Regarding the pendulum swing, your essay sent me to my bookcase.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., argued in his 1986 book “Cycles of American History”
that American politics alternates between periods of public purpose /reform and periods of private interest. When one dominates for too long, a natural exhaustion sets in, prompting the nation's political mood to swing to the other extreme
One hopes he was right and that the current period, dominated by venality, corruption in the public sphere and the private interests of 21st century oligarchs (Musk, Altman, Bezos,Ellison, tec.), will give way to a period of liberalism and reform.
I agree with ~80% of this. That's the only reason I'm bothering to comment about my disagreement, which is: many features of the international liberal capitalist order seem shaky at best, in a way that competent technocracy can't just paper over.
For most of the twentieth century, the center held thanks to a combination of a) relatively shared economic prosperity, b) the perception of serious external threats, and c) monolithic centrist mass media. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of social media and smartphones ended this. I can't imagine that AI (which, one way or another, will likely severely damage the economy) and the aftermath of the Iran war will improve much on this part.
Carney's popularity is largely an aberration, a rally-around-the-flag effect resulting from Trump's threatening behavior toward Canada that would be hard to replicate in other countries at other times. Keir Starmer and Olaf Scholz are more instructive.
Will "boring" make a comeback? Aspirationally, I guess. (The DNC definitely wants to run "Generic Democrat" in 2028.) I think that aspiration is the underside of everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop via AI, which is almost certainly going to destroy the normal order of things (either because the sci-fi singularity scenario happens, or -- my and probably your guess -- it's a bubble that pops and takes the economy with it).
FWIW I think a post-Trump politics is overhyped, vs. the much more interesting question of what post-boomer politics looks like -- I think more than anything, Trump is the last gasp of boomers as a political force. 2028 GOP primary is probably going to be a Vance/Rubio slugfest; on the Dem side, all the ado about Platner's politics, tattoos, whatever, are a sideshow to the real reason he won (he is not 2,000 years old).
I agree that this could very well happen (probably for the worst long-term though) but what I think is the more desperate problem for democracy (whatever that means now) is that most Americans regardless of party don't vote out of genuine conviction in their candidate or the system. Was talking the other day to a manager at a retail store about politics, she goes "you know we have like no say, right?"
All true and well said … in the short term. But just as Trump’s gravitational pull distorts our vision, so does the moribund polarization/pendulum dynamic that defined politics long before 2016.
The thing is, that underlying status quo is itself untenable. The structural problems of American society are just too vast to continue indefinitely, from the rotting of the healthcare system to cultural despair to all the other things that we’ve recognized for decades as symptoms of terminal decline but seem powerless to affect.
Part of the excitement around Trump was that he seemed to represent a break of *some* kind with status quo of ideological trench warfare. Instead of “realignment” we got a retrenchment of the battle lines, because that proved a more useful political lever for him to exploit. There’s a sort of meta-narrative that runs through the whole past decade of Trump, in which we’re constantly wondering “is this it? Has the rupture occurred? Are we living in a new world now?” and yet the answer again and again ultimately has been “no, it’s more of the same, just a little bit worse.”
But the structural problems persist, and sooner or later, they will catch up to us. A country with a political system this broken can’t hobble on forever.
Regarding the pendulum swing, your essay sent me to my bookcase.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., argued in his 1986 book “Cycles of American History”
that American politics alternates between periods of public purpose /reform and periods of private interest. When one dominates for too long, a natural exhaustion sets in, prompting the nation's political mood to swing to the other extreme
One hopes he was right and that the current period, dominated by venality, corruption in the public sphere and the private interests of 21st century oligarchs (Musk, Altman, Bezos,Ellison, tec.), will give way to a period of liberalism and reform.
Can't wait for boring. I want to be bored.
I agree with ~80% of this. That's the only reason I'm bothering to comment about my disagreement, which is: many features of the international liberal capitalist order seem shaky at best, in a way that competent technocracy can't just paper over.
For most of the twentieth century, the center held thanks to a combination of a) relatively shared economic prosperity, b) the perception of serious external threats, and c) monolithic centrist mass media. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of social media and smartphones ended this. I can't imagine that AI (which, one way or another, will likely severely damage the economy) and the aftermath of the Iran war will improve much on this part.
Carney's popularity is largely an aberration, a rally-around-the-flag effect resulting from Trump's threatening behavior toward Canada that would be hard to replicate in other countries at other times. Keir Starmer and Olaf Scholz are more instructive.
Will "boring" make a comeback? Aspirationally, I guess. (The DNC definitely wants to run "Generic Democrat" in 2028.) I think that aspiration is the underside of everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop via AI, which is almost certainly going to destroy the normal order of things (either because the sci-fi singularity scenario happens, or -- my and probably your guess -- it's a bubble that pops and takes the economy with it).
FWIW I think a post-Trump politics is overhyped, vs. the much more interesting question of what post-boomer politics looks like -- I think more than anything, Trump is the last gasp of boomers as a political force. 2028 GOP primary is probably going to be a Vance/Rubio slugfest; on the Dem side, all the ado about Platner's politics, tattoos, whatever, are a sideshow to the real reason he won (he is not 2,000 years old).
I agree that this could very well happen (probably for the worst long-term though) but what I think is the more desperate problem for democracy (whatever that means now) is that most Americans regardless of party don't vote out of genuine conviction in their candidate or the system. Was talking the other day to a manager at a retail store about politics, she goes "you know we have like no say, right?"
All true and well said … in the short term. But just as Trump’s gravitational pull distorts our vision, so does the moribund polarization/pendulum dynamic that defined politics long before 2016.
The thing is, that underlying status quo is itself untenable. The structural problems of American society are just too vast to continue indefinitely, from the rotting of the healthcare system to cultural despair to all the other things that we’ve recognized for decades as symptoms of terminal decline but seem powerless to affect.
Part of the excitement around Trump was that he seemed to represent a break of *some* kind with status quo of ideological trench warfare. Instead of “realignment” we got a retrenchment of the battle lines, because that proved a more useful political lever for him to exploit. There’s a sort of meta-narrative that runs through the whole past decade of Trump, in which we’re constantly wondering “is this it? Has the rupture occurred? Are we living in a new world now?” and yet the answer again and again ultimately has been “no, it’s more of the same, just a little bit worse.”
But the structural problems persist, and sooner or later, they will catch up to us. A country with a political system this broken can’t hobble on forever.
Great analysis, as always. I pull back on very last sentence though. Too dreamy for me.
#CutThePendulum