Interesting. That would explain his recent tic of referring to the US as "hot"––as if geopolitics is no different than being on the guest list of a Vanity Fair post-Oscars party.
“People often wonder why Gen X in particular is so enamored of Trump. Well, could it be that they evince the same delayed development that always brings them back to their glory days.”
Not just us Xers — it often seems to me most of the Dems I think of as devout centrists, many of them boomers, somehow stopped developing in the 90s. They seem to cling to an ideal of bipartisanship that ossified in the mid- and late-90s and was hopelessly inadequate even then. All these years later it’s still hopelessly inadequate but rather continue to politically and culturally tread water than take a single step in a new direction (endorse Mamdani or the Green New Deal, etc.).
You’re right about centrists. As a Boomer I’ll tell you that Trump has radicalized me. I didn’t realize how blissfully I was misunderstanding the world until he came on the political scene.
John, it’s a pleasure reading your insights into the current moment, and now you’ve added a cogent explanation of what is going on in part. I’d really like to see you explore further the last two sentences of today’s newsletter:
“Trump may be trying to reimpose an old order, but he also seems to think it never really passed. For him, history didn’t end; it never existed in the first place.”
When a Past (as I've just written in another comment) becomes murky enough to look good, how can any immediate option with actual benefits and deficits compete?
He may still want a spot on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” not realizing all has been exposed in NBC producers’ admission that they had to build sets for Trump Tower offices because the original site was too shabby for tv.
actually, he reminds me of that great scene in "The Magnificent Ambersons" when the eldest Amberson (played by the elderly, very frail Richard Bennett) has that sad little senile monologue that begins "we came from the sun..." etc.
in the movie, it's very sad. in real life, it's a whole lot worse.
Yes, I think people underestimate the continuity between Reagan and Trump. Reagan’s first term also saw a massive slash to social services, which resulted in a massive and noticeable increase in homelessness. It’s just that Reagan garbed it in “avuncular” grandpa and Trump is “mean grandpa”.
There are two eras Trump would like to return to: the fifties of his childhood and unchallenged white male supremacy, and the eighties of Dallas, Dynasty, and unabashed love of luxury.
Post-Ceaușescu and pre-Viagra (it will matter shortly) I was stuck in an uptown bus next to a professor of Roumanian history. Around Columbus Circle we were discussing the neo-monarchists then enjoying a bit of a surge there, and he said something about the monarchists' being nostalgic for 'a different order', and I shot back, uncharacteristically without thought (years of speech therapy still make me prepare most utterances), 'Theyʼre nostalgic for when they could dependably get erections.' to which he agreed.
If one is lucky, it is only with age that one starts to be nostalgic for when one could, for example, practise karate-dō for two hours, and then after the nausea exercise _always_ brings subsides eat most of a 1-kg. roast, then later sleep through the night without the need for urination…. Given his age, terrible habits, and the strain he would soon be under, I can easily believe that 1987 was the last year Mr Trump felt that his body 'worked right', and so the World was if not right then tractable….
I have a theory that the existence of Viagra is the source of a lot of our issues today. Pre-Viagra, when old men's dicks stopped working, they would pack it in and accept inevitable decline while the new generation took over. Now they're taking outrageous amounts of T and experimental hair transplants from Turkey, and refusing to leave the scene.
I find this very odd, because - take it with a grain of salt, because I was a child/tween in Poland at the time, so I have no direct experience of living in the US then - i thought the late 80s through early 90s were a sort of Golden Age for America!
America triumphed over USSR. The evil empire fell, to the joy of freedom-loving Eastern Europeans such as my family. It was “the end of history.” The American economy was good. Immigrants from all over the world wanted to come to the US. The internet was in a very nascent form, with none of the crappiness of social media; it was exciting and full of promise. Sure, America had many problems, but wasn’t there an overall mood of optimism? What’s not to love?
(Yes, I know I should read John Ganz’s book, but from the perspective of the average American, wasn’t life mostly good?)
well, I'll be 77 in a few months and it gives me no particular pleasure to disabuse you of these notions, but consider yourself disabused. I was happy in the early '80s, but for entirely personal reasons. anybody who was anywhere on the Left was NOT happy.
But he spoke explicitly of Gen X more than Boomers or their immediate predecessors such as ourselves. And in the late-80s to 90s, they were very young indeed!
that was the era after his great vietnam victory. i believe that war was his metaphor for his avoidance of sexually transmitted diseases. A real victorious 'veteran', that guy…
Astute analysis. I remember that period all too well. I was a poor graduate student, and I have to confess, the time did shape my politics. I went from a confirmed anticommunist into someone who really likes your essays.
I keep it simple and just remember that he was born bad, as it were. A monster since birth blessed by people always, always, letting him pull all the monstrous shit he wants. Enabled by his father, uncontrollable by his mother. Then things got worse.
Now it’s the media and, understandably, his party that gives him pass after pass after pass.
That far from enough voters were unable to see and acknowledge what’s been in front of them forever…
Excellent take. Also, look at the Trump's cultural lodestars -- The Village People, professional
wrestling, Les Miz, country music, etc. -- all from that era.
I should’ve mentioned Les Miz!
I will forgive you for the oversight. most eagerly, being no fan.
Interesting. That would explain his recent tic of referring to the US as "hot"––as if geopolitics is no different than being on the guest list of a Vanity Fair post-Oscars party.
“People often wonder why Gen X in particular is so enamored of Trump. Well, could it be that they evince the same delayed development that always brings them back to their glory days.”
Not just us Xers — it often seems to me most of the Dems I think of as devout centrists, many of them boomers, somehow stopped developing in the 90s. They seem to cling to an ideal of bipartisanship that ossified in the mid- and late-90s and was hopelessly inadequate even then. All these years later it’s still hopelessly inadequate but rather continue to politically and culturally tread water than take a single step in a new direction (endorse Mamdani or the Green New Deal, etc.).
You’re right about centrists. As a Boomer I’ll tell you that Trump has radicalized me. I didn’t realize how blissfully I was misunderstanding the world until he came on the political scene.
John, it’s a pleasure reading your insights into the current moment, and now you’ve added a cogent explanation of what is going on in part. I’d really like to see you explore further the last two sentences of today’s newsletter:
“Trump may be trying to reimpose an old order, but he also seems to think it never really passed. For him, history didn’t end; it never existed in the first place.”
When a Past (as I've just written in another comment) becomes murky enough to look good, how can any immediate option with actual benefits and deficits compete?
He may still want a spot on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” not realizing all has been exposed in NBC producers’ admission that they had to build sets for Trump Tower offices because the original site was too shabby for tv.
His neurodegnerative decline also probably helps lock him in the past even more
actually, he reminds me of that great scene in "The Magnificent Ambersons" when the eldest Amberson (played by the elderly, very frail Richard Bennett) has that sad little senile monologue that begins "we came from the sun..." etc.
in the movie, it's very sad. in real life, it's a whole lot worse.
Yes, many have noted the mental retreat from old age into a Past now murky enough to look good.
Frankenstein creation of the Reagan Revolution.
Yes, I think people underestimate the continuity between Reagan and Trump. Reagan’s first term also saw a massive slash to social services, which resulted in a massive and noticeable increase in homelessness. It’s just that Reagan garbed it in “avuncular” grandpa and Trump is “mean grandpa”.
This makes a lot of sense.
It is this sort of mentality that Fox news plugged into in the mid-1990's -- and in a way way has kept its audience there ever since.
He certainly seems to be trying to keep his hair looking like it did in 1989.
Maybe he associates his personal downturn with the election of Clinton in 1992.
Early 90's is when he meets Epstein.
There are two eras Trump would like to return to: the fifties of his childhood and unchallenged white male supremacy, and the eighties of Dallas, Dynasty, and unabashed love of luxury.
Post-Ceaușescu and pre-Viagra (it will matter shortly) I was stuck in an uptown bus next to a professor of Roumanian history. Around Columbus Circle we were discussing the neo-monarchists then enjoying a bit of a surge there, and he said something about the monarchists' being nostalgic for 'a different order', and I shot back, uncharacteristically without thought (years of speech therapy still make me prepare most utterances), 'Theyʼre nostalgic for when they could dependably get erections.' to which he agreed.
If one is lucky, it is only with age that one starts to be nostalgic for when one could, for example, practise karate-dō for two hours, and then after the nausea exercise _always_ brings subsides eat most of a 1-kg. roast, then later sleep through the night without the need for urination…. Given his age, terrible habits, and the strain he would soon be under, I can easily believe that 1987 was the last year Mr Trump felt that his body 'worked right', and so the World was if not right then tractable….
I have a theory that the existence of Viagra is the source of a lot of our issues today. Pre-Viagra, when old men's dicks stopped working, they would pack it in and accept inevitable decline while the new generation took over. Now they're taking outrageous amounts of T and experimental hair transplants from Turkey, and refusing to leave the scene.
I have long believed so, with the amendment that impotence may make some old men _meaner_..
Viagra and other P.D.E.5-inhibitors were supposedly behind some of the little progress the U.S. made among the more elderly Afghan warlords.
ha! well, maybe that's why I'm a Cialis man...
but seriously...your post DOES feel a tad mean-spirited.
give it TIME ("...that common arbitrator"), my friend. give it time.
I probably should have specified that I was referring specifically to elites.
I find this very odd, because - take it with a grain of salt, because I was a child/tween in Poland at the time, so I have no direct experience of living in the US then - i thought the late 80s through early 90s were a sort of Golden Age for America!
America triumphed over USSR. The evil empire fell, to the joy of freedom-loving Eastern Europeans such as my family. It was “the end of history.” The American economy was good. Immigrants from all over the world wanted to come to the US. The internet was in a very nascent form, with none of the crappiness of social media; it was exciting and full of promise. Sure, America had many problems, but wasn’t there an overall mood of optimism? What’s not to love?
(Yes, I know I should read John Ganz’s book, but from the perspective of the average American, wasn’t life mostly good?)
well, I'll be 77 in a few months and it gives me no particular pleasure to disabuse you of these notions, but consider yourself disabused. I was happy in the early '80s, but for entirely personal reasons. anybody who was anywhere on the Left was NOT happy.
But he spoke explicitly of Gen X more than Boomers or their immediate predecessors such as ourselves. And in the late-80s to 90s, they were very young indeed!
I thought he was more or less talking about the times themselves. but I also tend to read too fast.
No wonder the mere existence of Obama broke his ossified brain.
I think his brain & memories are running backwards lile so many other dementia patient’s brains.
As for GenX, he feeds their deeply held, cynical, middle kid/sandwich generation feelings. And that makes them feel happy.
that was the era after his great vietnam victory. i believe that war was his metaphor for his avoidance of sexually transmitted diseases. A real victorious 'veteran', that guy…
Astute analysis. I remember that period all too well. I was a poor graduate student, and I have to confess, the time did shape my politics. I went from a confirmed anticommunist into someone who really likes your essays.
I keep it simple and just remember that he was born bad, as it were. A monster since birth blessed by people always, always, letting him pull all the monstrous shit he wants. Enabled by his father, uncontrollable by his mother. Then things got worse.
Now it’s the media and, understandably, his party that gives him pass after pass after pass.
That far from enough voters were unable to see and acknowledge what’s been in front of them forever…
I could go on.
Definitely a take.