Maturity

So Nancy Pelosi told Donald Trump he couldn’t give the State of the Union until the shutdown is over. Then he told her she can’t go on her trip until it’s over. I’m glad our government is run by such mature people.

If I ever run for president, one of my promises will be to always do the State of the Union as a written document, not as a speech. If I remember correctly, that’s what all presidents did until Woodrow Wilson, one of our worst presidents. The deal where the president makes a big, televised speech only contributes to our unhealthy deification of the presidency.

(My campaign slogan will be: “I’m not going to solve your problems.” My reason for running would be that too many people are looking for a president to take care of them, but no one could vote for me with that illusion.)

What he said

Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad

But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements.  And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.

The postwar era saw the creation of international institutions ranging from NATO to the United Nations to the World Bank, along with a proliferation of think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to accompany them. It saw the vast expansion of higher education in the United States, and the transformation of academic degrees into something close to must-haves for the upper-middle class. It saw a great expansion of power on the part of media organizations, and on the part of government bureaucrats and lobbyists, both of whose numbers increased enormously.

But after the turn of the millennium, other Americans, much like the workers and peasants in the old Soviet Union, started to notice that while the New Class was doing quite well (America’s richest counties now surround Washington, D.C.), things weren’t going so well for them. And what made it more upsetting was that — while the Soviet Union’s apparatchiks at least pretended to like the workers and peasants — members of America’s ruling class seemed to view ordinary Americans with something like contempt, using terms such as “bitter clingers,” “deplorables” and flyover people.

I think this is exactly right. There’s a lot I don’t like about Donald Trump, but he has spoken for and to people who our economy and culture have been leaving behind. Until those of us with good educations and urban lifestyles learn some humility and develop some respect for the people not like us, things will only get worse.

Vale MMXVIII, Ave MMXIX

Well, it was a crazy year. I have hopes that the next one will be better, though.