We'll Have to Rethink Everything
The feeling of limitless possibility ahead of Trump's inauguration is dizzying.
Happy New Year, Crowd!
I don’t know about you, but I feel like we’re at a very pregnant moment as 2025 dawns.
It’s hard to get one’s bearings. On yesterday’s J6 anniversary, Democrats were clucking about their strict adherence to Constitutional norms in certifying Trump’s win. But their attempt at symbolism felt like it fell flat. The toothless Biden administration was trying to show that they are giving up power willingly, when in fact all of the power has already drained away from them. Trump has been all but usurping Biden’s role since November. It’s an easy feat when the lame duck is this lame, but it’s a feat nonetheless. And it feels unprecedented.
At the same time, Trump’s usurpation has only been virtual. The President Elect has been meeting heads of state and making wild statements about foreign policy. But what does it all mean, really? Just today I woke up to a European friend of mine asking me just how serious I thought Trump was about annexing Canada. A few hours later, Trump told David Sanger of the New York Times that he could not rule out economic or military coercion in trying to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. What do we do with such statements? Meme-like debates from 2016-2020 are all flooding back: Do we take Trump seriously but not literally? Or is doing that some kind of abdication of responsibility?
Whatever the answer, it’s clear that we’re in for a disorienting four years. And I feel ready for them.
I’m pleased with how Wisdom of Crowds has come together as a project. It feels like we’re well positioned to grapple with exactly this kind of disorientation.
and I came up with the name as an ironic double joke about democracy — both echoing H.L. Mencken for the Trump era (“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”) and chiding #Resistance types for thinking they were fighting for democracy when they were in fact lining up against the popular will. But really, the whole project was an attempt to get a grip during disorienting times by drilling down to first principles. We were purpose-built for a second Trump term.Most of my colleagues here at Wisdom of Crowds seem to be interested in how Democrats can re-imagine themselves in the wilderness. Is centrism dead, and if so, can something more authentically leftist take its place — and win elections? Thinking through all that will be important, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of it here on the site.
But me, I’m no longer that interested in the debate on the political left. Paradoxically, Trump’s re-election has made me embrace that I am in fact a conservative after all, not just some kind of impish critic. It isn’t that Trump’s politics are themselves appealing. Rather it’s that I’ve fully come around to the idea that mid-century liberalism is dead — and that even in its hey-day, it has been corrosive and toxic.
I’m taking religion more seriously, and have as a result grown dismissive of all manners of glib secular pieties. But it’s more than that. In destroying and refashioning the Republican Party in his own unique image, Trump has cleared out a lot of the cruft in American conservatism. He has done what John Hinckley failed to do: he put a fatal bullet through Reagan and his legacy. As a result, conservatism itself feels up for grabs. Since I don’t believe that any form of leftism, however packaged, will gain traction in America, the coming debates about what conservatism will mean feel more vital to me. My goal is to capture some of that vitality here.
Whatever your political bent, though, I trust you’ll find lots of good stuff in our pages in the coming years.
All of us at Wisdom of Crowds can’t thank you enough for your support. And we’re really excited to take the next steps with you, our beloved Crowd. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share with us about how you’re thinking about the future and what’s keeping you up at night, drop them below in the comments. We’ll be sure to consider them all carefully as we get to planning.
For Pete's sake, Damir, adherence to constitutional norms is damn well something to cluck about. Don't tell me you've "moved on" from Jan 6, 2021 and the protracted effort to overthrow a perfectly valid presidential election? It was a pretty serious constitutional violation; the Georgia episode alone -- "Just get me 11,000 votes, and the Republican congressmen will do the rest" -- should have landed the bastard in jail. Threatening to hold up aid to Ukraine unless they ginned up an investigation of a rival candidate's son also demonstrated a somewhat casual attitude to constitutional principles. As did his obstruction of every investigation of his crimes and misdemeanors. As did his recent effort to evade Senate approval for his nominees by means of recess appointments. And so much more.
Please, Damir, stop twittering about "new visions" -- that's just idle Beltway chatter. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has been waging relentless class war against the bottom half of the population. All the bottom half has is smart, honorable young intellectuals like you. Don't desert them in a vain attempt to craft some bit of discourse that will ever-so-briefly capture the attention of the empty-headed custodians of The Conversation.
Thanks for this Damir. I tend to see this moment for liberals as the 'You can't always get what you want' moment. They're facing a real challenge in not only substantiating their philosophy which has arguably helped create a set of circumstances which has created what I consider to be a very serious backlash which potentially threatens the substantial civil rights and political gains made in the late 20th century. But this backlash is precisely because of conditions which liberal philosophy either ignored or said was a good thing.
I think what keeps me up at night (besides my ever more precarious academic employment) is not the Trump Presidency but the notion of Presidentialism in politics and society itself. Seeing what is happening in South Korea, and even in my own country the UK, where we have no president but presidentialism is running amok makes me nervous that many of us are looking for that 'big figure' to fix things without recognising that the state and society are too complex for a singular person to fix today. There may have been a great man theory of history which held up in the past but I no longer believe this is true at all.
Entering a world where Zuckerberg and Musk control significant platforms also makes me increasingly nervous. One is run by a guy who thinks Augustus was amazing and the other is running around with the most powerful man in the world like an overgrown toddler trying to smash stuff up. This is not a recipe which is going to end well for our ability to communicate. Given that we increasingly rely on such platforms as well there seems to be little hope for radical change in society and politics without altering our behaviour online. Given bluesky's success some may think this is the answer but we see similar problems emerging in our use of that platform as well....
So, for me, I think we're entering a true period of simulacra where we are increasingly finding it difficult to find authenticity. This is why I am not so psyched about the rise of this new brand of conservatism. Just as Nietzche declared God is dead, I do fear deeper value is dead and all we have left is performance.