The Resistance people and their friends squandered a massive, historic amount of goodwill that justly came about after Trump's first win. We will never see anything like that kind of righteous political anger ever again. Yet they have almost nothing positive to show for it after nearly a decade's worth of work, and every time someone says anything about a "vibe shift," they are reminded of that.
Saving the ACA doesn't count? Electing the squad? pushing Biden to sign the IRA? Seeding resurgence of interest in labor? everyone sweating to save abortion rights? All my friends rushing to protect their trans kids and their libraries from book bans? Glad none of them are as certain and "sophisticated" in their analysis as you.
Electing the "squad" poisoned the Democratic party and helped Trump win in 2024; the IRA caused horrific inflation that also helped Trump win the election; "interest" in labor was undercut by a horrific inflow of undocumented immigrants who crush wages for working class people; protecting "trans kids" looks more like protecting kids from the bone and sexual impairment caused by puberty blockers than by letting money hungry surgeons cut their breasts and penises off; "book bans" are as likely to come from the Left as from the Right (google Abigail Shrier); and if you are a Democratic voter, please know that you are in the rapidly vanishing minority.
Unionization requires leverage with the employer. Blue collar workers who can be replaced by immigrant labor have none. Even now you have democrats asking "who will clean our streets and trim our hedges?" when talking about Trump's deportation push. What always left out of the discussion is wages. I'm sure many Americans will gladly clean the streets, you just have to pay them more than the pittance you're used to paying.
If you measure highly engaged liberals by the metric of 2016 to 2024, they often look defensive and talk a very big game compared to their policy gains in the Biden admin (at least, ones that won't be undone by Trump's executive orders.)
But if you measure by the metric of 2004 to 2024, they clearly succeeded in influencing both America and its center-right party. Republicans became a bit less Evangelical in their social politics, a bit less trusting in their view of the natsec state, and a bit more open to voters from recent immigrant ethnic groups.
Trump is a kind of symbol of a new Yankeedom, one that has been forming over the early 21st century across urbanization, secularization, the war on terror, and of course, the woke phenomenon. Looking over the decades, Republicans peaked in absorbing Southern politics around the 90s and 2000s. They have gotten their foot in the door receiving a bit more support in cities and the new economy (Silicon Valley), which so often skewed deep blue. They're becoming an older version of themselves.
It's too bad; I thought Nixonland was a great book, and I saw plenty of parallels to the 2010s/2020s. There's just something about Trump that makes otherwise level-headed liberals forget everything they've learned and lose all control of their emotions, dissolving into ranting maniacs. The man knows how to push their buttons.
I enjoyed this essay. I wrote a piece on exactly the sort of cultural critique/ zeitgeist analysis you mentioned, but from a rightist perspective. I invite your thoughts.
Good piece, Ross, but to pick a nit: As a person who studies China, I'm leery of your claim that the U.S. is too big for fascism. China isn't fascist, of course, but it is thoroughly unified under a single ruling ideology that allows no dissent. In a country with multiple ethnicities, strong regional variations, and languages, there is no political pluralism of any kind.
I don't think we're heading down that road in the U.S., and there are enormous differences in the histories, developmental levels, economies, and cultures, but I'd warn you not to be too sanguine about the next few years. Things can turn, and quickly.
I like your perspective. Authoritotalitarianism rules according to different modalities. And comparisons and predictions are valuable up to the moment bad things actually occur.
A nitpick: China has political pluralism, just not at the formal institutional/party level. That level, of course, has most of the immediate power. Long run? There will likely be change in the long run, and probably not much like the republican US system.
When I saw 'Culture' and 'Perlstein' together, I thought this was going to be about Philip Pearlstein, the painter. Ah well, it was still a good piece.
America may be too big for fascism to succeed, but this does not mean that Trump is not a fascist. Or that Project 2025 is not a fascist initiative to subdue democracy in America. In South Africa, where I live, there were moments of mobilisation against the apartheid system and moments of quietude. You are right to note that resistance to Trump is quiet now, but that will not be for long. Taking to the streets is not the only way forward. A great deal of patience and strategy will be required to dislodge a fascist regime, once they are established.
The Democrats are not in touch with the American people. They have no program to build affordable housing. No program to stop the shutting down of medical facilities all over the country. No program to increase the number of medical personnel. No program for affordable post high school education/training.
Well, at least you're attracting attention! Most of what you say here about the shifting tenor of the times seems to me rather clearly, almost obviously, right. And observing, sensitively, is not the same thing as a database. In fact, I just finished editing a chapter arguing that social meanings cannot be reduced to data.
That said, I think you're a little too quick with fragmentation. Long discussion for another time. Nice job.
Totally not a Trumpist but the anti-Trump crap has been a 10-year march to Nowheresville. I honestly can’t even consume any of the anti-Trump content anymore, I’m burnt out from it! The Resistance has become a grift too!
I offer an anecdote that may help shed some light on the confusion (much of it via miscategorization) evidenced by the @rossbarkan/Perlstein tiff.
After the shocking 2016 election, I traveled to the Women's March in NYC with family and friends. So many people had assembled to march that we stood in a massive crowd for over an hour before we were ushered onto the street and began an ever-so-slow, stop-and-start march through Manhattan. While waiting at the assembly area, we were invited by bullhorn to hear Senate Leader Schumer speak from a flatbed truck off to the side.
As a sucker for catching a performance by a famous person, I moved closer to see and hear the Senator better. I remember noting that very few in the crowd paid attention to this Democratic Party Leader. I even felt a little bad for the guy, going through his prepared remarks for people who cared very little for what he had to say.
Looking back, that little incident reveals much about how US politics had evolved. I know I went to this demonstration not expecting to change the incoming Trump administration. To me, it was not "resistance." My companions and I were there for solidarity and connection with each other. With many demonstrations under my belt going back to the 60s, I was realistic enough to know our demo would not change national politics. In fact, many of us would verbalize that what might make a difference was what we did when we went home. Of course, I did not poll the people around me when Schumer spoke, but I bet a lot of people I stood with thought something like this:
"What is this man doing addressing this captive audience at a women's march? He's probably just working the crowd for his next campaign."
In my case, I wondered why he didn't just get off his platform and march alongside the women rather than speak at them.
To me, this anecdote is indicative of how detached and tone-deaf the Democratic Party leadership is to what matters to people to their left. They only care about left interests when they need votes. That's it!
"Resistance" is a trendy but unnecessary and counter-productive term evoking a fictive-image of the various "resistance" fighters during WWII and the Spanish Civil War. The more useful term is simply "opposition". The Democrats need to start acting like an opposition party. That means doing what the Harris/Biden ticket never really did during the election: setting out in plain language (without academic and pseudo-intellectual jargon or meaningless slogans like "opportunity society"—or "make america great again" for that matter) a "program" that will benefit all working people—which is most people. And that means confronting the MAGA lies with truth and facts.
One basic tactic of effective opposition is to never, never, never say anything like: "Trump has a point". Don't exaggerate when the truth is on your side. And if the truth isn't on your side than stop and think about what you saying and what you need to say.
Overall a decent piece, but this passage is truly thoughtless analysis:
“But liberal historians like Perlstein always assume the evidence, when strung together, will prove their theses, or simply that scientific rigor itself is proof of serious thinking. The science must belong to them. If so, The Bell Curve, clocking in at almost nine hundred pages, must be a totem of progress. Clearly, Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein, in Perlstein’s mode, were “evaluating evidence.”
Just words strung together in a flailing attempt to counter Pearlstein - ascribing to him an imagined criteria, then using a roundly dismissed book to try to dunk on him based on your imagined criteria. You can, and are, better.
I was just reading an article touting Wikler as the kind of normal working-class friendly guy who can possibly lead the Dems out of the wilderness. I was skeptical but willing to entertain the idea. Now I read from Ross's Times article:
>>Wikler recently posted on X that he would lift up the Democratic Party’s “full coalition,” checking off “Black, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ, Youth, Interfaith, Ethnic, Rural, Veteran, and Disability representation.”
. . .and I'm ready to put that thesis to bed. Unless by working class we mean the adjunct faculty at Oberlin. You've already lost when the acronym sprouts its fourth letter.
I felt the same way about Timothy Snyder. I appreciate his support for Ukraine, but found both his political columns and historical works uninsightful and unreadable.
The Resistance people and their friends squandered a massive, historic amount of goodwill that justly came about after Trump's first win. We will never see anything like that kind of righteous political anger ever again. Yet they have almost nothing positive to show for it after nearly a decade's worth of work, and every time someone says anything about a "vibe shift," they are reminded of that.
Saving the ACA doesn't count? Electing the squad? pushing Biden to sign the IRA? Seeding resurgence of interest in labor? everyone sweating to save abortion rights? All my friends rushing to protect their trans kids and their libraries from book bans? Glad none of them are as certain and "sophisticated" in their analysis as you.
Electing the "squad" poisoned the Democratic party and helped Trump win in 2024; the IRA caused horrific inflation that also helped Trump win the election; "interest" in labor was undercut by a horrific inflow of undocumented immigrants who crush wages for working class people; protecting "trans kids" looks more like protecting kids from the bone and sexual impairment caused by puberty blockers than by letting money hungry surgeons cut their breasts and penises off; "book bans" are as likely to come from the Left as from the Right (google Abigail Shrier); and if you are a Democratic voter, please know that you are in the rapidly vanishing minority.
> Seeding resurgence of interest in labor.
Unionization requires leverage with the employer. Blue collar workers who can be replaced by immigrant labor have none. Even now you have democrats asking "who will clean our streets and trim our hedges?" when talking about Trump's deportation push. What always left out of the discussion is wages. I'm sure many Americans will gladly clean the streets, you just have to pay them more than the pittance you're used to paying.
If you measure highly engaged liberals by the metric of 2016 to 2024, they often look defensive and talk a very big game compared to their policy gains in the Biden admin (at least, ones that won't be undone by Trump's executive orders.)
But if you measure by the metric of 2004 to 2024, they clearly succeeded in influencing both America and its center-right party. Republicans became a bit less Evangelical in their social politics, a bit less trusting in their view of the natsec state, and a bit more open to voters from recent immigrant ethnic groups.
Trump is a kind of symbol of a new Yankeedom, one that has been forming over the early 21st century across urbanization, secularization, the war on terror, and of course, the woke phenomenon. Looking over the decades, Republicans peaked in absorbing Southern politics around the 90s and 2000s. They have gotten their foot in the door receiving a bit more support in cities and the new economy (Silicon Valley), which so often skewed deep blue. They're becoming an older version of themselves.
It's too bad; I thought Nixonland was a great book, and I saw plenty of parallels to the 2010s/2020s. There's just something about Trump that makes otherwise level-headed liberals forget everything they've learned and lose all control of their emotions, dissolving into ranting maniacs. The man knows how to push their buttons.
I enjoyed this essay. I wrote a piece on exactly the sort of cultural critique/ zeitgeist analysis you mentioned, but from a rightist perspective. I invite your thoughts.
https://librarianofcelaeno.substack.com/p/the-apsu-sea-of-the-real?r=b1hwi
Good piece, Ross, but to pick a nit: As a person who studies China, I'm leery of your claim that the U.S. is too big for fascism. China isn't fascist, of course, but it is thoroughly unified under a single ruling ideology that allows no dissent. In a country with multiple ethnicities, strong regional variations, and languages, there is no political pluralism of any kind.
I don't think we're heading down that road in the U.S., and there are enormous differences in the histories, developmental levels, economies, and cultures, but I'd warn you not to be too sanguine about the next few years. Things can turn, and quickly.
Actually I would say China is almost the dictionary definition of a true fascist state - much more so than it is communist at this point.
I like your perspective. Authoritotalitarianism rules according to different modalities. And comparisons and predictions are valuable up to the moment bad things actually occur.
A nitpick: China has political pluralism, just not at the formal institutional/party level. That level, of course, has most of the immediate power. Long run? There will likely be change in the long run, and probably not much like the republican US system.
When I saw 'Culture' and 'Perlstein' together, I thought this was going to be about Philip Pearlstein, the painter. Ah well, it was still a good piece.
I would think Perlstein would have better things to do with his time.
America may be too big for fascism to succeed, but this does not mean that Trump is not a fascist. Or that Project 2025 is not a fascist initiative to subdue democracy in America. In South Africa, where I live, there were moments of mobilisation against the apartheid system and moments of quietude. You are right to note that resistance to Trump is quiet now, but that will not be for long. Taking to the streets is not the only way forward. A great deal of patience and strategy will be required to dislodge a fascist regime, once they are established.
The Democrats are not in touch with the American people. They have no program to build affordable housing. No program to stop the shutting down of medical facilities all over the country. No program to increase the number of medical personnel. No program for affordable post high school education/training.
Well, at least you're attracting attention! Most of what you say here about the shifting tenor of the times seems to me rather clearly, almost obviously, right. And observing, sensitively, is not the same thing as a database. In fact, I just finished editing a chapter arguing that social meanings cannot be reduced to data.
That said, I think you're a little too quick with fragmentation. Long discussion for another time. Nice job.
Totally not a Trumpist but the anti-Trump crap has been a 10-year march to Nowheresville. I honestly can’t even consume any of the anti-Trump content anymore, I’m burnt out from it! The Resistance has become a grift too!
I offer an anecdote that may help shed some light on the confusion (much of it via miscategorization) evidenced by the @rossbarkan/Perlstein tiff.
After the shocking 2016 election, I traveled to the Women's March in NYC with family and friends. So many people had assembled to march that we stood in a massive crowd for over an hour before we were ushered onto the street and began an ever-so-slow, stop-and-start march through Manhattan. While waiting at the assembly area, we were invited by bullhorn to hear Senate Leader Schumer speak from a flatbed truck off to the side.
As a sucker for catching a performance by a famous person, I moved closer to see and hear the Senator better. I remember noting that very few in the crowd paid attention to this Democratic Party Leader. I even felt a little bad for the guy, going through his prepared remarks for people who cared very little for what he had to say.
Looking back, that little incident reveals much about how US politics had evolved. I know I went to this demonstration not expecting to change the incoming Trump administration. To me, it was not "resistance." My companions and I were there for solidarity and connection with each other. With many demonstrations under my belt going back to the 60s, I was realistic enough to know our demo would not change national politics. In fact, many of us would verbalize that what might make a difference was what we did when we went home. Of course, I did not poll the people around me when Schumer spoke, but I bet a lot of people I stood with thought something like this:
"What is this man doing addressing this captive audience at a women's march? He's probably just working the crowd for his next campaign."
In my case, I wondered why he didn't just get off his platform and march alongside the women rather than speak at them.
To me, this anecdote is indicative of how detached and tone-deaf the Democratic Party leadership is to what matters to people to their left. They only care about left interests when they need votes. That's it!
"Resistance" is a trendy but unnecessary and counter-productive term evoking a fictive-image of the various "resistance" fighters during WWII and the Spanish Civil War. The more useful term is simply "opposition". The Democrats need to start acting like an opposition party. That means doing what the Harris/Biden ticket never really did during the election: setting out in plain language (without academic and pseudo-intellectual jargon or meaningless slogans like "opportunity society"—or "make america great again" for that matter) a "program" that will benefit all working people—which is most people. And that means confronting the MAGA lies with truth and facts.
One basic tactic of effective opposition is to never, never, never say anything like: "Trump has a point". Don't exaggerate when the truth is on your side. And if the truth isn't on your side than stop and think about what you saying and what you need to say.
Your big New York Times Magazine story is not aging well, Ross, and it's barely even been a week since it was published.
Overall a decent piece, but this passage is truly thoughtless analysis:
“But liberal historians like Perlstein always assume the evidence, when strung together, will prove their theses, or simply that scientific rigor itself is proof of serious thinking. The science must belong to them. If so, The Bell Curve, clocking in at almost nine hundred pages, must be a totem of progress. Clearly, Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein, in Perlstein’s mode, were “evaluating evidence.”
Just words strung together in a flailing attempt to counter Pearlstein - ascribing to him an imagined criteria, then using a roundly dismissed book to try to dunk on him based on your imagined criteria. You can, and are, better.
I was just reading an article touting Wikler as the kind of normal working-class friendly guy who can possibly lead the Dems out of the wilderness. I was skeptical but willing to entertain the idea. Now I read from Ross's Times article:
>>Wikler recently posted on X that he would lift up the Democratic Party’s “full coalition,” checking off “Black, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ, Youth, Interfaith, Ethnic, Rural, Veteran, and Disability representation.”
. . .and I'm ready to put that thesis to bed. Unless by working class we mean the adjunct faculty at Oberlin. You've already lost when the acronym sprouts its fourth letter.
I felt the same way about Timothy Snyder. I appreciate his support for Ukraine, but found both his political columns and historical works uninsightful and unreadable.