This Is Why You're Exhausted by Politics - 0 views
www.thebulwark.com/...hy-youre-exhausted-by-politics
maga revolution exhaustion history crisis culture politics US trump
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You and I, sitting on the side that would like to preserve liberal democracy, are exhausted. The people lined up across the way, the ones who want to transition to illiberalism? They are energized.
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Damon is right that we are on the cusp of something new. But where he sees it as the dawning of a new epoch, I believe we are on the cusp of a revolution.2
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views on policy are merely the ornaments on a wholesale reimagining of government as a tool for minority rule and a rejection of the rule of law.3
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Those are revolutionary aspirations in that they reject not a policy consensus, but social and governing compacts that date to the Founding. (Or at least the end of the Civil War.)
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The Trumpian revolution, on the other hand, seems to be the product of decadent boredom commingled with casual nihilism.
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Circumstances for our revolutionaries have never been better. They are so flush that they parade on their boats. And fly upside-down flags outside of their million-dollar suburban homes. And put stickers depicting a hogtied president on their $75,000 pickup trucks. All while posting angry memes to Facebook on their $1,000 iPhones.
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Unlike normal revolutionaries, the Trumpist revolutionaries risk nothing. If their gambit succeeds, then they overturn the Constitutional order. And if it fails? They go back to their boats, and trucks, and good-paying jobs, and iPhones.
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What’s more, this revolution has discovered that it gets as many bites at the apple as it likes. All defeats and setback are temporary. The movement lives to fight again. They can lose a dozen times—they only have to win once more.
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Trumpist revolutionaries get to tell themselves that they are part of a historic, final battle—but also that if they lose, they get to keep their normal, pampered lives. And four years from now they can try again.
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In sum: While the revolutionaries get to have their glamorous Götterdämmerung, over and over, the forces of the status quo have to defend against wave after wave of challenges. And it doesn’t matter how many authoritarian attempts are beaten back. There’s always another one looming.That is why you’re exhausted.
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let’s be honest about human nature: Breaking things is fun. Especially when you don’t experience any consequences. But running around putting out fires, and cleaning up broken glass, and asking people to stop breaking things? That is not fun. It is enervating.
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To paraphrase Mr. Cobb, once an idea has taken hold in society, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.
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the Trumpist revolution’s weakness is that it has no ideas. It has goals, but these are motivated by nothing more than will-to-power. There is no logic—not even a faulty logic—behind them.7
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How do we fight the exhaustion?First, we try to have some fun while we are scolding the twits and defending the imperfect status quo.Second, we remain fearless about the fight and clear eyed about reality.