Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom I wrote a whole book
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Posted On: 09/01/2023 1:46:27 PM
Tom Nichols
@RadioFreeTom
I wrote a whole book on why democracies become illiberal, but something about America after Trump's indictment really strikes me. Yes, MAGA world is about resentment and ignorance and displaced anger and all that. But it's also a time that seems to me incredibly...juvenile. /1
Trump hawking t-shirts with his mug shot is like some hair band selling posters of their guy getting busted for drugs or waggling his junk onstage or something. It's beyond unserious. It's child-like, the political version of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. And yet it'll sell. /2
In the book, I argue that peace and affluence have been a big part of America's slide: Life's good and people don't grasp that ghastly decisions can have disastrous effects - including on *them*. Because other adults make sure the nation functions even when the voters go nuts. /3
But maybe peace and affluence, in addition to making people bored out of their skulls, also prevents them developing into adults who make democracy possible. This is the world, as I wrote in the book, in which Huxley wins, not Orwell. (I am stealing Neil Postman's point here.) /4
I suppose you could call all this *decadence*, but it's not even gloriously decadent in that grandiose, Weimar, "Cabaret" kind of decadence. It's just people putting on costumes and hats and being violent and then crying in front of judges when it all goes horribly wrong. /5
Childishness doesn't make voters less dangerous to democracy. But even if Trump is defeated (again), this is a serious level of social dysfunction. You can't sustain a superpower when nearly half of its citizens are mired in eternal petulant childhood. /6
And millions of our oldest citizens, people my age - Trump's most reliable voting bloc - who should be our wisest among us, are the ones most like angry, irrational toddlers (much like Trump himself). This is incomprehensible to me, especially as I get older. /7
In another weird role-switch, these right-wingers are now like the dilettantish countercultural activists of the 60s: well-off would-be revolutionaries who really have no idea what they're doing and merely want to act on ill-defined, self-actualizing, self-centered emotion. /8
Adults, however, know that there were people who came before us, and people who will come after us, and that "the moment" is not supreme. We have a civic inheritance, a trust, to hold and to protect, and then to pass on. This used to be central to the American idea. No longer. /9
All we can do is hope that the generations coming up can learn to embrace civic adulthood. I'm (mildly) optimistic - if we get past these next few elections.
But how weird that so many adults now worship - and emulate - a choleric 77 year old toddler. /10x
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1697452173024461106
@RadioFreeTom
I wrote a whole book on why democracies become illiberal, but something about America after Trump's indictment really strikes me. Yes, MAGA world is about resentment and ignorance and displaced anger and all that. But it's also a time that seems to me incredibly...juvenile. /1
Trump hawking t-shirts with his mug shot is like some hair band selling posters of their guy getting busted for drugs or waggling his junk onstage or something. It's beyond unserious. It's child-like, the political version of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. And yet it'll sell. /2
In the book, I argue that peace and affluence have been a big part of America's slide: Life's good and people don't grasp that ghastly decisions can have disastrous effects - including on *them*. Because other adults make sure the nation functions even when the voters go nuts. /3
But maybe peace and affluence, in addition to making people bored out of their skulls, also prevents them developing into adults who make democracy possible. This is the world, as I wrote in the book, in which Huxley wins, not Orwell. (I am stealing Neil Postman's point here.) /4
I suppose you could call all this *decadence*, but it's not even gloriously decadent in that grandiose, Weimar, "Cabaret" kind of decadence. It's just people putting on costumes and hats and being violent and then crying in front of judges when it all goes horribly wrong. /5
Childishness doesn't make voters less dangerous to democracy. But even if Trump is defeated (again), this is a serious level of social dysfunction. You can't sustain a superpower when nearly half of its citizens are mired in eternal petulant childhood. /6
And millions of our oldest citizens, people my age - Trump's most reliable voting bloc - who should be our wisest among us, are the ones most like angry, irrational toddlers (much like Trump himself). This is incomprehensible to me, especially as I get older. /7
In another weird role-switch, these right-wingers are now like the dilettantish countercultural activists of the 60s: well-off would-be revolutionaries who really have no idea what they're doing and merely want to act on ill-defined, self-actualizing, self-centered emotion. /8
Adults, however, know that there were people who came before us, and people who will come after us, and that "the moment" is not supreme. We have a civic inheritance, a trust, to hold and to protect, and then to pass on. This used to be central to the American idea. No longer. /9
All we can do is hope that the generations coming up can learn to embrace civic adulthood. I'm (mildly) optimistic - if we get past these next few elections.
But how weird that so many adults now worship - and emulate - a choleric 77 year old toddler. /10x
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1697452173024461106
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