"One thing people want is to be able to have conversations again without an overarching sense of moral reprobation being right around the corner. That felt normal, and the current environment of elevated censoriousness feels weird."
I don't know why certain people believe that the way to improve society is to try to make everyone feel truly awful about themselves, but it's not a winning strategy.
On schools, I'll provide some anecdata that may or not be valid, but I think presents something that hasn't been captured.
I'm a divorced dad with a "traditional" every other weekend residential schedule with two teenage daughters who were in high school during the pandemic.
The schools sends out weekly emails on Friday afternoons. When I was commuting into the office every day, this would be as I was rushing to get things finished up so I could catch the bus home. So, I'd quickly scan them for things that might directly impact me, and then delete.
During the pandemic, I had both the time and inclination (as I was eager to read tea leaves on the direction of school restrictions) to spend a little more time with them. And what I saw was an administration that seemed a lot more interested in lecturing me than it was in trying to re-open.
Now, did this "radicalize" me? No, not really. But it did make me think that these administrators could do with a reminder of who they work for and what their priorities are.
Yeah I think this has been missed in a lot of the political discussions. We’ve focused so much on who’s outraged with various changes that were missing who’s displeased by them. There are a lot more phenomena that outrage *or displease* 50% of people than that outrage 50%. And the winning formula on a lot of these issues is to find a way to please the displeased, even if you can’t calm the outraged. I think a lot of the school curriculum stuff is in this bucket.
In a somewhat related vein, I (modestly) disapprove of Joe Biden's performance, which I think many in the mainstream media interpret as being a persuadable/swing voter, but I would crawl naked through a nettle thicket over five miles of flaming broken glass to vote for him in 2024 over any conceivable Republican nominee.
Nuance! You can't flatten everything, or if you do, your interpretation of the world will be pretty distorted.
I was struck by the last Edsall piece in the NYT about the politics of resentment and loss of status and I feel like Democrats really need to take advantage of a gap in the political market and recapture patriotic optimism with a Reaganesque vibe. I don’t think we can outcompete Trump on arguing that everything is broken and needs to be rebuilt. We need to remind people that this is the best time in history to be alive and we have the most dynamic country and we can come together and meet the real challenges that we face because that is what we always do. Obama was the last politician to articulate that effectively and we really need a new voice with that optimistic message. I know that optimism is not in fashion on the left but I just don’t think that woke populism will ever out compete right wing populism and so we have to appeal to the majority that are weary of all the rage and resentment.
there is a huge market opportunity for an "America kicks ass, actually" party. It shouldn't be hard to say:
-America is a country of immigrants and immigration is perhaps our greatest comparative advantage...but people need to come here legally
-America has a problematic past in many ways with slavery, Native American displacement, Japanese internment, etc. and still has a ways to go...but we're still a successful multicultural society that is no more racist than any other country
-etc. etc.
That type of messaging wouldn't work in either primary but it seems electorally unstoppable in a general election.
The desire for normalcy that Josh describes strikes me as the true sense in which the United States is a "conservative" country. It's less about specific political preferences and more about a desire for orderliness in general.
Josh, do you think Biden really should be in front of the camera that often? He often loses track of his thoughts, goes on weird tangents, or is incomprehensible. I feel his team is keeping him off camera because he just can't handle it. I'd love the Biden you talk about here, but he rarely makes me feel confident when he's on camera. Does anyone else feel this?
I mean, we just saw him do two hours of it. His performance could have been better, but I think it was pretty good, and having him out there (however imperfectly) is better for sending the message that he's on top of things than hiding him. He's also one of the more likable prominent figures in the Democratic Party, and it would be good to have people think more about him and less about various congressional figures when they think of Democrats.
Fair enough. I would agree he's more likeable than most prominent Democratic Party figures, so that's a positive. However, I rarely feel confidence in Biden as a leader after public remarks from him, and that includes his recent 2 hour press conference. Maybe it's a lack of empathy. I don't get the "I feel your pain" vibe from Biden.
I'll admit, his comments, actions, and continued inaction surrounding Afghanistan has colored my lens of how I view him. After Afghanistan, I've seen him as a pretty cold and unempathetic leader.
I was bouncing a normal but "unenlightened" off a young person and was told that this opinion was ignorant. Indeed I've spent a fair bit of time on the topic considering various views, and while I may be wrong, I'm not ignorant. Claiming different views and values are ignorant, is incredibly gnostic. How do we move back to disagreeing in good faith and building on commonality? It feels like the agenda is to proselytize, not consensus building. There are weird and very different brands of this on both sides.
Much of the non-Trump, non-covid stuff that has made life so weary is ostensibly aimed at improving the outcomes for those who historically have been disadvantaged or faced unfair and unequal challenges--women, minorities, non-straight people, etc.
I agree in principle that, as a straight white man with a good job, I've been playing on easy mode, and I am and should be willing to pay some modest social price in the service of equality. I think it would be interesting to see some polling that had some robust demographic crosstabs--do those disadvantaged groups think our deviation from normal has made any headway? Have the gains, if any, been worth the cost?
Hardly a robust poll, but my own opinion is no. Not worth it. I feel like I'm living in this bizarro world where both the misogynistic far right and the supposedly feminist left believe I'm a fragile little flower who can't hold my own in the big bad world. It's annoying, and the battles they constantly pick over vocabulary are even more annoying. (Like I legitimately don't care if someone in the office calls me "honey" or "sweetheart." Most times, it's not meant in any bad way. And when it is condescending, the problem is the condescension, not the word. The condescension isn't going away just because the vocabulary changes.)
Then again, I think I'm just coming from a fundamentally different place than a lot of people on the left. I don't believe there is or ever has been an "easy mode" for anyone. Life can be hard, and telling people their own difficulties don't matter because someone, somewhere, at some point in time, has had it worse, just isn't awesome. Or a good way to convince anyone that you're on their side.
"Back to Normal" implies "Back to White Supremacy" so it's hard to envision such a platform being adopted by the Democratic Party. The party's activist energy is with dismantling / revolution and the leaders don't seem capable of withstanding it. Democrats might need to spend some years in the electoral wilderness first, unless either more normalcy-minded leaders emerge like Adams who are immune to charges of upholding White Supremacy (or like Hochul who bypassed the electoral process and may remain via incumbency inertia), or another catastrophic Republican administration comes along.
Great column and I completely agree but normal is boring and would leave those whose careers and/or current status is based on crazy with little or nothing to do and that risks making them 'GASP!' irrelevant. It's what the country and the 60% or so of us who are in the middle of the political bell curve want and need but achieving it will take time that we may not have.
This is so true:
"One thing people want is to be able to have conversations again without an overarching sense of moral reprobation being right around the corner. That felt normal, and the current environment of elevated censoriousness feels weird."
I don't know why certain people believe that the way to improve society is to try to make everyone feel truly awful about themselves, but it's not a winning strategy.
On schools, I'll provide some anecdata that may or not be valid, but I think presents something that hasn't been captured.
I'm a divorced dad with a "traditional" every other weekend residential schedule with two teenage daughters who were in high school during the pandemic.
The schools sends out weekly emails on Friday afternoons. When I was commuting into the office every day, this would be as I was rushing to get things finished up so I could catch the bus home. So, I'd quickly scan them for things that might directly impact me, and then delete.
During the pandemic, I had both the time and inclination (as I was eager to read tea leaves on the direction of school restrictions) to spend a little more time with them. And what I saw was an administration that seemed a lot more interested in lecturing me than it was in trying to re-open.
Now, did this "radicalize" me? No, not really. But it did make me think that these administrators could do with a reminder of who they work for and what their priorities are.
Yeah I think this has been missed in a lot of the political discussions. We’ve focused so much on who’s outraged with various changes that were missing who’s displeased by them. There are a lot more phenomena that outrage *or displease* 50% of people than that outrage 50%. And the winning formula on a lot of these issues is to find a way to please the displeased, even if you can’t calm the outraged. I think a lot of the school curriculum stuff is in this bucket.
In a somewhat related vein, I (modestly) disapprove of Joe Biden's performance, which I think many in the mainstream media interpret as being a persuadable/swing voter, but I would crawl naked through a nettle thicket over five miles of flaming broken glass to vote for him in 2024 over any conceivable Republican nominee.
Nuance! You can't flatten everything, or if you do, your interpretation of the world will be pretty distorted.
I was struck by the last Edsall piece in the NYT about the politics of resentment and loss of status and I feel like Democrats really need to take advantage of a gap in the political market and recapture patriotic optimism with a Reaganesque vibe. I don’t think we can outcompete Trump on arguing that everything is broken and needs to be rebuilt. We need to remind people that this is the best time in history to be alive and we have the most dynamic country and we can come together and meet the real challenges that we face because that is what we always do. Obama was the last politician to articulate that effectively and we really need a new voice with that optimistic message. I know that optimism is not in fashion on the left but I just don’t think that woke populism will ever out compete right wing populism and so we have to appeal to the majority that are weary of all the rage and resentment.
there is a huge market opportunity for an "America kicks ass, actually" party. It shouldn't be hard to say:
-America is a country of immigrants and immigration is perhaps our greatest comparative advantage...but people need to come here legally
-America has a problematic past in many ways with slavery, Native American displacement, Japanese internment, etc. and still has a ways to go...but we're still a successful multicultural society that is no more racist than any other country
-etc. etc.
That type of messaging wouldn't work in either primary but it seems electorally unstoppable in a general election.
The desire for normalcy that Josh describes strikes me as the true sense in which the United States is a "conservative" country. It's less about specific political preferences and more about a desire for orderliness in general.
Josh, do you think Biden really should be in front of the camera that often? He often loses track of his thoughts, goes on weird tangents, or is incomprehensible. I feel his team is keeping him off camera because he just can't handle it. I'd love the Biden you talk about here, but he rarely makes me feel confident when he's on camera. Does anyone else feel this?
I mean, we just saw him do two hours of it. His performance could have been better, but I think it was pretty good, and having him out there (however imperfectly) is better for sending the message that he's on top of things than hiding him. He's also one of the more likable prominent figures in the Democratic Party, and it would be good to have people think more about him and less about various congressional figures when they think of Democrats.
Fair enough. I would agree he's more likeable than most prominent Democratic Party figures, so that's a positive. However, I rarely feel confidence in Biden as a leader after public remarks from him, and that includes his recent 2 hour press conference. Maybe it's a lack of empathy. I don't get the "I feel your pain" vibe from Biden.
I'll admit, his comments, actions, and continued inaction surrounding Afghanistan has colored my lens of how I view him. After Afghanistan, I've seen him as a pretty cold and unempathetic leader.
I was bouncing a normal but "unenlightened" off a young person and was told that this opinion was ignorant. Indeed I've spent a fair bit of time on the topic considering various views, and while I may be wrong, I'm not ignorant. Claiming different views and values are ignorant, is incredibly gnostic. How do we move back to disagreeing in good faith and building on commonality? It feels like the agenda is to proselytize, not consensus building. There are weird and very different brands of this on both sides.
Much of the non-Trump, non-covid stuff that has made life so weary is ostensibly aimed at improving the outcomes for those who historically have been disadvantaged or faced unfair and unequal challenges--women, minorities, non-straight people, etc.
I agree in principle that, as a straight white man with a good job, I've been playing on easy mode, and I am and should be willing to pay some modest social price in the service of equality. I think it would be interesting to see some polling that had some robust demographic crosstabs--do those disadvantaged groups think our deviation from normal has made any headway? Have the gains, if any, been worth the cost?
Hardly a robust poll, but my own opinion is no. Not worth it. I feel like I'm living in this bizarro world where both the misogynistic far right and the supposedly feminist left believe I'm a fragile little flower who can't hold my own in the big bad world. It's annoying, and the battles they constantly pick over vocabulary are even more annoying. (Like I legitimately don't care if someone in the office calls me "honey" or "sweetheart." Most times, it's not meant in any bad way. And when it is condescending, the problem is the condescension, not the word. The condescension isn't going away just because the vocabulary changes.)
Then again, I think I'm just coming from a fundamentally different place than a lot of people on the left. I don't believe there is or ever has been an "easy mode" for anyone. Life can be hard, and telling people their own difficulties don't matter because someone, somewhere, at some point in time, has had it worse, just isn't awesome. Or a good way to convince anyone that you're on their side.
"Back to Normal" implies "Back to White Supremacy" so it's hard to envision such a platform being adopted by the Democratic Party. The party's activist energy is with dismantling / revolution and the leaders don't seem capable of withstanding it. Democrats might need to spend some years in the electoral wilderness first, unless either more normalcy-minded leaders emerge like Adams who are immune to charges of upholding White Supremacy (or like Hochul who bypassed the electoral process and may remain via incumbency inertia), or another catastrophic Republican administration comes along.
Great column and I completely agree but normal is boring and would leave those whose careers and/or current status is based on crazy with little or nothing to do and that risks making them 'GASP!' irrelevant. It's what the country and the 60% or so of us who are in the middle of the political bell curve want and need but achieving it will take time that we may not have.