How many articles have your read or conversations have you been a part of where the theme is some version of “the loss of civility” or “an increase of nastiness/mean-spiritedness” or the “loss of shared norms of behavior (a.k.a. ‘manners’)” in today’s America?
At the time of the Watergate scandal (circa 1973-1974) we had a capacity to be scandalized by President Nixon’s law breaking and lies. We had a shared sense of right and wrong. It was, after all, his fellow Republicans who told him he had to go. Norms and moral codes might be broken, but we had them. Today, behaviors far worse than Nixon’s are blown off and ignored.
How did we get here? Many attribute our current state to Donald Trump. Yes, he has infused a lot of nastiness into our common life, while normalizing lying and self-dealing.
But he is more an expression of a societal sea-change than the cause of it. Nor are our normlessness and incivility limited to national politics. They have seeped into most everything — behavior on the roads and in classrooms, at sports events and in local civic life. In churches, too. Sure, there are lots of decent people doing good work and being considerate, but it sometimes seems they are the exception rather than the rule.
While there is no single or simple answer to explain how we got here, ideas have played a role. Specifically, a school of thought became prevalent in the late 20th century that reduced everything to power. According to this idea, there is no truth, not really. There is only power. There is no legitimate authority, only power. There are no objective facts, but only narratives that support or diminish one group’s power over others.
There’s a heady term for all this constellation of ideas: post-modernism. In a recent excellent article, the Brooking Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch traced the evolution of post-modernism. In particular, Rauch explains how a movement that was mostly identified with the political left has now found a home on the political right. Rauch’s article is titled, “The Woke Right Stands at the Door.”
Here’s a description of the post-modern idea or take on things:
“[Post-modernism] adopts a radically skeptical epistemology, viewing all claims to capital-T truth . . . as assertions of power: efforts by dominant social actors to impose and legitimize their own, often oppressive, agendas. Wherever you see a truth claim, you should unmask it: look behind it to see whom it might benefit . . . modernism [post-modernism’s precursor] wants to assess claims, not claimants; postmodernism reverses the emphasis. ‘Who were the scientists?’ ‘What color were they? What gender? What country are they in? What biases do they have?’”
There is a place for skepticism. Absolutely. In theological terms, we are talking about unmasking “idolatry.” Idolatry is claiming ultimacy for that which is not ultimate, claiming too much for a particular social arrangement or earthly authority. But like all virtues, this skepticism, when pushed too far or too single-mindedly, flips over and becomes a vice. In this case the vice is cynicism, believing that everyone is motivated always and only by self-interest and anything else is merely insincere posing. No one can be trusted. It’s all just smoke and mirrors to justify powerful people getting their way.
This approach became dominant in the American academic world and elite schools in the 80’s and 90’s. To academics it offers an edginess and sense of being on the side of the downtrodden. Radical skepticism is heady stuff!
But post-modernism has also evolved, morphing into a second wave, which Rauch describes this way:
“Radical skepticism is like the acid that eats through every container. And sure enough, postmodernism’s skepticism undermined itself. How could it be for anything if all truth claims, including its own, are masks for power? The answer came in what Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay in their book, Cynical Theories, identify as a second wave of postmodernism, which—handily enough—exempted itself from skepticism.”
With second-wave post-modernism:
“Identity and oppression now took center stage. Society is best understood not as an association of autonomous individuals but as congeries of groups contending for dominance and organized into hierarchies. All people fall into one of two categories: the oppressors or the oppressed.
“Because some groups dominate and oppress others, not all standpoints are suspect; marginalized groups’ vision is less distorted by the dominant narrative. Identity thus confers expertise and oppression confers authority. Now equipped with a worldview which justified their own claims of epistemic privilege, second-wave activists welded onto the original postmodernist engine an assortment of progressive ideologies, including post-colonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and intersectionality.”
The words, “Identity thus confers expertise and oppression confers authority” describe the way that postmodernism exempted itself from its own radical skepticism and became what we know as “Woke.” It explains how campus protestors could hail a group like Hamas as “freedom fighters.” And woe to any who might challenge this. “Objecting to Woke’s hypocrisy, inconsistency, and empirical shoddiness,” comments Rauch, “got you mocked, disqualified, and personally attacked. However philosophically unintelligible Woke may have been, its rhetorical virality and sheer aggressiveness conquered the intelligentsia with astonishing speed.”
In Part Two of “Reaping the Whirlwind” I will turn to the way in which the postmodern ethos has come to influence the political right, leading to the paradoxical development of “The Woke Right.”
To return to the questions I raised at the beginning, the skeptical/cynical ethos of postmodernism — “Wherever you see a truth claim you should unmask it,” and it is all just self-interest–has devolved into a general cynicism and nihilism, the “acid that eats through every container.” All claims of truth, objective fact and legitimate authority (unless made by victims of oppression) are out the window. Reality is up to you to define for yourself or your tribe.
This leaves us in a world trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence, with people and groups shouting at one another, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” “And, F — you, anyhow!” “Get out of my way!” No truth, no shared facts, no norms, no authority (almost always a dirty word), just power, raw and naked power. Ergo: Trump, not cause but symptom and manifestation.
Whether in the classroom or the courtroom, in the office or on an airplane, it is an anxious and dangerous world especially for the most vulnerable. We are now reaping the whirlwind.*
*The phrase “reaping the whirlwind” comes from the Bible, the prophet Hosea, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7)
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I never embraced postmodernism – too much formulaic deconstructing and not enough thoughtful analysis. But it seems even sillier to me that one would blame our current neofascist moment on Foucault, Derrida, and other rather marginal, unpopular critics of the Enlightenment. We are here because of a few literary critics? Really??
Walter,
What is your explanation?
PS That’s not to say I agree with the exact analysis of this article. I’m puzzled too. And haven’t read Rauch.
But I think I see a common denominator on both left and right and that is “cheap cynicism” …. an ignorant but pseudo-sophisticated “Oh yeah, there is a plot going on & X is behind it all”.
So what do you think is happening?
Thanks for asking, David. First, I don’t think this problem is entirely new. There has always been a deep strain of resentful anti-intellectualism or anti-expertise in our political culture. (See Richard Hofstader’s work on this.) Unlike Asia, where I’ve also spent a lot of time, Americans long have thought their personal opinions were as valid as anyone’s — and should be expressed loudly, despite what the “authorities” or “experts” might believe. (Democracy!) But I think this quality in our culture has become more toxic since the late 1970s due to rising inequality, the increasing aloofness (and cluelessness) of the professional-managerial class (of which I am definitely a part), and due to the anomie associated with automation, globalization, and the deepening erosion of traditional values. The expansion of alternative “media” (FB, Twitter, T Social, Instagram, TikTok, etc) has supercharged this already explosive cocktail. Blaming postmodernism (a strain of thinking in the humanities, mostly in the 80s and 90s) seems, to me, kinda silly.
Walter.
Interesting.
Not persuasive but let me ponder further.
What I keep asking is “How did we elect Obama in 2012
(and fairly decisively — 51.1% of the popular vote to Romney 47.2%)
and then Trump in 2024
(also less decisively — 49.8% of the popular vote to Harris 48.3%)?
I don’t understand it except THE major change seems to me is “identity politics” and more particularly “gender identity”.
Do I have a complete theory? No way. But I think a way out of the mess has to be with Democrats rethinking DEI in total. And when I say rethinking I mean literally _rethinking_.
—
But anyway Walter, my follow up question is whether YOUR sense of the changes (such as anti-intellectualism) you see also appear in the left wing as well as in the right?
David: Except for his race, Obama was a mainstream Dem. What needs to be explained there? Trump, on the other hand, is not a mainstream R — especially in his 2024 rebirth. Trumpism is the thing requiring explanation. “Identity politics,” for me, explains almost nothing. Politics has always been about identity (including class identity). But we only began invoking this pejorative moniker when marginalized groups — especially black Americans, but also women and queer folks — began claiming for themselves a central place in our politics. As for DEI, don’t worry: Dems, especially older straight and white Dems, are radically rethinking what had become rather mainstream by 2020. The rather obvious idea that we should value racial, gender (and in my view, ideological) diversity, equity and inclusion has — remarkably — become controversial. Due to latent racism, sexism and queer-phobia, now catalyzed by Trumpism.
Your final comment/question is whether the Left is also guilty of the problems I have identified, especially “anti-intellectualism.” For better and worse, I think the answer is no. The Left is increasingly dominated by college-educated folks, meaning intellectuals. This makes them less likely to embrace insane conspiracy theories (like climate change is a hoax; vaccines create autism; elections are rigged when my candidate loses; etc). Of course, there is a small slice of the Left that does this (9-11 trutherism; ACAB — “all cops are bastards,” etc etc.) — but these folks are a tiny splinter of the Democratic Party. Whereas Trumpism — with all its unhinged illogical — is the totality of the GOP. No comparison, I think.
The problem, for Dems, is that the smarty-pants approach of much of the Left is viewed, often correctly, as elitist, as know-it-all-ism. The Dem Party of 15 years ago (under Obama) included both college-educated and working class folks who despised or at least distrusted the rich. Now the Dems are increasingly a fraction of the rich or relatively well-to-do. This is not a winning coalition. And is not a likeable coalition because it is aloof and finger-wagging.
BTW, none of this has to do with postmodernism.
This is an outstanding article which gives me a better understanding of how we devolved to the current mess we are in…..
And the path out of this morass is the second article to come.
I’m with Walter Hatch. Look at where we’re seeing the flowering of nasty and mean-spirited, and tell me the intellectuals and their deconstructions are behind it. Ha ha, no. I read a ways back that polled on the question of honesty among public figures, Republicans now find it significantly less important than they used to. Now the evangelical Christians have decided that empathy isn’t really a Christian virtue. What this is about is pretty obvious – an ascendancy of tribal loyalty that “trumps” more idealistic virtues.
Mr Hatch is right about the economic and societal context that nourishes this, but the roots go back behind the civil war. Slavery and Protestant Christianity may have been a fatal combination.
Thanks, Donn. Like you, I think an honest, thoughtful analysis of our coarse, unkind, and even neo-fascist politics in America must acknowledge its continuity. Hello? We not only had a period of history where we enslaved black people and treated them as subhumans, we had a subsequent period in which we gathered together in grotesque celebrations as we hung those black people from trees (see Terry Anne Scott, “Lynching and Leisure”). What we are witnessing today is scary and discomfiting. But it is far from new or surprising.
Woke leadership goes back to Eisenhower, who sent troops to Little Rock. That and the following civil rights evolution in the ’60s could have put the federal government in the position of the surgeon that operates on and heals that festering century old wound, but it doesn’t work that way in America. Falwell, mad about his segregated academies, brought us the Moral Majority and Reagan. Etc. Education and policy went kind of adrift, as their imperative could no longer be public consensus.
All because of lies. Other countries have had slavery – Brazil in particular, had more and longer, and of course it has done harm to their society, but not like this. They have racial prejudice, but they don’t have the race myth we have, that we’re so susceptible to because of our fundamentals.
Donn,
“Woke leadership goes back to Eisenhower…”
Huh?
I think that’s stretching the definition of “woke” way beyond a reasonable boundary.
David: No, it’s not. Before backlash Americans like Trump and Tony began using “woke” as a pejorative, the term was used by black activists to describe a commitment to civil rights. Ike was definitely “woke.”
Post-modernism may not be the cause of our malaise, but it is at least the movie score that accompanies it. Most of the observations in this piece are familiar to me (I have read *Cynical Theories*), but the likening of post-modernist politics to a perpetual (or at least protracted) adolescence was novel and refreshing. >This leaves us in a world trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence, with people and groups shouting at one another, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” “And, F — you, anyhow!” “Get out of my way!”<
One influence I have noticed is reality television. Producers have found a cheap way to get an audience: put multiple strangers together in competition with one another. Ensure that everyone in the cast has a personality that thinks poorly of others. Record and broadcast all the times when one contestant disses another. Make sure that no contestant ever is seen supporting another person or saying something complimentary. The message is clear. You need to be mean and hyper-competitive to succeed. Nice guys finish last. This is the America of the 21st century.