Crossed Wires: The new normal — the politics of resentment, revenge and bullying

Given the events in the US over the past week or two — particularly the brutal clampdown on “free” speech everywhere, from academic institutions to media conglomerates to private industry — I was struck by the loud echoes of the left-wing-fuelled cancel culture that, relatively recently, saw university speakers deplatformed and the careers of academics and professionals derailed or curtailed for “wrongthink”.

The same drift is apparent on all sides of the political battlefield, and it is rather dispiriting in this time of general bewilderment. Fear and uncertainty are everywhere; nobody seems to have a handle on what opinion it may be acceptable to share, with whom, and what the unacceptable might cost them.

And so it was with some interest that I read a sober and searing post by Professor Christopher Robichaud, a senior lecturer in ethics and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, in which he explains the issues we are facing with brutal clarity.

Robichaud casts aside the blame that has been variously assigned for Donald Trump’s second ascendancy. He is not interested in whether Kamala Harris was the right candidate, or whether the Democrats erred in shielding Joe Biden’s condition, or whether Trump cheated, or whether it was inflation or immigration that was the fulcrum on which the 2024 election swung, or even whether the electoral college reflects the will of the people. All nonsense, he asserts — these are technical issues, easily solvable.

Trump won because of a cultural revolution that has been brewing for a generation — he is the man the US now wants at the helm. The tearing down of venerable civic institutions and academic pillars and the cuts in funding for arts and foreign aid are a new cultural norm that is just fine with a broad swathe of the electorate. Thinking of it as some transitory miscarriage of history that can be easily rectified is a tragic sort of wishful thinking. It is not going to be upended by another election cycle — it takes a generation for deep cultural change to come to the boil, and Trumpism has been a generation in the making.

Robichaud writes:

“Simply put ... America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying. And if you look at the demographics, you also won’t be able to comfort yourself that it’s just a white thing, or a working-class thing, or an education thing. It’s multi-class, multi-gender, multi-educational and multi-racial. That's what winning the popular vote means.”

An American friend of mine talks about joining “the resistance” as though this is France in 1941 or 1970s South Africa. It is not. Talk of resistance is no more than a flaccid statement of longing for a time that may be gone forever. There can be no comparison with partisan cells and underground militias fighting for the freedom of the people. The people were free to make the choice that they did, and they clearly did so.

Of course, it is not only the right wing of US politics that has become untethered from the rational centre. The left has also neglected to observe its own march towards intolerance and amorality, now on vivid display in the unchecked anti-Semitism on US campuses and the media’s blindness to any number of unmasked recent blue deceits — such as the Hunter Biden laptop nonsense or the Russian hoax following Trump’s election in 2016.

Debasement

Robichaud continues:

“A culture that has descended to this level of debasement is not easily fixed. In fact, it may not ever be fixed. The timeline for changing something like this is decades. You can extend that in this case, because with the GOP likely controlling all branches of federal government and the courts, they will ensure that mechanisms are in place to keep them in power long after their popularity has waned. You can count on that... The old GOP will never return, and the Dems have nothing to say to American culture at the moment. Nothing. They’ve been speaking to a country that’s gone, like dust in the wind.”

I found this post weirdly liberating, like hearing the clarion call of an uncomfortable truth for the first time. Let’s assume Robichaud is correct, for the sake of argument. The old world in which many of us lived — the world in which politics contained some measure of civility, decency and respect — has been replaced by a snarling, bullying, lying, vengeful council of autocrats. What then? Do we simply descend into depression and hopelessness and march grimly forward while we wait for a new generation of idealists to pull us out of the mire in a few decades?

Robichaud offers this:

“The first quarter of the 21st century will therefore in hindsight be viewed as the seed-planting stage for the absolute shit show that’s about to unfold globally over the next two and a half decades. Count on it. Adopt whatever coping and endurance strategies you have available. You’re going to need it.”

Coping and endurance strategies? That’s not much to hold on to. Perhaps the appropriate attitude is to think that as long as we have a vote, we have a small handrail with which to retain our balance. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing either.

On the other hand, maybe Robichaud is completely wrong, and this is simply a flash in the pan, and we will one day go back to trying, or even pretending, to care about each other. I am not holding my breath, but wouldn’t that be a fine thing? DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg, a partner at Bridge Capital and a columnist-at-large at Daily Maverick. His new book, “It's Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership”, is published by Maverick451 in SA and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.