"I’m never more inclined to endorse the reactionary right than in its diagnosis of how 'what’s gained in wealth and freedom might be lost in alienation and anomie.'"
I think this analysis needs a bit more international perspective. All this occurs in countries, yes, but nation states are in world systems, see I. Wallerstein. Migration, for example, does not occur because of low birth rates, but because of the real inequality on world scale. It also occurs because a lot of countries have fallen apart and the rich Global North has asylum law. It also occurs because of climate change. And global communication makes finding routes possible.
National policy is hard pressed to solve any of those challenges.
The world system, the global economy, need labor and climate friendly policies even more than a given nation state.
And with cryptocurrencies extreme global inequality is even harder to harness to address systemic change.
This. And we have constant reminders that the Americans who elevated Trump are no better or worse than the Brits, the Hungarians, the Brazilians, the Italians, the Filipinos etc etc who elevated their own Trumps. The global forces are acting on all modern republics and on their electorates. Trump's departure will not end our era of madness, because his enablers remain and will continue to vote, and immigration is only going to increase, not decrease.
Anyone else remember this? Many progressives here, pre-Brexit, would look longingly at Britain's unwritten constitution, its legislative system and lack of an electoral college or a comically inept Supreme Court. "If only we could have their system!" they would sigh. As the sun sets on the British -who have their own anti-immigration hysteria, perhaps more intense than ours -- is anyone saying that now? But we are all Britain now.
I was glad for Damon’s summary, as Douthat’s article seemed heavily skewed to a definition of liberalism in economic terms, as well in prescriptions. And of course it’s foolish to expect Douthat to bring any meaningful skepticism of capitalism to bear beyond the impacts of globalism.
It is hard to parse the degree to which voters are expressing legitimate pecuniary distress versus using “economics” as cover for their less defensible impulses. I don’t suppose that’s anything new. For all but The Hopeless 1/3 (tm J Dalessandro), voting for someone like Trump requires some cognitive dissonance.
I do tend to agree with Douthat that our low birth rates will lead to a need to insource labor, just that it’s in the next two decades, not right now. And hey, we may have unconsciously slowed down procreation just in time for AI to render the need for it moot. Aren’t we prescient?
It’s interesting how disruptive inflation is to both parties, it’s probably the biggest reason Trump won, and will probably be the biggest reason the GOP gets smoked in the 26 midterms, we all intuitively know this, but no one wants to do anything about it, I took my wife on our first date in 1997 at Outback for $21 dollars, 30 years ago, it’s a full blown tragedy no one wants to deal with it, the way Trump and Biden spent money from 2020 to 2023 will haunt both parties for years to come
I was with you right up until you said everybody is against immigration. It’s a part, but not the heart of it.
You are correct that we need to become completely honest and real about our situation. In reality, infinite growth is unsustainable on a finite planet. Our entire civilization is rooted in the assumption of infinite growth. In my opinion, the fact that we are now at the outer limits of frictionless expansion is the (still largely unconscious) driver of much of the maniacal activity currently occurring. Please include this aspect of our shared reality in your analysis.
"But it’s also possible we’re living through something less clearly defined: a growing incapacity to govern ourselves in any particular, consistent, productive way. Maybe that’s the sense in which this really is a populist era—no matter who we elevate to high office or the leadership of establishment institutions, we quickly become discontented with their performance and committed to booting them out and trying someone else, even if, in the case of Trump, that someone else is the exact same someone we booted out the last time."
Quite right, but, is it new, or even "growing"?
Hofstadter: "When one considers American history as a whole, it is hard to think of any very long period in which it could be said that the country has been consistently well governed. And yet its political system is, on the whole, a resilient and well-seasoned one, and on the strength of its history one must assume that it can summon enough talent and good will to cope with its afflictions. To cope with them—but not, I think, to master them in any thoroughly decisive or admirable fashion. The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb."
Such a *marvelous* quote! Thanks SO much for including it in your comment.
But I would argue that "this time it's different". Every liberal society has gotten SO complicated, both socio/culturally and technical/rationally, that governance has become harder. Liberalism thrives on rationality and has trouble with the emotional quicksand of populism. But in the time of Faux/Fake News and *massive* uncertainty, the emotions win out. There is no "path of predictable progress" (Kyla Scanlon) anywhere. I think our current debacle reflects that when emotions are tapped and manipulated, this inability to rely on "...talent and good will..." becomes a critical deficit. Or, put another way, look at the large Orange Middle Finger raised at you, its owner saying "Cope with this, liberals!" Good luck with that.
Is not Krastev's "Inderminate Negation" a mirror image of Adorno's "Negative Dialectics," which actually valorizes whatever the dialectic will not synthesize. And considers that which is not " Sublated" as that which is ultimately real and as the only engine of "real" social progress.
Not having done the detailed research, I'm left with the perhaps unfair truism about lies, damn lies, and statistics. I have read innumerable secondary accounts of deindustrialization's immiseration of the Heartland, of rising homelessness, of the corruption of education, of deaths of despair rooted in economic hopelessness, of deregulation's taking off the gloves and abolishing the New Deal order, of regulatory paralysis, of an extremely disproportionate share of income growth going to the top 1%, and other crises. I live in the once Golden State, which reportedly has the highest poverty rate in the nation, surpassing even Mississippi, West Virginia, and New Mexico.
Damon and Ross Douthat, on the other hand, claim here that things aren't really so bad economically when looked at through a macroeconomic lens. Who do we believe? Whose and what lens can we use to see the truth?
The discussion of anomie, deep alienation, and the collapse of trust in public institutions and each other rings true and represents what I consider to be signs of imperial decline, nothing new in that. By the mid to late 70's, the American left for the most part turned its back on even FDR's moderate economic justice platform and embraced a form of identity politics animated on the left by a compulsive need for atonement and moral contempt for ordinary white men, leading to what seems to be unending culture war. Pointing to the nationalist right's racism and nativism does nothing to help the left to face up to its part in this mess, to use Damon's term. In a 50 year and counting era dominated on the left by what has become a collection of entrenched, rent-seeking identity interest groups, the aspirational ideal of shared citizenship seems just about gone from the scene. Are we heading, in our nation's worst nightmare future, to a fratricidal tribal war of all against all, to an even harsher climate of resentment and retribution in which no political administration, as Damon points out, has much if any chance of succeeding?
If there is one overarching source of the present crisis that I personally favor, in addition to economic upheaval, it's the decades-long and accelerating transformation of the US into a majority minority society.
I hope for my grandchildren's sake that the country can get through it without committing national suicide. Whatever the outcome, the rise of Trump underscores how dangerous a moment we are now are in.
It's been clarifying for me, and I'm suggesting it might be for you, to change emphasis and NOT think of this as an inflation vs. good economy argument. It's the loss of opportunity: "the lack of a path of predictable progress" (Kyla Scanlon). Read Hochschild's fabulous books for confirmation. This produces *massive uncertainty* about almost everything, which leads to fear and a profoundly conservative desire to return to a time when that path of predictable progress existed, back when America was Great. We're living in highly uncertain, no-clear-solution-anywhere times and hopefully we can get through them more or less intact.
Agreed. Many years ago, I was out of work for six months. No one likes inflation - it can be very threatening, but joblessness is a whole lot worse for a variety of reasons.
And it's not just "joblessness". It's knowing that, not only are you out of work, but prospects for anything as good as what you had, and God forbid something that lasts more than 6 months, are just NOT good. Out of work plus no hope. Horrible combination. And that's kinda' where we are for more and more people.
Lots of references in comments to trust, or lack thereof…in each other, in our institutions, in ourselves.
This is “the most important thing.”
We build trust by making, and keeping, promises…by telling the truth about the near-future as we see it, and having events prove us right…and by doing everything possible to loop in more, and more different, people into the circle of people we’re working together with.
We could do worse than abandoning all spin, hedge and pre-varication about our fiscal health. We’re $1.9 trillion out of budget balance ANNUALLY, and we’re $37 trillion in debt. This WIL NOT sustain. It’s VERY BAD, and it’s a horrible thing for a politician to have to say! But I believe the American people know they need to hear this, and anyone who doesn’t tell them this, they will not trust.
We need to spend less, and raise taxes. Both-and.
I know just enough to be dangerous…so don’t believe me! Argue with me! What do you think we should do?
Markets are imperfect, but they're less imperfect than command economies tend to be. For a few decades in the mid-20th century, the U.S. benefited from the fact that 1) our chief economic competitors were too war ravaged to compete against American industry, 2) the developing world hadn't yet supplanted American manufacturing, and 3) technology hadn't yet reached a stage at which human obsolescence seemed a threatening possibility. It was nice while it lasted- if you happened to be a white middle class American during that time- but it was never going to be more than a temporary array of essentially accidental circumstances. Neither the center left nor the center right have been able to effectively deal with the erosion of that temporary order of things, not because of a lack of brainpower or ideas but because of the pace of market and technological change combined with the short term pressures that tend to impede longer term strategic thinking within liberal democratic societies. So yeah, we'll keep stumbling along until the next largely accidental period of stability materializes, foe better or for worse.
Sometimes I wonder what planet Damon lives on and sometimes I think he's writing an essay just for me. Happily, today is the latter. My reactions in order editorial appearance:
"It’s not the economy, stupid. Or at least not simply the economy."
I started sensing this in 2016, wondering how the optics of political rage in our era was some how equal to 1930's Coughlin/Long levels of demagoguery, in a time of relative prosperity. Sure we have great inequalities, but that doesn't explain the rage found in the MAGA economic protests consisting expensive power boats. Basically, I blame the reach and frequency of digital media platforms that can, with the effort of very bad actors like Fox News, literally make us feel differently (poor) than what we really are (economically well-off).
And there certainly is a large blob in our proverbial living room. Maybe it's an elephant, as Damon and Douthat describe it? Maybe it's a crazy-gorilla? If it's one of them, it's a subspecies we've never seen before and I suspect it's a cross between an elephant and a shark...that is something that kinda looks familiar enough that we can cling to old assumptions about what it is and what that means, instead of confronting a reality that we have no idea what it is and, frankly, we're afraid to say out load the real fear as to what we are experiencing (revolutionary changes in every aspect of our lives).
As I've said here many times, whether they are the post 1920's European fascists or the "traditional" paranoid American right, these forces at least understand the current dynamics of failing industrial institutions and solutions that are no longer relevant (or weakened) and they are exploiting this dynamic to seize power. But as Douthat points out, they are good at kicking a barn down, but have no intention of building a new, better barn.
As for the Democrats? Hell, as Damon wrote a few weeks ago, they think their primary role is to be effective bureaucrats that will deliver needed benefits, infrastructure and whatever the "people" need. First, one of the few redeeming points from the "Abundance" book is the critique of how bad Dems deliver as bureaucrats (we suck at it), and we (I am still a registered Dem) have no vision what so ever as to how to develop real solutions for the coming age.
So how to we break this doom-loop of competent fascists that destroy w/no vision to build, and liberals who want to do "good" but are afraid to tear-down what needs to be replaced? In my 46 years of voting, way, way to many elections fall into the pattern the Damon and Douthat describe: punishing the party in power for their over reaches and incompetence. Even when you vote for a positive reason like "Hope", reality rolls over the slogan.
Damon is too much of a "professional" to indulge in leaps of faith. But I'm not. What I've been waiting for, albeit for much to long that I'm losing the faith, is for the enormous challenges we face will have a tsunami impact that will overwhelm the boiling frog syndrome we are facing today. This inevitable tsunami will act as a "palate cleanser" that will force us to dump the relatively silly policy battles we are having over immigration, abortion, etc and we can start focusing on issues like the lose of human ethics, personalities and dignity in a world of AI. Never mind issues like massive jobs losses across broad sectors of our economy and demographics. Basically we are only a decade or two away from a new civilization. I won't see it, but a vast majority of Damon's subscribers will.
But who am I kidding? In about 6 years...maybe 7 years...automatic Social Security cuts of 25% or more are going to happen UNLESS our political system demonstrates the most basic act of "must have" public policy. No ones taking the bet that our political system is anywhere near doing the right thing on fixing something so popular, why should we expect "we the people" can figure our way out of this mess.
“The problem with an indeterminate negation is that it undermines the possibility of dialectical progress. Rather than identifying a problem or mistake committed by the people in positions of authority, kicking them out, and elevating an alternative set of elites to course correct, we end up with, instead, one spasm of disgusted rejectionism followed by another, and then another, as if the very fact of being ruled by anyone at all who must make choices and trade-offs under conditions of constraint is itself a fatal flaw or defect demanding punishment.”
I don’t think I’ve read a pithier encapsulation of my bafflement with the electorate.
To the later question of who is more to blame between voters and the elected, I think the broad incompetence and malignancy of the latter was overstated until recently, and was often worst in those with strong electoral support.
I tend to blame an electorate that only sort of understands what it doesn’t want and has even less of an idea what it does want.
I just finished reading an article about Rob Boddice, a self-described historian of emotion and senses, that hints at my fear that our road out of this mess cannot be paved with what unites us:
“Boddice’s standards are exacting. At the same time, they lead to a place with no boundaries at all. If we concede that the meaning of experience is not necessarily the same from past to present, doesn’t the same logic make you wonder about the meaning of experience from culture to culture in the present? In fact it does, as Boddice readily admits. He is skeptical that any kind of universal baseline can be established for capturing how humans make their way through the world.”
Every single living thing has different experiences from every other living thing. That doesn't mean that people, who unlike most animals can share experiences and what they've learned from them, can't accept other peoples' experiences and beliefs about the experiences and come to some common understanding. Difference does not mandate disagreement. Perhaps unexamined or undiscussed difference does (see arguments over "privilege" and other woke-isms).
I wouldn’t say that disagreement is mandated; that feels like an overstatement. Where I agree with Boddice is that there is an overreliance on universalism regarding experience. We project our experiences on others, presume that we can understand theirs via our own, and at worst refuse to accept norms and mores which conflict with ours and attempt to force conformity and assimilation.
In practical terms I think we muddle through because our experiences are often close enough to seem congruent. At the sane time, the diversity of possible experiences has exploded, and it’s no surprise that people retreat to groups or communities where congruence is higher and they feel comfortable.
And to be clear, Boddice’s work is focused on differences in experience across history, which is a compelling antidote to our natural inclination to impose our sense of ontology on people who lived under dramatically different conditions. I’d suggest familiarizing yourself with his arguments before dismissing them.
The article also mentioned another historian who focuses on how similar certain things are across cultures and centuries. His arguments are equally interesting and completing in their own right.
Evan Thanks, that was helpful. My anthropology background put that concept in my head some time ago. I'm quite comfortable with your description above. But not with the "skeptical that any kind of universal baseline can be established for capturing how humans make their way through the world." bit. I think what you're talking about in the first part here is Consensus Bias: Because we experience it this way, probably most other people do, too. Maybe I'm too sensitive to it, but it sounds awfully like the "particularlism" "intersectionality" and "there are no facts. It's all in your experience" BS that comes from the far left these days. Call me silly, but I still think the earth is round.
"Woke particularism" is a critical term used in political and cultural commentary, primarily by critics of modern social justice movements, to describe the perceived emphasis on specific group identities and experiences over universal human values or class-based solidarity.
Key aspects of "woke particularism" include:
Focus on Identity: The term suggests that "woke" ideology focuses heavily on group identity (race, gender, sexual orientation) rather than viewing people primarily as individuals.
Oppressor/Oppressed Binary: Critics argue that this perspective often frames society through a binary of "oppressor" and "oppressed" groups, focusing on power dynamics and historical grievances.
Rejection of Universalism: It is often presented as a contrast to Enlightenment-era ideals of universalism, which emphasize shared human reason, universal rights, and the potential for general progress that transcends particular group identities.
Division over Unity: Some commentators, including some on the left, argue that an emphasis on particularism can divide the working class and distract from broader class struggles, thus hindering potential for wider social change.
Pejorative Use: Like "woke" itself, "woke particularism" is generally a pejorative term used by opponents of the associated social justice movements (often labeled as "wokeism" or the "woke left").
Philosophers and writers such as Susan Neiman have written books, like Left Is Not Woke, arguing that true leftism should be rooted in universalist values and distinguishing it from what she calls the "woke" focus on particularism.
The “West” is certainly convulsing everywhere. That’s not Trump Effect - that’s something more deep and profound dying in our souls.
It’s like debating the school massacre problem. We point to guns as the culprit. But never in history - till the last 30 years - has this ever happened. Something about the modern world has sickened the children of the West. There is something really wrong when we murder children for fun. Our souls are lost.
Maybe all our wealth, freedom, individualism, and ridding of religion brings ennui, boredom, and a yearning for purpose beyond eating, drinking, sex, and spending. As the anti-liberals suggest — maybe this cultural Charlie Sheen world we’ve created isn’t so great after all.
Maybe this restive energy is a cry for help. For rescue from the godless nihilism of a choose-your-own-adventure social contract.
Maybe our technology has rewired us so profoundly that we can no longer see each other, agree on facts, debate in good faith, and do the minimum required to negotiate our next steps.
This is as much a spiritual collapse as that of economics. We are spent. The powerful and predatory will determine the battlefield as it is beyond our capabilities as normal citizens to do so.
Bored, yes. We lack purpose, cohesion, and meaning so we bring social media reactionism to our daily, lived lives looking for that new dopamine hit. And politics is the perfect platform.
Douthat asserts that “the confluence of wealth and technology and individualism” leads to low birth rates as if it’s an established fact. Is it? I’m not so sure, and if it does, so what; low birth rate panic is the climate doomerism of the right.
"I’m never more inclined to endorse the reactionary right than in its diagnosis of how 'what’s gained in wealth and freedom might be lost in alienation and anomie.'"
Somewhere, Marx is smiling, however ruefully.
I think this analysis needs a bit more international perspective. All this occurs in countries, yes, but nation states are in world systems, see I. Wallerstein. Migration, for example, does not occur because of low birth rates, but because of the real inequality on world scale. It also occurs because a lot of countries have fallen apart and the rich Global North has asylum law. It also occurs because of climate change. And global communication makes finding routes possible.
National policy is hard pressed to solve any of those challenges.
The world system, the global economy, need labor and climate friendly policies even more than a given nation state.
And with cryptocurrencies extreme global inequality is even harder to harness to address systemic change.
This. And we have constant reminders that the Americans who elevated Trump are no better or worse than the Brits, the Hungarians, the Brazilians, the Italians, the Filipinos etc etc who elevated their own Trumps. The global forces are acting on all modern republics and on their electorates. Trump's departure will not end our era of madness, because his enablers remain and will continue to vote, and immigration is only going to increase, not decrease.
Anyone else remember this? Many progressives here, pre-Brexit, would look longingly at Britain's unwritten constitution, its legislative system and lack of an electoral college or a comically inept Supreme Court. "If only we could have their system!" they would sigh. As the sun sets on the British -who have their own anti-immigration hysteria, perhaps more intense than ours -- is anyone saying that now? But we are all Britain now.
I was glad for Damon’s summary, as Douthat’s article seemed heavily skewed to a definition of liberalism in economic terms, as well in prescriptions. And of course it’s foolish to expect Douthat to bring any meaningful skepticism of capitalism to bear beyond the impacts of globalism.
It is hard to parse the degree to which voters are expressing legitimate pecuniary distress versus using “economics” as cover for their less defensible impulses. I don’t suppose that’s anything new. For all but The Hopeless 1/3 (tm J Dalessandro), voting for someone like Trump requires some cognitive dissonance.
I do tend to agree with Douthat that our low birth rates will lead to a need to insource labor, just that it’s in the next two decades, not right now. And hey, we may have unconsciously slowed down procreation just in time for AI to render the need for it moot. Aren’t we prescient?
It’s interesting how disruptive inflation is to both parties, it’s probably the biggest reason Trump won, and will probably be the biggest reason the GOP gets smoked in the 26 midterms, we all intuitively know this, but no one wants to do anything about it, I took my wife on our first date in 1997 at Outback for $21 dollars, 30 years ago, it’s a full blown tragedy no one wants to deal with it, the way Trump and Biden spent money from 2020 to 2023 will haunt both parties for years to come
I was with you right up until you said everybody is against immigration. It’s a part, but not the heart of it.
You are correct that we need to become completely honest and real about our situation. In reality, infinite growth is unsustainable on a finite planet. Our entire civilization is rooted in the assumption of infinite growth. In my opinion, the fact that we are now at the outer limits of frictionless expansion is the (still largely unconscious) driver of much of the maniacal activity currently occurring. Please include this aspect of our shared reality in your analysis.
"But it’s also possible we’re living through something less clearly defined: a growing incapacity to govern ourselves in any particular, consistent, productive way. Maybe that’s the sense in which this really is a populist era—no matter who we elevate to high office or the leadership of establishment institutions, we quickly become discontented with their performance and committed to booting them out and trying someone else, even if, in the case of Trump, that someone else is the exact same someone we booted out the last time."
Quite right, but, is it new, or even "growing"?
Hofstadter: "When one considers American history as a whole, it is hard to think of any very long period in which it could be said that the country has been consistently well governed. And yet its political system is, on the whole, a resilient and well-seasoned one, and on the strength of its history one must assume that it can summon enough talent and good will to cope with its afflictions. To cope with them—but not, I think, to master them in any thoroughly decisive or admirable fashion. The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb."
Such a *marvelous* quote! Thanks SO much for including it in your comment.
But I would argue that "this time it's different". Every liberal society has gotten SO complicated, both socio/culturally and technical/rationally, that governance has become harder. Liberalism thrives on rationality and has trouble with the emotional quicksand of populism. But in the time of Faux/Fake News and *massive* uncertainty, the emotions win out. There is no "path of predictable progress" (Kyla Scanlon) anywhere. I think our current debacle reflects that when emotions are tapped and manipulated, this inability to rely on "...talent and good will..." becomes a critical deficit. Or, put another way, look at the large Orange Middle Finger raised at you, its owner saying "Cope with this, liberals!" Good luck with that.
Is not Krastev's "Inderminate Negation" a mirror image of Adorno's "Negative Dialectics," which actually valorizes whatever the dialectic will not synthesize. And considers that which is not " Sublated" as that which is ultimately real and as the only engine of "real" social progress.
Extremely depressing but difficult to argue with.
Not having done the detailed research, I'm left with the perhaps unfair truism about lies, damn lies, and statistics. I have read innumerable secondary accounts of deindustrialization's immiseration of the Heartland, of rising homelessness, of the corruption of education, of deaths of despair rooted in economic hopelessness, of deregulation's taking off the gloves and abolishing the New Deal order, of regulatory paralysis, of an extremely disproportionate share of income growth going to the top 1%, and other crises. I live in the once Golden State, which reportedly has the highest poverty rate in the nation, surpassing even Mississippi, West Virginia, and New Mexico.
Damon and Ross Douthat, on the other hand, claim here that things aren't really so bad economically when looked at through a macroeconomic lens. Who do we believe? Whose and what lens can we use to see the truth?
The discussion of anomie, deep alienation, and the collapse of trust in public institutions and each other rings true and represents what I consider to be signs of imperial decline, nothing new in that. By the mid to late 70's, the American left for the most part turned its back on even FDR's moderate economic justice platform and embraced a form of identity politics animated on the left by a compulsive need for atonement and moral contempt for ordinary white men, leading to what seems to be unending culture war. Pointing to the nationalist right's racism and nativism does nothing to help the left to face up to its part in this mess, to use Damon's term. In a 50 year and counting era dominated on the left by what has become a collection of entrenched, rent-seeking identity interest groups, the aspirational ideal of shared citizenship seems just about gone from the scene. Are we heading, in our nation's worst nightmare future, to a fratricidal tribal war of all against all, to an even harsher climate of resentment and retribution in which no political administration, as Damon points out, has much if any chance of succeeding?
If there is one overarching source of the present crisis that I personally favor, in addition to economic upheaval, it's the decades-long and accelerating transformation of the US into a majority minority society.
I hope for my grandchildren's sake that the country can get through it without committing national suicide. Whatever the outcome, the rise of Trump underscores how dangerous a moment we are now are in.
Lovely comment, thanks! Dangerous moment indeed.
It's been clarifying for me, and I'm suggesting it might be for you, to change emphasis and NOT think of this as an inflation vs. good economy argument. It's the loss of opportunity: "the lack of a path of predictable progress" (Kyla Scanlon). Read Hochschild's fabulous books for confirmation. This produces *massive uncertainty* about almost everything, which leads to fear and a profoundly conservative desire to return to a time when that path of predictable progress existed, back when America was Great. We're living in highly uncertain, no-clear-solution-anywhere times and hopefully we can get through them more or less intact.
Agreed. Many years ago, I was out of work for six months. No one likes inflation - it can be very threatening, but joblessness is a whole lot worse for a variety of reasons.
And it's not just "joblessness". It's knowing that, not only are you out of work, but prospects for anything as good as what you had, and God forbid something that lasts more than 6 months, are just NOT good. Out of work plus no hope. Horrible combination. And that's kinda' where we are for more and more people.
Lots of references in comments to trust, or lack thereof…in each other, in our institutions, in ourselves.
This is “the most important thing.”
We build trust by making, and keeping, promises…by telling the truth about the near-future as we see it, and having events prove us right…and by doing everything possible to loop in more, and more different, people into the circle of people we’re working together with.
We could do worse than abandoning all spin, hedge and pre-varication about our fiscal health. We’re $1.9 trillion out of budget balance ANNUALLY, and we’re $37 trillion in debt. This WIL NOT sustain. It’s VERY BAD, and it’s a horrible thing for a politician to have to say! But I believe the American people know they need to hear this, and anyone who doesn’t tell them this, they will not trust.
We need to spend less, and raise taxes. Both-and.
I know just enough to be dangerous…so don’t believe me! Argue with me! What do you think we should do?
Markets are imperfect, but they're less imperfect than command economies tend to be. For a few decades in the mid-20th century, the U.S. benefited from the fact that 1) our chief economic competitors were too war ravaged to compete against American industry, 2) the developing world hadn't yet supplanted American manufacturing, and 3) technology hadn't yet reached a stage at which human obsolescence seemed a threatening possibility. It was nice while it lasted- if you happened to be a white middle class American during that time- but it was never going to be more than a temporary array of essentially accidental circumstances. Neither the center left nor the center right have been able to effectively deal with the erosion of that temporary order of things, not because of a lack of brainpower or ideas but because of the pace of market and technological change combined with the short term pressures that tend to impede longer term strategic thinking within liberal democratic societies. So yeah, we'll keep stumbling along until the next largely accidental period of stability materializes, foe better or for worse.
It sounds as if you may be aligned with the theory Ganz highlights in a recent post.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnganz/p/politics-and-capitalist-stagnation?r=18o23d&utm_medium=ios
Thanks. I'll check it out.
Sometimes I wonder what planet Damon lives on and sometimes I think he's writing an essay just for me. Happily, today is the latter. My reactions in order editorial appearance:
"It’s not the economy, stupid. Or at least not simply the economy."
I started sensing this in 2016, wondering how the optics of political rage in our era was some how equal to 1930's Coughlin/Long levels of demagoguery, in a time of relative prosperity. Sure we have great inequalities, but that doesn't explain the rage found in the MAGA economic protests consisting expensive power boats. Basically, I blame the reach and frequency of digital media platforms that can, with the effort of very bad actors like Fox News, literally make us feel differently (poor) than what we really are (economically well-off).
And there certainly is a large blob in our proverbial living room. Maybe it's an elephant, as Damon and Douthat describe it? Maybe it's a crazy-gorilla? If it's one of them, it's a subspecies we've never seen before and I suspect it's a cross between an elephant and a shark...that is something that kinda looks familiar enough that we can cling to old assumptions about what it is and what that means, instead of confronting a reality that we have no idea what it is and, frankly, we're afraid to say out load the real fear as to what we are experiencing (revolutionary changes in every aspect of our lives).
As I've said here many times, whether they are the post 1920's European fascists or the "traditional" paranoid American right, these forces at least understand the current dynamics of failing industrial institutions and solutions that are no longer relevant (or weakened) and they are exploiting this dynamic to seize power. But as Douthat points out, they are good at kicking a barn down, but have no intention of building a new, better barn.
As for the Democrats? Hell, as Damon wrote a few weeks ago, they think their primary role is to be effective bureaucrats that will deliver needed benefits, infrastructure and whatever the "people" need. First, one of the few redeeming points from the "Abundance" book is the critique of how bad Dems deliver as bureaucrats (we suck at it), and we (I am still a registered Dem) have no vision what so ever as to how to develop real solutions for the coming age.
So how to we break this doom-loop of competent fascists that destroy w/no vision to build, and liberals who want to do "good" but are afraid to tear-down what needs to be replaced? In my 46 years of voting, way, way to many elections fall into the pattern the Damon and Douthat describe: punishing the party in power for their over reaches and incompetence. Even when you vote for a positive reason like "Hope", reality rolls over the slogan.
Damon is too much of a "professional" to indulge in leaps of faith. But I'm not. What I've been waiting for, albeit for much to long that I'm losing the faith, is for the enormous challenges we face will have a tsunami impact that will overwhelm the boiling frog syndrome we are facing today. This inevitable tsunami will act as a "palate cleanser" that will force us to dump the relatively silly policy battles we are having over immigration, abortion, etc and we can start focusing on issues like the lose of human ethics, personalities and dignity in a world of AI. Never mind issues like massive jobs losses across broad sectors of our economy and demographics. Basically we are only a decade or two away from a new civilization. I won't see it, but a vast majority of Damon's subscribers will.
But who am I kidding? In about 6 years...maybe 7 years...automatic Social Security cuts of 25% or more are going to happen UNLESS our political system demonstrates the most basic act of "must have" public policy. No ones taking the bet that our political system is anywhere near doing the right thing on fixing something so popular, why should we expect "we the people" can figure our way out of this mess.
We have met the enemy an it is us.
Without discounting the rest of your post, the 1930s was not a period of relative prosperity. It was the Great Depression.
“The problem with an indeterminate negation is that it undermines the possibility of dialectical progress. Rather than identifying a problem or mistake committed by the people in positions of authority, kicking them out, and elevating an alternative set of elites to course correct, we end up with, instead, one spasm of disgusted rejectionism followed by another, and then another, as if the very fact of being ruled by anyone at all who must make choices and trade-offs under conditions of constraint is itself a fatal flaw or defect demanding punishment.”
I don’t think I’ve read a pithier encapsulation of my bafflement with the electorate.
To the later question of who is more to blame between voters and the elected, I think the broad incompetence and malignancy of the latter was overstated until recently, and was often worst in those with strong electoral support.
I tend to blame an electorate that only sort of understands what it doesn’t want and has even less of an idea what it does want.
I just finished reading an article about Rob Boddice, a self-described historian of emotion and senses, that hints at my fear that our road out of this mess cannot be paved with what unites us:
“Boddice’s standards are exacting. At the same time, they lead to a place with no boundaries at all. If we concede that the meaning of experience is not necessarily the same from past to present, doesn’t the same logic make you wonder about the meaning of experience from culture to culture in the present? In fact it does, as Boddice readily admits. He is skeptical that any kind of universal baseline can be established for capturing how humans make their way through the world.”
Nope. Can't buy it.
Every single living thing has different experiences from every other living thing. That doesn't mean that people, who unlike most animals can share experiences and what they've learned from them, can't accept other peoples' experiences and beliefs about the experiences and come to some common understanding. Difference does not mandate disagreement. Perhaps unexamined or undiscussed difference does (see arguments over "privilege" and other woke-isms).
I wouldn’t say that disagreement is mandated; that feels like an overstatement. Where I agree with Boddice is that there is an overreliance on universalism regarding experience. We project our experiences on others, presume that we can understand theirs via our own, and at worst refuse to accept norms and mores which conflict with ours and attempt to force conformity and assimilation.
In practical terms I think we muddle through because our experiences are often close enough to seem congruent. At the sane time, the diversity of possible experiences has exploded, and it’s no surprise that people retreat to groups or communities where congruence is higher and they feel comfortable.
And to be clear, Boddice’s work is focused on differences in experience across history, which is a compelling antidote to our natural inclination to impose our sense of ontology on people who lived under dramatically different conditions. I’d suggest familiarizing yourself with his arguments before dismissing them.
The article also mentioned another historian who focuses on how similar certain things are across cultures and centuries. His arguments are equally interesting and completing in their own right.
Evan Thanks, that was helpful. My anthropology background put that concept in my head some time ago. I'm quite comfortable with your description above. But not with the "skeptical that any kind of universal baseline can be established for capturing how humans make their way through the world." bit. I think what you're talking about in the first part here is Consensus Bias: Because we experience it this way, probably most other people do, too. Maybe I'm too sensitive to it, but it sounds awfully like the "particularlism" "intersectionality" and "there are no facts. It's all in your experience" BS that comes from the far left these days. Call me silly, but I still think the earth is round.
Thanks again for your insight!
From AI:
"Woke particularism" is a critical term used in political and cultural commentary, primarily by critics of modern social justice movements, to describe the perceived emphasis on specific group identities and experiences over universal human values or class-based solidarity.
Key aspects of "woke particularism" include:
Focus on Identity: The term suggests that "woke" ideology focuses heavily on group identity (race, gender, sexual orientation) rather than viewing people primarily as individuals.
Oppressor/Oppressed Binary: Critics argue that this perspective often frames society through a binary of "oppressor" and "oppressed" groups, focusing on power dynamics and historical grievances.
Rejection of Universalism: It is often presented as a contrast to Enlightenment-era ideals of universalism, which emphasize shared human reason, universal rights, and the potential for general progress that transcends particular group identities.
Division over Unity: Some commentators, including some on the left, argue that an emphasis on particularism can divide the working class and distract from broader class struggles, thus hindering potential for wider social change.
Pejorative Use: Like "woke" itself, "woke particularism" is generally a pejorative term used by opponents of the associated social justice movements (often labeled as "wokeism" or the "woke left").
Philosophers and writers such as Susan Neiman have written books, like Left Is Not Woke, arguing that true leftism should be rooted in universalist values and distinguishing it from what she calls the "woke" focus on particularism.
The “West” is certainly convulsing everywhere. That’s not Trump Effect - that’s something more deep and profound dying in our souls.
It’s like debating the school massacre problem. We point to guns as the culprit. But never in history - till the last 30 years - has this ever happened. Something about the modern world has sickened the children of the West. There is something really wrong when we murder children for fun. Our souls are lost.
Maybe all our wealth, freedom, individualism, and ridding of religion brings ennui, boredom, and a yearning for purpose beyond eating, drinking, sex, and spending. As the anti-liberals suggest — maybe this cultural Charlie Sheen world we’ve created isn’t so great after all.
Maybe this restive energy is a cry for help. For rescue from the godless nihilism of a choose-your-own-adventure social contract.
Maybe our technology has rewired us so profoundly that we can no longer see each other, agree on facts, debate in good faith, and do the minimum required to negotiate our next steps.
This is as much a spiritual collapse as that of economics. We are spent. The powerful and predatory will determine the battlefield as it is beyond our capabilities as normal citizens to do so.
Bored, yes. We lack purpose, cohesion, and meaning so we bring social media reactionism to our daily, lived lives looking for that new dopamine hit. And politics is the perfect platform.
Douthat asserts that “the confluence of wealth and technology and individualism” leads to low birth rates as if it’s an established fact. Is it? I’m not so sure, and if it does, so what; low birth rate panic is the climate doomerism of the right.