Culture Wars

Drove My Chevy to the Levee

In a post entitled Bye Bye Miss American Pie I wrote that traditional America contracted a terminal disease in the twenties and died in the sixties. Don McLean sang the funeral dirge and Marshall McLuhan wrote the obituary. The terminal disease was liberation fever, and the demon spirit that took possession of the corpse is consumer capitalism. American culture
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Albee’s “The Goat” or A Discourse on Ontological Dizziness

[Ed. note: I posted this originally in 2018, but I was reminded of it by Will Arbery's play that I wrote recently about. Both are about challenging in interesting ways the more superficial presuppositions of the late modern cosmopolitan imaginary.] Last weekend I saw a very good student production of Edward Albee's The Goat or
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Heroes of the Fourth Turning

I have just read Will Arbery's intriguing play. I haven't seen it on stage. I read an interview with Arbery in Vox, which motivated me to purchase the play.which I read the other day. I come out of the Catholic world, and this blog represents what I hope is an intellectually coherent presentation of a
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Waiting for the Music

Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be. National narratives, like personal ones, are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride, shame, self-blindness. There is never just one—they compete and constantly change. The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up
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Boredom, Dionysos, and the Ethic of Authenticity

For people like Trump there is no good or bad; there is only boring and entertaining, and so anything is permitted so long as it is entertaining. The only sin is to be a bore, and it is better to be a boor than a bore. This is a truth someone like Matt Gaetz well
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Filibuster Bust

“I predict to you your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake.” —Joe Biden If this seems hyperbolic, then you really haven't a clue about the significance of the moment. It's understandable–we all tend to
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How Does this End Well?

The big question for me going forward is to what degree the craziness of the hard right in this country will retain the level of legitimacy it now enjoys? A related question is what has to happen for its grip on so many Americans to loosen? The answer to the second question is foundational for
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Proud Boys See the Trump Truth

After the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Trump. In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail
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Why Trump?

Why? Why has Trump, of all people, evoked such devotion from so many Americans who should know better? Why do so many decent Americans identify with a man who is so blatantly indecent? What's at stake for them? What part of their souls have they surrendered to him? Why is the prospect of a Biden
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From Edsall’s Column This Morning:

Bernard Grofman, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, put it this way in an email: We would not have Trump as president if the Democrats had remained the party of the working class. The decline of labor unions proceeded at the same rate when Democrats were president as when Republicans were president;
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