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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe 'golden past' is a crock - By Jennifer Rubin
By Jennifer Rubin November 2 at 9:00 AM
In a speech receiving the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain, had some wise words on the state of politics in the West, and specifically in the United States. He warned that weve come to indulge in magical thinking. So you get the far right dreaming of a golden past that never was and the far left yearning for a utopian future that never will be. And then comes populism, the belief that a strong leader can solve all our problems for us. And that is the first step down the road to tyranny, whether of the right or of the left. He continued, later observing, We need people willing to stand up and say, rich and poor alike, we all have collective responsibility for the common good. And we need a culture of responsibility, not one of victimhood, because if you define yourself as a victim, you can never be free.
There is a lot to unpack there. Sacks certainly has figured out the populists routine.
The golden past that the Trumpian populists long for today takes many forms. They sanitize, romanticize and elevate the Lost Cause of the antebellum South. They dream of a pre-Great Society, even pre-New Deal government. They pine for Americas industrial world domination of the 1950s and 1960s. They seem enamored of a pre-Brown v. Board of Education and pre-Warren Court legal system. This nostalgia allows them to treat everything since then from globalism to minority activists to gay marriage to justice reform as a deviation, an intrusion into real America.
What others see as progress enhanced civil rights for minorities, women and criminal defendants; the rise of robust capitalist democracies around the globe (who compete with us economically) they see as losses. A sense of loss comes when you see things to which you believe you are entitled whittled away. If you have enjoyed cultural, economic and political dominance, its a bitter pill to see others reach parity or pass you by. And if you are convinced there is a finite number of jobs or other prizes, everyone who succeeds is poaching your opportunities.
Holding up the golden past allows President Trump and his ilk to stir anger, resentment and aggrievement. Not only can Trump present himself as the sole person he alone to solve his fans problems, but also he can cast anyone who criticizes him or checks his power (and his facts) to be obstructionist, evil, liars and more. There is no legitimate opposition and dissent (he rails at media that can write anything they like) because they are preventing the Great Leader from solving all our problems and returning us to the golden past.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/11/02/the-golden-past-is-a-crock/?utm_term=.dfdb32902363
treestar
(82,383 posts)I often see the sentiment that the party has to give us better leaders, as if we have nothing to do with it and cannot participate. When we have a duty to do that. Likewise the non-voters who refuse to even vote, let alone get involved, because they don't like anyone running. God forbid they should get involved to influence that. I almost despise those people more than voting right wingers. They will sound so snide and superior, they do not sully themselves with politics. Yet it is what allows the dreaded "status quo."
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)hmmmm - sounds familiar - i wonder if there are any historical precedents for a nation in decline reaching to that sort of magical thinking?
Bryant
VermontKevin
(1,473 posts)The longing for a past that never was. Except for a privileged few.
Orrex
(63,197 posts)Heigh-o!
stopbush
(24,395 posts)I vote that the time is long past that we retire the phrase theres a lot to unpack there, along with its many variations (let me unpack that for you; can you unpack that for us; etc).
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)I know Edmund Burke was a conservative but his analysis on the malleability of men and women is spot on. Burke said we need to take people as they are and not how we would like them to be.
First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...which means, of course, that I'm on the left wing of the Democratic Party...have any of today's "conservatives" ever read Burke...? Or Adam Smith, for that matter?
Wounded Bear
(58,629 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,629 posts)Something we used to say when I was far younger.
I think it has some profound things to say about those who continually bring up some mythical golden age they grew up in and didn't really understand what was really going on.