Modernity and its Discontents

As a postscript to the above post on the Suleimani assassination, Nicholas Kristof, writing for the Times, recaps the results of the action: [1] ·        Iran has cast off nuclear curbs so that it is now potentially within five months of having enough fuel for a nuclear warhead, down from almost 15 years when Trump took office. ·        United States forces may be pushed out of Iraq, allowing Suleimani to achieve in death one of his foremost goals in life. ·        American forces in Syria may be difficult to support without the military presence in Iraq, so some or all of them might pull out as well, another strategic victory for Iran. ·        The military campaign against ISIS is on hold, giving terrorists a chance to regroup. ·        Iran’s regime, which had been threatened by enormous protests at home and in Iraq,...

As a factor of political and social instability, to lose a war is perhaps the most obvious form of humiliation, but the United States has never really lost a war, at least not in the classical sense where the national sovereignty is impugned and one nation finds itself subject to another.   In each of our three major wars, our own Civil War, the first World War, and the second World War, there was a clear victor in the classical sense.   The North prevailed over the South, and thenceforth the South became something a subject people, politically reintegrated into the union, while remaining culturally distinct.   There is much that can be said about our Civil War, and much has been said.   Suffice it to say that the painful lessons learned during our own period of reconstruction have not been fully overcome, now almost two centuries later, as exemplified by the contentious battle over the heritage represented by confederate statues in confederate states.   The ...

The Politics of Grievance David Roth, “Making Sense of Donald Trump’s Petulant Reign,” New Republic , June 12, 2019. There seem to be two aspects to Donald Trump’s personality.   The first, and the one that connects him to the Evangelical communities, is the messianic.   He believes himself to be, in effect, the chosen one sent to redeem and repair America. [1]    The secular version of the messiah is, of course, the superhero, and Roth begins his piece recounting a (blessedly) failed animated series called Trump Takeover: The Ultimate Power Trip , in which “Trump was taking over everything and making it better.”    One pitched episode has Trump and his team “’uncovering a global financial conspiracy’ and ends with them triumphantly taking control of the stock market ‘to save the world economy from total ruin.’”    Another, more pertinent example, “’Politically Corrected,’ begins with ‘America … in a state of virtual collapse,’ which is...