Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising clarity about the moral evil of the Soviet Empire helped bring the Cold War to a successful conclusion. (I wrote last month about Kingman Brewster, a good example of an establishment figure who preserved by accommodating.) In the 1960s, the liberal-progressive establishment successfully managed black anger, which became explosive in major cities, by accommodating demands for civil rights and allocating vast sums for economic uplift while preserving America’s existing hierarchies of wealth and power. When asked whether Roosevelt had carried out a socialist program, Socialist party leader Norman Thomas quipped, no, “unless he carried it out on a stretcher.” Although organized labor had political muscle in the postwar years, the ability of America’s liberal-progressive establishment to manage and temper class conflict ensured that no communist or socialist movement of any consequence emerged. Franklin Roosevelt navigated the social crisis of the Great Depression by coopting some of the left’s issues. Its dominance flows, in large part, from the fact that it stymied left-wing revolutionary politics in the twentieth century. Our liberal-progressive establishment is super-eminent. This phenomenon is new in recent American politics, which since the end of World War II has been anchored by a “responsible right.” Trump’s encouragement of a right-wing, populist anger-politics has inspired many nightmares. During his campaigns and his term in office, Trump has stoked populist anger and openly represented it. In its explosive discontent, it threatens established arrangements. Populism is a politics of anger and frustration. This makes many of us susceptible to panicked concerns about the continuity and integrity of our basic institutions.
I am beginning to see that our political culture is changing. Without a transcendent horizon, we’re vulnerable to upsetting fears. I chalked up the angst to the post-religious mentality that is so widespread among our elites (and affects us all). Trump always struck me as a political freelancer and Twitter provocateur, not a potential dictator commanding ranks of uniformed followers. Populism is a threat to democracy.” “Trump is an authoritarian.” “Trump subverts constitutional norms.” Claims such as these puzzled me when I first heard them four years ago.
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