A leftist on how we got to Trump

From a review of always-thoughtful Mark Lilla’s 2018 book on how to revive liberalism. The question, says Samuel Moyn, is: “How did we get here? Much depends on how one narrates the path from 1968 to Trump’s election.”

Moyn’s suggestion is:

‘After 1968, disaster set in. Faced with the sins of Vietnam, the Democrats flirted with ending Cold War militarism only to double down on it. The critique of the welfare state, not the demand for its extension, prevailed. A toxic brew of white identity politics, a rhetoric of “family values” and “personal responsibility,” and, above all, anti-statist economics wafted across party lines. Fifty years later, Donald Trump is in the White House, embattled but victorious.’

Four weirdnesses are packed into this brief excerpt:

1. The claimed causal connection: Is it that (a) Trump embodies family values? personal responsibility? anti-statist economics? Or (b) those are what his official statements and policies are about, even if he personally is disconnected from them? Or (c) that people voted for him on those grounds? All very odd claims to make. (The white identity politics claim about Trump has some traction, though, in my view.)

2. Only “white” versions of identity politics are important in that fifty years? That (a) opposition to identity politics dominated culturally for generations (even while intellectuals nurtured identity politics). (b) That whites in large numbers voted for Obama and non-whites for Trump. That (c) perhaps the most fervent apostles of identity politics include those advocating non-white and anti-white versions? Those factors count for little?

3. What is and is not put in scare quotes: “family values” and “personal responsibility,” are put in distancing marks but not white identity politics and anti-statist economics. Only the latter two are real phenomena, while the former two are fake or suspicious?

4. “Toxic” ideas include “personal responsibility,” “family values,” and, “anti-statist economics.” A standard definition: “tox·ic, adjective, poisonous. ‘the dumping of toxic waste’
synonyms: poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, pernicious.”

The author does not develop this pregnant contextualizing suggestion, but it’s so hard to read the review further when it’s not at all clear, at minimum, that he and Lilla are trying to explain the same thing.

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