What this moment may have revealed, ironically enough, is that only in a time of stability and outrageous decadence could the United States have had the luxury of picking such a dark and divisive candidate with the intellectual firepower of a water gun.-Jennifer Senior
That was far beside the point of the junior Senior's column yesterday, thus I ignored it, but it stuck in my mind. At once I thought I understood it.
I have recalled many times since my brother-the-klansman emailing me how exciting he found the battle of the insults in GOP primary debates in early 2016.
The end of the no-drama-Obama presidency was a time of extraordinary stability, of good feeling, within the United States, in her relations with other nations, and worldwide. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize having barely been sworn in as president. We had not assassinated him; he had not only survived eight years but had succeeded. "It is a miracle," my translator said to me in a cab in Beijing after the 2008 election, and you could hear similar sentiments anywhere you went in the world. Race relations in the U.S. were on an historically unprecedented seven-year plane of stability. We seemed, truly seemed, to have escaped our birth curse at last. We had emerged from the Great Recession, enacted comprehensive health care for all, come together with Asia, drawn down wars, had even brought Iran to wary detente. Peace, emerging prosperity, stability, all with no drama.
"Only in a time of stability and outrageous decadence could the U.S. have the luxury" of choosing Donald Trump as successor. I have puzzled over Ms Senior's use of "decadence." This wasn't the fin de siecle, it wasn't the '60's. But not to quibble. I take her point. Only at such a time could we afford to manufacture drama, to invent crises--Mexicans! Shriek!. Only at such a time could we permit ourselves the luxury to see excitement rather than appalling unfitness in Lyin' Ted Cruz, Little Marco Rubio, and a man selling fake watches from inside his coat on a Manhattan street. It was as if we believed that no man could bring that all down and to prove it we will choose a clown to run things. Were not the American revolutionaries the most prosperous and the most free of all peoples on earth? What do you do with that if you're an American? You manufacture crises and rebel, of course. Every four years, Tocqueville wrote, Americans work themselves into a frenzied fever. It is as if we need it, we need to struggle, we cannot stand peace and prosperity, freedom and liberty, good will. Only then, and only we, have license to be rebels without cause, to tempt fate.
That was far beside the point of the junior Senior's column yesterday, thus I ignored it, but it stuck in my mind. At once I thought I understood it.
I have recalled many times since my brother-the-klansman emailing me how exciting he found the battle of the insults in GOP primary debates in early 2016.
The end of the no-drama-Obama presidency was a time of extraordinary stability, of good feeling, within the United States, in her relations with other nations, and worldwide. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize having barely been sworn in as president. We had not assassinated him; he had not only survived eight years but had succeeded. "It is a miracle," my translator said to me in a cab in Beijing after the 2008 election, and you could hear similar sentiments anywhere you went in the world. Race relations in the U.S. were on an historically unprecedented seven-year plane of stability. We seemed, truly seemed, to have escaped our birth curse at last. We had emerged from the Great Recession, enacted comprehensive health care for all, come together with Asia, drawn down wars, had even brought Iran to wary detente. Peace, emerging prosperity, stability, all with no drama.
"Only in a time of stability and outrageous decadence could the U.S. have the luxury" of choosing Donald Trump as successor. I have puzzled over Ms Senior's use of "decadence." This wasn't the fin de siecle, it wasn't the '60's. But not to quibble. I take her point. Only at such a time could we afford to manufacture drama, to invent crises--Mexicans! Shriek!. Only at such a time could we permit ourselves the luxury to see excitement rather than appalling unfitness in Lyin' Ted Cruz, Little Marco Rubio, and a man selling fake watches from inside his coat on a Manhattan street. It was as if we believed that no man could bring that all down and to prove it we will choose a clown to run things. Were not the American revolutionaries the most prosperous and the most free of all peoples on earth? What do you do with that if you're an American? You manufacture crises and rebel, of course. Every four years, Tocqueville wrote, Americans work themselves into a frenzied fever. It is as if we need it, we need to struggle, we cannot stand peace and prosperity, freedom and liberty, good will. Only then, and only we, have license to be rebels without cause, to tempt fate.
