievances.
The "cancer" that besets us is oligarchy itself -- which, in its advanced state, also operates through the bureaucracies of nonprofits and NGOs -- and leaves Joe Sixpack feeling like he's living in a Kafka novel. The "epistemic reckoning" is spiritual (and deeply cultural) in nature, worldwide in scope, and confronts humanity on an apocalyptic scale. "Petty," my ass!
"Spiritual"? Yes, "the planet" (as we've evolved to live on it) is in danger. But if the world is overcrowded, and if a person's right to swing their arms ends where someone else's nose begins, the answer is not to put everyone in a straitjacket, while blaming their unease on delusion or "superstition."
I suggest reading "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and (yes!) maybe a little Kafka.
"Conspiracy theory"? Not quite. In fact, compared with what we face as a species (whose [overcrowded] ecological niche is INFORMATION), "structural racism" and "gender identity" (or even "A Handmaid's Tale") are themselves merely about "petty cultural grievances."
An epistemic reckoning, indeed...
You are too close to the object. Please zoom out for proper perspective. [end of transmission]
Thanks, Sam. Reading the responses to the thread has been fascinating as I sort through the bundle of splinters that are my own thoughts on the matter.
Like you I return to the inescapable fact of the Conservative movement’s and Religious Right’s dual collapse, and the way they have turned their backs on long held values and first principles in the name of political power.
Though I have generally disagreed with those politics and that strain of Christianity, I respected their commitment and their faith. As a bullshit postmodernist I feel both vindicated (so they were just making it up!) and deeply concerned at the inevitable nihilism that many will choose in a post-Truth environment.
Great piece by Noah Millman on his ‘Gideon’s Substack’ — it serves as an amplification of Damon’s piece, and to someone degree a critique. Basically argues for the inseparability of populism and demagoguery — making Trump’s loathsomeness a requirement for the job, not a regrettable defect getting in the way of a purer expression of populism.
I don’t agree that universalism cuts against the grain of human nature. I think we naturally oscillate between universalism and particularism and must learn to live with the tension.