Very insightful article. The obvious question is that if "liberal" and "conservative" are now inaccurate and useless for describing the current political dynamic then how do we describe what is really going on?
I am a big fan of the "brokenist" theory, first advanced by Alanah Newhouse at Tablet and explored in more detail by Oliver Wise at The Free Press.
Trump has put together a coalition of outsiders/brokenists whose primary commonality is a belief that the status quo is broken, not in the traditional liberal sense of social justice concerns such as income inequality or racism but that the system is failing. The belief that the government is facilitating illegal immigration leading to increased homelessness, crime and social disorder? Brokenist, because the government/status quo is responsible for the chaos. The rise in crime? Brokenist, because again government/elite policy (lenient DA's, reducing funding for policing or otherwise handicapping law enforcement) are to blame. The criminal and civil charges against Trump? Brokenist, in the sense of "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." The critical element in the brokenist's world view is not that the system is unfair, as the old progressives would argue, but that it is in decline and in danger of complete failure.
The brokenist argument is appealing to me because it accounts for the seeming inconsistencies in Trump's base of support. The popular media narrative is that MAGA is primarily working class whites with no college education. But Trump has also managed to pick up significant support from Silicon Valley: Elon Musk, David Sacks, Andreesen, Palmer Lucky, etc. Not only are they some of the wealthiest people in the country but they are also knowledge workers who disproportionately hold degrees, often advanced, in subjects like physics or computer science. Brokenism transcends socioeconomic class and educational attainment.
It also transcends political affiliation as Trump picked up Democratic dissidents like Tulsi Gabbard (singled out for retaliation by the old political order) and RFK Jr. At the same time so-called "paleo-Republicans" like Lynne Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, defenders of the status quo, gladly volunteered for the Harris campaign.
If conservatism is a series of “irritable mental gestures” then what is conspiratorial thinking but a series of even more irritable gestures? Whatever the democratic nature of a program like Rogan’s, in the case of some of his crankier guests, one man’s view of the traditional media as elite gatekeepers is another man’s sense of having some goddam standards and not wasting people’s time.
Sure, but note that I have no problem with gatekeepers in principle; it does create certain tensions for those who are notionally committed to an egalitarian ethos, however.
I wonder how much less of that tension there’d be if a rank liar hadn’t become president, who of course has to be covered by the media. I can imagine it’s hard for any self respecting media type to feel proud of a solid commitment to egalitarianism if that weakens the other commitment to broadcasting truths.
Maybe that is much of the reason why the ‘political middle’ has been so ‘hollowed out’ lately. I don’t follow political messaging in Europe to the degree I do in the USA, but I expect that much of it is similar, crying out for the defense of existing institutions, without explaining what they are for, and why people should want them. That’s a very unsatisfactory starting point for people who strongly feel that the system isn’t working for them.
The people, parties, and policies located in the middle of the 20th century political spectrum are now sitting farther away from the center. They are in a ‘conservative’ wing that wants to preserve Neoliberalism (broadly encompassing economic and social values), treating it as an optimal form of Liberal Democracy, but not putting much effort into defending it. Their tacit claim is ‘it works, and if you break it, you’ll unleash forces that will hurt you.’
The other side of today’s political spectrum, a coalition of different cultural constituencies currently united in their disdain for Liberalism, has a much easier messaging task. All they have to do is promise to fix something widely perceived as being broken. They can easily avoid specifics about policy, and so far, their audience is extremely forgiving of contradictions, misstatements, and mistakes.
Liberal Democracy has always struggled to provide simple answers to complex problems, and the increasingly complexity of our modern economy and media scape only serves to increase the appeal of politicians and pundits willing to overly simplify and pander to a constituency.
The ‘new Conservatives’/‘old Neoliberals’ have done themselves no favors by reflexively but uncompellingly defending their top-heavy and out-of-touch institutions, even when attacks are based at least in part on legitimate criticisms.
Great essay, really appreciate you unpacking the contradictions in how people perceive these terms.
On the surface, one issue with conservatism (and progressivism) is that their content is dependent on the status quo. But do you think there are any substantive more differences between the two that cannot be explained by someone's position in relation to the status quo?
The fence example seems interesting: some of us trust the wisdom of those that came before us, of institutions, custom and precedent. Others do not see why things should be a certain way, and relentlessly strive towards optimising society.
Interesting article but you are seriously overstating your case. The most important issue you do not pick up is the total overturning of the values the US, the world’s oldest democracy, stood for. What enrages people about the Zelenskyy incident is not Ukraine as such, a country that as you point out most Americans barely knew existed until five minutes ago. It is that Trump and Vance violate norms that reflect how the US used to see itself and by doing so move the country to the other side of the geopolitical board.
Similarly, Europeans did know that the status quo could not last. This status quo was actively encouraged by US policy despite occasional grumbles about cost-sharing WHICH WERE NOT ACTED UPON BECAUSE US POLICYMAKERS KNEW THE SYSTEM WAS IN FACT BENEFICIAL TO THE US. (Sorry for the all-caps, I felt trumpian for a few seconds). But the way in which Trump blew up American alliances and then proceeded to use the chaos for strategic advantage really positions the US as an enemy power in the view of many if not most Europeans.
So yes of course any new policy direction will be resisted by those who benefit from the previous state of affairs. But that does not say anything about the value of both the old and the new policy. Also the change just reboots the machine as a new beneficiary replaces the old. So frankly, you basically pointed out something quite obvious and selected a few examples where the new could be better than the old (I could not agree more with your take on universities for instance) but did not say anything really relevant on whether or not in aggregate this is for the best.
Though the argument is not that there is no value to the United States in the existing geopolitical arrangement or that Trump's possible implosion (I think it's still too early to say how this will play out) of that arrangement will in fact be beneficial. What I'm struck by is not that there's no case to be made, but how unable or unwilling the defenders of the status quo are to make such a case. Hence, my point about their reflexive conservatism.
Maybe that is much of the reason why the ‘political middle’ has been so ‘hollowed out’ lately. I don’t follow political messaging in Europe to the degree I do in the USA, but I expect that much of it is similar, crying out for the defense of existing institutions, without explaining what they are for, and why people should want them. That’s a very unsatisfactory starting point for people who strongly feel that the system isn’t working for them.
The people, parties, and policies located in the middle of the 20th century political spectrum are now sitting farther away from the center. They are in a ‘conservative’ wing that wants to preserve Neoliberalism (broadly encompassing economic and social values), treating it as an optimal form of Liberal Democracy, but not putting much effort into defending it. Their tacit claim is ‘it works, and if you break it, you’ll unleash forces that will hurt you.’
The other side of today’s political spectrum has a much easier messaging task. All they have to do is promise to fix something widely perceived as being broken. They can easily avoid specifics about policy, and so far, their audience is extremely forgiving of contradictions, misstatements, and mistakes.
Liberal Democracy has always struggled to provide simple answers to complex problems, and the increasingly complexity of our modern economy and media scape only serves to increase the appeal of politicians and pundits willing to overly simplify and pander to a constituency.
The ‘new Conservatives’/‘old Neoliberals’ have done themselves no favors by reflexively but uncompellingly defending their top-heavy and out-of-touch institutions, even when attacks are based at least in part on legitimate criticisms.
Fair enough. The American Left is rudderless and discovers, after dominating the culture for decades, that it does not stand for much anymore, except wokeism at the fringes, and then mostly without much conviction because almost everybody now understands without necessarily admitting it that it was one of those bouts of puritanical hysteria that periodically rocks the US. The Left hardly understands the value of the “ancien régime” which it continually criticised and contributed very little to: it also has nothing to replace it with. And you are right, that is why they do not even try to defend it. What you call conservatism I would call decadence. The real question is who will take up the mantle of (real) liberalism. Hard to say at this point. There seems to be more willingness on the Right than on the Left but at the moment it’s a very limited number of never-Trump intellectuals. Speaking as a European, liberalism is an ideological super-weapon that the US will regret having let slip from its hands. We’ll make good use of it, also against the US.
Very insightful article. The obvious question is that if "liberal" and "conservative" are now inaccurate and useless for describing the current political dynamic then how do we describe what is really going on?
I am a big fan of the "brokenist" theory, first advanced by Alanah Newhouse at Tablet and explored in more detail by Oliver Wise at The Free Press.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-everything-is-broken-administration
Trump has put together a coalition of outsiders/brokenists whose primary commonality is a belief that the status quo is broken, not in the traditional liberal sense of social justice concerns such as income inequality or racism but that the system is failing. The belief that the government is facilitating illegal immigration leading to increased homelessness, crime and social disorder? Brokenist, because the government/status quo is responsible for the chaos. The rise in crime? Brokenist, because again government/elite policy (lenient DA's, reducing funding for policing or otherwise handicapping law enforcement) are to blame. The criminal and civil charges against Trump? Brokenist, in the sense of "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." The critical element in the brokenist's world view is not that the system is unfair, as the old progressives would argue, but that it is in decline and in danger of complete failure.
The brokenist argument is appealing to me because it accounts for the seeming inconsistencies in Trump's base of support. The popular media narrative is that MAGA is primarily working class whites with no college education. But Trump has also managed to pick up significant support from Silicon Valley: Elon Musk, David Sacks, Andreesen, Palmer Lucky, etc. Not only are they some of the wealthiest people in the country but they are also knowledge workers who disproportionately hold degrees, often advanced, in subjects like physics or computer science. Brokenism transcends socioeconomic class and educational attainment.
It also transcends political affiliation as Trump picked up Democratic dissidents like Tulsi Gabbard (singled out for retaliation by the old political order) and RFK Jr. At the same time so-called "paleo-Republicans" like Lynne Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, defenders of the status quo, gladly volunteered for the Harris campaign.
If conservatism is a series of “irritable mental gestures” then what is conspiratorial thinking but a series of even more irritable gestures? Whatever the democratic nature of a program like Rogan’s, in the case of some of his crankier guests, one man’s view of the traditional media as elite gatekeepers is another man’s sense of having some goddam standards and not wasting people’s time.
Sure, but note that I have no problem with gatekeepers in principle; it does create certain tensions for those who are notionally committed to an egalitarian ethos, however.
I wonder how much less of that tension there’d be if a rank liar hadn’t become president, who of course has to be covered by the media. I can imagine it’s hard for any self respecting media type to feel proud of a solid commitment to egalitarianism if that weakens the other commitment to broadcasting truths.
Maybe that is much of the reason why the ‘political middle’ has been so ‘hollowed out’ lately. I don’t follow political messaging in Europe to the degree I do in the USA, but I expect that much of it is similar, crying out for the defense of existing institutions, without explaining what they are for, and why people should want them. That’s a very unsatisfactory starting point for people who strongly feel that the system isn’t working for them.
The people, parties, and policies located in the middle of the 20th century political spectrum are now sitting farther away from the center. They are in a ‘conservative’ wing that wants to preserve Neoliberalism (broadly encompassing economic and social values), treating it as an optimal form of Liberal Democracy, but not putting much effort into defending it. Their tacit claim is ‘it works, and if you break it, you’ll unleash forces that will hurt you.’
The other side of today’s political spectrum, a coalition of different cultural constituencies currently united in their disdain for Liberalism, has a much easier messaging task. All they have to do is promise to fix something widely perceived as being broken. They can easily avoid specifics about policy, and so far, their audience is extremely forgiving of contradictions, misstatements, and mistakes.
Liberal Democracy has always struggled to provide simple answers to complex problems, and the increasingly complexity of our modern economy and media scape only serves to increase the appeal of politicians and pundits willing to overly simplify and pander to a constituency.
The ‘new Conservatives’/‘old Neoliberals’ have done themselves no favors by reflexively but uncompellingly defending their top-heavy and out-of-touch institutions, even when attacks are based at least in part on legitimate criticisms.
Great essay, really appreciate you unpacking the contradictions in how people perceive these terms.
On the surface, one issue with conservatism (and progressivism) is that their content is dependent on the status quo. But do you think there are any substantive more differences between the two that cannot be explained by someone's position in relation to the status quo?
The fence example seems interesting: some of us trust the wisdom of those that came before us, of institutions, custom and precedent. Others do not see why things should be a certain way, and relentlessly strive towards optimising society.
Interesting article but you are seriously overstating your case. The most important issue you do not pick up is the total overturning of the values the US, the world’s oldest democracy, stood for. What enrages people about the Zelenskyy incident is not Ukraine as such, a country that as you point out most Americans barely knew existed until five minutes ago. It is that Trump and Vance violate norms that reflect how the US used to see itself and by doing so move the country to the other side of the geopolitical board.
Similarly, Europeans did know that the status quo could not last. This status quo was actively encouraged by US policy despite occasional grumbles about cost-sharing WHICH WERE NOT ACTED UPON BECAUSE US POLICYMAKERS KNEW THE SYSTEM WAS IN FACT BENEFICIAL TO THE US. (Sorry for the all-caps, I felt trumpian for a few seconds). But the way in which Trump blew up American alliances and then proceeded to use the chaos for strategic advantage really positions the US as an enemy power in the view of many if not most Europeans.
So yes of course any new policy direction will be resisted by those who benefit from the previous state of affairs. But that does not say anything about the value of both the old and the new policy. Also the change just reboots the machine as a new beneficiary replaces the old. So frankly, you basically pointed out something quite obvious and selected a few examples where the new could be better than the old (I could not agree more with your take on universities for instance) but did not say anything really relevant on whether or not in aggregate this is for the best.
Though the argument is not that there is no value to the United States in the existing geopolitical arrangement or that Trump's possible implosion (I think it's still too early to say how this will play out) of that arrangement will in fact be beneficial. What I'm struck by is not that there's no case to be made, but how unable or unwilling the defenders of the status quo are to make such a case. Hence, my point about their reflexive conservatism.
Maybe that is much of the reason why the ‘political middle’ has been so ‘hollowed out’ lately. I don’t follow political messaging in Europe to the degree I do in the USA, but I expect that much of it is similar, crying out for the defense of existing institutions, without explaining what they are for, and why people should want them. That’s a very unsatisfactory starting point for people who strongly feel that the system isn’t working for them.
The people, parties, and policies located in the middle of the 20th century political spectrum are now sitting farther away from the center. They are in a ‘conservative’ wing that wants to preserve Neoliberalism (broadly encompassing economic and social values), treating it as an optimal form of Liberal Democracy, but not putting much effort into defending it. Their tacit claim is ‘it works, and if you break it, you’ll unleash forces that will hurt you.’
The other side of today’s political spectrum has a much easier messaging task. All they have to do is promise to fix something widely perceived as being broken. They can easily avoid specifics about policy, and so far, their audience is extremely forgiving of contradictions, misstatements, and mistakes.
Liberal Democracy has always struggled to provide simple answers to complex problems, and the increasingly complexity of our modern economy and media scape only serves to increase the appeal of politicians and pundits willing to overly simplify and pander to a constituency.
The ‘new Conservatives’/‘old Neoliberals’ have done themselves no favors by reflexively but uncompellingly defending their top-heavy and out-of-touch institutions, even when attacks are based at least in part on legitimate criticisms.
Fair enough. The American Left is rudderless and discovers, after dominating the culture for decades, that it does not stand for much anymore, except wokeism at the fringes, and then mostly without much conviction because almost everybody now understands without necessarily admitting it that it was one of those bouts of puritanical hysteria that periodically rocks the US. The Left hardly understands the value of the “ancien régime” which it continually criticised and contributed very little to: it also has nothing to replace it with. And you are right, that is why they do not even try to defend it. What you call conservatism I would call decadence. The real question is who will take up the mantle of (real) liberalism. Hard to say at this point. There seems to be more willingness on the Right than on the Left but at the moment it’s a very limited number of never-Trump intellectuals. Speaking as a European, liberalism is an ideological super-weapon that the US will regret having let slip from its hands. We’ll make good use of it, also against the US.