Lyons' essay seems like yet another example of the sort of overwritten, pompous positing that has become a hallmark of Trumpist apologist-intellectuals.
It seems pretty obvious to me that in just about any other era, Trump would be recognized as the fraud, huckster, and ignoramus he so obviously is. He's a product of a tawdry late-20th century entertainment tabloid culture that nevertheless managed to seduce a lot of people. He's no man of action, nor any sort of epoch-defining figure, and the fact that he's hated by half the country doesn't prove it, though men like Lyons like to think it does. Sometimes people are just hated because they're awful, and sometimes the damage they wreak is just damage.
American Evangelicals seem to universally downplay or ignore their ongoing and deliberate cheapening of the Christian faith by their nearly unconditional support for Trump and his imitators. By lionizing the repeated commission of literally every sin in the book, what sort of message are they sending to potential converts? To their own children? Sin is delightful--for me--but not for thee?
Well this is exactly it. His movement is a movement of unapologetic sin: lying, wrath, pride, jealousy, hate... even the sort of sexual sinning the evangelicals so righteously denounce, in the form of degenerates like Hegseth, RFK, or indeed Trump himself. I don't know how these right-wing "deep thinkers" manage to convince themselves MAGA is some sort of righteous movement of salvation. Again, in any other era, this wouldn't even be considered a difficult question.
My religious relatives keep bringing up King David as their example - in their telling, Trump and David were both great sinners who nevertheless did God's will despite their flaws. I think it's self-serving nonsense, because the Biblical David tried to live a virtuous life but was flawed; while the Cheeto very plainly doesn't try at all. But they do have their own logic that's not quite as cynical as it seems.
Well put. I too have Evangelicals in my family. All of whom are good people. But who don't seem to even consider that Trump's incessant lying & cheating are actually doing the will of Beelzebub. Trump is either the Antichrist, or the one who precedes him.
It's also a tribal thing, "He may be a unrepentant sinner; but he's OUR sinner, making us happy by transferring government money to our churches, letting us break 501c law, and trying to give each of us no-strings-attached cash to homeschool our kids."
Cyrus. It's supposed to be Cyrus who was the secular king who was used by God. David was the direct linear descendant of Abraham. This is standard 90's bad apologetics. Seems like we can't even remember the old excuses anymore...
Yes, not much to learn from Lyons. J.K. Galbraith observed, in a previous century (and really nothing has changed), "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
And when we undress Trump 2.0, it's just Reaganist supply-side carried to its (il)logical conclusion - full speed ahead with cultural and race panics to distract from unfunded tax cuts for the rich and damn the national debt.
What's new is the geopolitical assaults on our Western allies and, in particular, the pandering to Putin's sick police state.
That slogan hit on something important but was rhetorically problematic: the message was, "you didn't build that ALONE" but the last word being left off makes it seem like people who actually did build stuff didn't accomplish anything. I know that people who craft these statements understand rhetoric better than I do and perhaps I'm wrong, but the slogan you reference was so easily misconstrued/countered that I can't help but think it was not well crafted.
"You didn't build anything" is a bit more difficult to counter, I think.
I wish you were more like Mark S from Severance but instead you're an awful person. Get a life, or troll elsewhere dude. You're not making inroads here perpetuating your bullshit worthless ideologies
One of your best essays in a while. As someone who is quite sympathetic to communitarian thinkers like Putnam and MacIntyre, it is both laughable and genuinely kind of heartbreaking to see so many of their purported acolytes defending an administration that is completely devoid of values or anything approaching virtue, either by modern or traditional standards.
It’s as if, in the intellectual void created by the Trump-induced death of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, these traditionalist conservative types see an opening to project their previously marginalized ideology onto Trump, but the shoe just doesn’t fit. Trump is neither credibly Christian, nor a family man, nor moral, nor even earnestly patriotic. The faction he most represents are not traditionalists but amoral, libertine Ugly American types like himself.
The conservative cope has been to dismiss his personal flaws by arguing that he still effectively serves their cause, but because Trump’s politics are basically an extension of his cruel and reprobate personality, the effect has been the opposite: in celebrating him, conservatives have not revived America’s traditional values but secularized, vulgarized and hollowed them out.
Lyons is basically correct that MAGA represents the long-suppressed thymos of politics as opposed to liberalism’s logos, but it pains me that he can’t see that this sort of thymotic politics is conducive not to building community but tearing it apart. Community and tradition are fueled by pathos. Fascism and radicalisms of all kinds are fueled by thymos. A politics based on bitter rage and action for action’s sake is more likely to get you the Russo-Ukrainian war (or indeed another World War) than a genuine revival of older virtues, assuming that is what he really cares about.
Based on my upbringing in a well to do, but not super-rich suburb of Boston in the nineties, I associate older virtues with an adherence to authority, and a belief that most authorities should be cis, hetero, white guys. I realize that some of these descriptors weren’t common back then, but as I’ve gotten older they seem to fit the case.
FWIW, I deeply appreciate the unfettered freedom of speech and thought that I had growing up, even when it led me, on a small handful of occasions, to say truly hateful things to peers my own age who absolutely deserved better.
I think that freedom ultimately helped me to develop a better set of moral principles, and to stick to them because they were organic to my own mental development, rather than being imposed from on high. At the same time though, I think back to an elementary school class where I declared that I was anti-Gay, not knowing that one of my classmates had lesbian parents. I still cringe at the recollection; I didn’t know her personally, but she seemed like a perfectly lovely person, and I still cringe at the recollections.
I’ve never taken Econ-101, but I read “Naked Economics” years ago, and I love the emphasis on tradeoffs. One person’s freedom is another person’s burden.
The 90s were a pretty intolerant time. However, the flipside was that -- in my vague recollection -- the "cis, hetero white guys" receiving this respect also felt some obligation back to the community and the country. You could appeal to them on moral grounds sometimes, even in favor of minority groups. (Not every single one of them, of course. There were plenty of racists and selfish assholes.) Today's version of right-wing politics almost demands that its adherents dump their morality out the airlock.
Damn, great stuff! I’m not a fan of the “older virtues,” because they tend to be cis, hetero, male and white. But some kind of contemporary, secular, and communal spirituality would definitely appeal to me.
This is excellent. There's so much to say on this. I'm increasingly of the belief that the greatest challenge for the generations of today is to find a way to rebuild the feelings of community, connection, and virtue (once promoted by religion) in the modern digitized world. If we can't find a way to do that we're doomed. MAGA and Lyons are totally wrong to believe Trump and their movement will do it. As you point out these people build nothing, and Trump himself is a corrupted seed to plant this renewal.
I think we really need to look at the Greatest Generation more closely, and read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam to get started.
Yeah, few things have radicalized me more than the Trump add about T being for you, while Kamala is for they/them. Meanwhile, Republicans are totally cool with cis white male rapists running the country. I’m not going to pretend to being a lifelong trans-rights advocate; I support trans-rights mainly because the ppl who want to destroy them are complete fucking assholes.
1. I was raised Catholic, and the pedophiliac sex abuse scandals which eventually went global hit when I was just entering early adulthood. I’m not against religion: I love the prayer of Saint Francis, and the Economist’s obituary of Kim Dae-jung is probably my favorite piece of journalism - https://www.economist.com/obituary/2009/08/27/kim-dae-jung. However, I do think that culturally powerful organizations which involve unsupervised adults having a lot of power over young ppl deserve very close scrutiny: College athletics programs have similar issues, for both female and male students (God help Trans-kids nowadays).
Hi everyone, Mark S is a troll that is here in bad faith! He's a poisonous individual who is in every Noah post trying to throw people off topic. Report him, do not engage, and move on.
If there is a god capable of producing this miraculous universe, they definitely would be capable of a more expansive understanding of humanity than your coarse comment reflects. Be better.
Nah, without exaggeration I think it’s the Civil Rights struggle of the 21st Century. Not because Trans-rights are more important than broad based rights/opportunities:/social status for everyone in general, but because they’ve become a centerpiece of cultural contention, and because Republicans routinely use dubious interpretations of trans-issues to justify their own misogyny and sexual violence against women. I’m really not a natural progressive, but in 2025 America I think it’s true that trans-rights are human rights.
What is dubious about (for example) following the Geneva Convention of 1949 and housing female prisoners separately from male prisoners?
We don't do this in blue states anymore. Today, any male prisoner (including a rapist of women) in a blue state can declare himself to be "trans" and housed in a women's prison.
And EVERY Democrat in Congress is on record as wanting this to be federal policy.
THAT is one example of what "trans rights" actually means in practice.
I would view particular trans-issues differently if America was approaching them from a generally trans-positive perspective. But since the overall perspective is negative, I suspect- reasonably I think - that a lot of the particular objections are driven by either transphobia, or by a desire to mask misogyny by invoking concerns about trans-ppl.
I do think that integrating trans-ppl into an overwhelmingly gender binary society will naturally create some perfectly reasonable tensions that should be resolved as reasonably as possible, while recognizing that invariably one side or the other is going to be a relative loser.
I’m fine with tradeoffs. I just think there’s a big difference between good faith and bad faith tradeoffs.
This is a canard, though; it's not an accurate description of what's happening. Yeah, the left can be overzealous about protecting trans rights to the point of ignoring some potential abuses. But the right seems to have this mental image of some beefy dude with stubble saying in a gravelly voice, "I just decided I'm a chick; where's the womens' showers at?" When that is REALLY not anything close to what's happening. By and large you're talking about people who have drastically altered their everyday lives and appearances and lived as women, and did so long before being convicted of a crime. And if I'm not mistaken, those blue states require psych evals at the very least.
Now, in a nation of over 330 million people, probably at least some bored male prisoners (as in, who do not and have never considered themselves women) have tried this. But I have seen no evidence that anyone like that has successfully declared himself a woman and been moved.
But even should one or two have succeeded (again, 330 million people, extremely unlikely events happen all the time), I seem to recall that the Geneva Convention says a few things about punishing a whole group for the actions (or imagined actions) of a few individuals...
I often wonder if the most extremist trans activists (like those who argue that convicted rapists should be able to self-ID as women and serve their sentences in women's prisons) are right-wing agents provocateurs.
I'm reminded of what happened in Scotland after the Scottish National Party (SNP) kicked out its former leader Alex Salmond after sexual harassment accusations: some members of the SNP started pushing fringe pro-trans positions, while Salmond started a new party Alba, which distinguished itself from the SNP with a transphobic stance.
Given that Salmond was defended at his sexual assault trial by Craig Murray (successfully, although Murray would subsequently be jailed for perverting the course of justice) and that Murray was both another sexual harasser and a notorious Russia apologist, how likely is it that both Salmond and the SNP's pro-trans extremists were on the Kremlin's payroll?
And another clue is that shortly afterwards the SNP has ran into money troubles: perhaps the Kremlin money that had helped build up the party was diverted to Alba?
"Trans" people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be.
This is a disability issue. It has nothing to do with "LGBTQIA+," let alone "Queer."
A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a deformity or disability. (As for "intersex"? Some people are born with eight toes.) And bullying or harming the disabled (or those with a genetic anomaly) is an atrocity in its own right.
None of this requires that we redefine “male” and “female,” or adopt terms like “cis” and “trans.”
All the rest is cosplay.
“Gender" (as distinct from biological sex) is a social fiction. Indeed, among gay males, drag is about repudiating and ridiculing the very notion of "gender identity" -- not “affirming” it.
Yes, I experience stereotypically "feminine" emotions -- but the operative word is "stereotypically"; those feelings don't make me female. Indeed, reconciling such feelings with respect for my male body has been absolutely crucial to my self-acceptance as a gay male.
Moreover, the implicitly adversarial notion of "Queer" (or some putative “LGBTQIA+ community”) is a self-serving, self-marginalizing corral into which we’ve been herded by “The Groups.” It dilutes and jeopardizes the hard-won, widespread acceptance (and self-esteem, as individuals) that gay people have otherwise already gained — along with our fight against those who once medicalized our condition. And those promoting that paradigm (thereby emboldening our adversaries) are running a protection racket, at our expense.
So, FWIW: Yes, I’ll pull up the ladder behind me when anyone (especially some apparatchik running a protection racket) starts clutching at my heels, dragging me down.
This seems to be a defining feature of the MAGA movement. A feel good neo-patriotic homage to the post-war period with absolutely no connection to the beliefs and policies of that time.
I don't think technology _necessarily_ resulted in a loss of religious identity; I think there were scenarios in which religion could have made itself more relevant as technology changed society as you describe. Churches could have recognized that and made it their duty to provide social cohesion, to call out dehumanizing influences and remind people of the importance of society.
Instead, I think organized religion in America met that trend halfway. Religion in the US got very cosy with the right wing. It was silent or complicit on big moral issues like the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis, and very loud on issues of sexuality that are really awfully minor in scripture. It largely refused to engage with technology, except to scold people about sexual matters. The American experience of religion has been that organized churches are just another part of right-wing power and generally unwilling to stand up to it on principle on which it ought to disagree. Which is fine if you're a business or other interest group, but when you claim to speak for God and still refuse to call out your buddies, when you say you represent the divine but never actually lead... well, it looks a bit shabby. They don't make demands on folks like Trump, because they know they're the junior partners here. As long as they never disagree, nobody knows they're not driving, right? So they let themselves be reduced to a sports jersey or a mascot, and at some level I think people recognize and respond to that.
The way in which American liberals turned away from a Christianity they saw as a tool of right-wing power, sounds like a milder version of how the Bolsheviks became anti-theists because the Russian Orthodox Church was basically an arm of the Tsarist regime (and note that following in this tradition it is now an arm of Putin's regime).
Technology ruins things. It also, as you yourself have written many times, has vasty improved people's lives across the globe. Humanity needs time to adjust to new realities, and 20 years in human terms is the blink of an eye. It's both the change and the pace of change that's overwhelmed the current generations' abilities to adapt and adjust. You can know both your neighbors and still chat with people across the globe, as we are doing here.
As for the ripping apart of communities and their close knit order, industrialization did a fine job of that hundreds of years ago: re-regulating household chores, child rearing, and the care of the elderly and our neighbors. Humanity hadn't really begun to fully recover from that when the latest technology revolution reset everything yet again. It's no wonder we have some level of chaos and false prophets in every available flavor.
According to my Athenian wife, in modern Greek usage "thymos" just means "anger". Which you could argue is part of the problem, that in the modern day people don't distinguish between constructive and destructive outlets for male energies.
Reading this, I recall that some translation of the Illiad is titled "The Wrath of Achilles". Certainly, Achilles had the ultimate in thymos. But he was also dead by the end of the war.
I’m not associated with this group but wouldn’t it be nice if the thumotic, leaders and followers alike, would enrich their personal psychology by attending…
“Why is everyone so angry these days? Are social media and political rhetoric fueling extremism and driving us apart? Join us to discuss what philosophy and psychology can each us about the rapidly escalating problem of anger.”
Is this intended irony? More than a few excellent essays employ understatement, e.g., “Corn-Pone Opinions,” by Mark Twain. In fact, Twain believed understatement was what made American humor unique.
The creator of the essay (Essais) form, Montaigne, frequently used understatement.
But let’s take a cursory look at the decline to disinformation. Walk the cat backward to one of the Greatest Generation who chose to not join the WWII troops in war with the claim of poor eyesight: Saint Reagan, and you’ll see that class warfare is as his stock in trade. He didn’t have any trouble reading cue cards from a decent distance. This has incrementally led us to the corporate oligarchs and monopolies that drive political polarization. Why his name adorns the Washington, DC International Airport is testimony to a long history of disinformation. “Ketchup is a vegetable.” “Welfare queens” “The nine most dangerous words in the English language. ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” And at the end of this road we have Saint Trump, who claimed he wasn’t fit for the draft because of bone spurs. I wonder how many holes of golf Trump has played in his lifetime. He’s still playing golf at age 79.
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
A little over twenty years ago, a group of conservatives were proposing a dramatic course of action that seemed to go against the basic rules that had been serving us well for decades. If you disagreed, you didn’t love America enough, you weren’t manly enough, you didn’t understand the big picture and the clash of civilizations and blah blah blah. Most importantly, you weren’t visionary enough to see the mystical magical world that lay around the corner once we got rid of the quaint old rules.
Of course the Iraq invasion was a disaster in exactly the obvious ways people said it would be a disaster.
It’s mind numbing that here we are again with visionary conservatives trying to sell us on some magical world if we just tear down the system that has lead to untold prosperity and peace.
Can we maybe just slow down illegal immigration and cool it with the woke excesses? We can always revisit NATO and, like, democracy if that doesn’t do the trick.
Yes, I am going to be 70 this year and I couldn't agree more with your critique of the automobile, television, iPhone and social media. See the movie, "Avalon". I really miss the first half of my life. Other cultures still have "family values"' not the ones conservatives talk about, the ones we had in the last century. Also I agree with your view that just burning down the house will not accomplish anything unless you have something to replace it with. The Maga party has no plans for the future, there will be nothing left for anyone if Trump and Musk continue on their path of destruction.
Dear Noah: I loved this column, and I’ll make the same pitch to you that I made to Nate Silver earlier today. Please start posting on Bluesky.
Consistent with your priors, it’s Saturday night. I’ve had a few beers, and I’m on my phone instead of engaging in meaningful, real world social life. So please forgive the cut and paste job below.
Bluesky is very liberal, and I grant that in more normal, and politically healthy times it probably wouldn’t be an appealing place for centrist, or center adjacent people. Personally, I was on X all last year until the election.
But if America as it actually exists today, as opposed to the imaginary America which is conjured up by Republicans, had to be run by either X or Bluesky users, I’d pick the Bluesky people by a light year.
I get that there is a long list of legitimate critiques of progressives, and even more so of super-online leftists. Personally, MeToo was the first big social movement that I fully bought into as an adult, and I was so annoyed that Democrats held Biden to a lower MeToo standard than Kavanaugh that I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote for Trump either, but I admit that I was so frustrated by the left in the summer of 2020 that part of me wanted Trump to win as a giant FU to progressives. Defund the police was the worst policy idea of my lifetime until DOGE, and the academic public health hypocrisy regarding the George Floyd protests was just too much to take. But then came Stop the Steal and Jan 6th - events which progressives had warned about in substance, even though they didn’t get the details right - and the world changed. And then Republicans followed it up with the most openly prejudiced and fascistic political campaign of my lifetime in 2024.
Consequently, my genuine issues with the progressive left have faded into the background as I’ve been confronted with the grim reality of MAGA unchained.
To sum up, I didn’t choose Bluesky due to natural disposition; I chose it because the alternative is so much worse.
Sean Kelleher postulated a world where the choice of leaders is either X or BlueSky users, which is a silly as postulating a world where the choice of leaders is Walmart shoppers or Whole Foods shoppers. I agree with him that MAGA and Woke are both bad alternatives, just as X and BlueSky also are both bad, but you don’t have to choose one of the two.
I see what you’re saying, and I agree that I’d rather live in an America ruled by Bluesky users than X users, but a big reason the Democrats have a brand in crisis is that center left politicians started talking their cues from social media shouters not their own constituents. By starving Bluesky of his attention, Noah is trying to model good epistemic hygiene.
> Bluesky is very liberal, and I grant that in more normal, and politically healthy times it probably wouldn’t be an appealing place for centrist, or center adjacent people.
Such problems are solved by following people who live in other countries and preferably speak other languages. I do think everyone on Bluesky has similar personalities and is over 35 though.
The main problem for me is that I turned on the algorithmic feed options and they continually show me, um, bad posts. I would describe the most common kind as selfies by people who I don't want to look at.
This is an aside, but Putnam’s “I” vs. “We” chart. I know it is trite to refer to Hunter Thompson — but it reminded me of the “wave speech” in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
That, in 1971, is an extremely keen observation of this peak.
"The singular figure of Hitler didn’t just lurk in the back of the 20th century mind; he dominated its subconscious, becoming a sort of secular Satan" - a bit like how the French Revolution haunted Queen Victoria and other 19th-century conservatives.
Lyons' essay seems like yet another example of the sort of overwritten, pompous positing that has become a hallmark of Trumpist apologist-intellectuals.
It seems pretty obvious to me that in just about any other era, Trump would be recognized as the fraud, huckster, and ignoramus he so obviously is. He's a product of a tawdry late-20th century entertainment tabloid culture that nevertheless managed to seduce a lot of people. He's no man of action, nor any sort of epoch-defining figure, and the fact that he's hated by half the country doesn't prove it, though men like Lyons like to think it does. Sometimes people are just hated because they're awful, and sometimes the damage they wreak is just damage.
American Evangelicals seem to universally downplay or ignore their ongoing and deliberate cheapening of the Christian faith by their nearly unconditional support for Trump and his imitators. By lionizing the repeated commission of literally every sin in the book, what sort of message are they sending to potential converts? To their own children? Sin is delightful--for me--but not for thee?
Well this is exactly it. His movement is a movement of unapologetic sin: lying, wrath, pride, jealousy, hate... even the sort of sexual sinning the evangelicals so righteously denounce, in the form of degenerates like Hegseth, RFK, or indeed Trump himself. I don't know how these right-wing "deep thinkers" manage to convince themselves MAGA is some sort of righteous movement of salvation. Again, in any other era, this wouldn't even be considered a difficult question.
Didn't know about the sexual assault allegations regarding RFK until your comment. I'm not surprised, but I didn't know.
He also cheated on his wife extensively and detailed it all in his journal. She found the journal and killed herself.
That this is not the most well known fact about RFK just goes to show you how deplorable his ideas and beliefs truly are
... Oh my god. This didn't surface during his campaign because...? It was not notable enough?
My religious relatives keep bringing up King David as their example - in their telling, Trump and David were both great sinners who nevertheless did God's will despite their flaws. I think it's self-serving nonsense, because the Biblical David tried to live a virtuous life but was flawed; while the Cheeto very plainly doesn't try at all. But they do have their own logic that's not quite as cynical as it seems.
Well put. I too have Evangelicals in my family. All of whom are good people. But who don't seem to even consider that Trump's incessant lying & cheating are actually doing the will of Beelzebub. Trump is either the Antichrist, or the one who precedes him.
It's also a tribal thing, "He may be a unrepentant sinner; but he's OUR sinner, making us happy by transferring government money to our churches, letting us break 501c law, and trying to give each of us no-strings-attached cash to homeschool our kids."
He’s a terrible human being, but he’s OUR terrible human being can’t be underestimated.
Cyrus. It's supposed to be Cyrus who was the secular king who was used by God. David was the direct linear descendant of Abraham. This is standard 90's bad apologetics. Seems like we can't even remember the old excuses anymore...
They might have mentioned him too, to be honest. The David example irritated me, and so stuck with me more.
Yes, not much to learn from Lyons. J.K. Galbraith observed, in a previous century (and really nothing has changed), "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
And when we undress Trump 2.0, it's just Reaganist supply-side carried to its (il)logical conclusion - full speed ahead with cultural and race panics to distract from unfunded tax cuts for the rich and damn the national debt.
What's new is the geopolitical assaults on our Western allies and, in particular, the pandering to Putin's sick police state.
Well said.
This is a great essay, Noah. "You didn't build anything." is a good meme for the 2028 election. Kudos to you.
Yeah, "you didn't build that" was such a huge hit for Obama 2012!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that
Definitely time for the Democrats to bring it back!
That slogan hit on something important but was rhetorically problematic: the message was, "you didn't build that ALONE" but the last word being left off makes it seem like people who actually did build stuff didn't accomplish anything. I know that people who craft these statements understand rhetoric better than I do and perhaps I'm wrong, but the slogan you reference was so easily misconstrued/countered that I can't help but think it was not well crafted.
"You didn't build anything" is a bit more difficult to counter, I think.
It was almost as bad as “basket of deplorables.”
I wish you were more like Mark S from Severance but instead you're an awful person. Get a life, or troll elsewhere dude. You're not making inroads here perpetuating your bullshit worthless ideologies
*sigh* Again with the personal insults. Is that REALLY all you can bring to the table? Sad!
One of your best essays in a while. As someone who is quite sympathetic to communitarian thinkers like Putnam and MacIntyre, it is both laughable and genuinely kind of heartbreaking to see so many of their purported acolytes defending an administration that is completely devoid of values or anything approaching virtue, either by modern or traditional standards.
It’s as if, in the intellectual void created by the Trump-induced death of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, these traditionalist conservative types see an opening to project their previously marginalized ideology onto Trump, but the shoe just doesn’t fit. Trump is neither credibly Christian, nor a family man, nor moral, nor even earnestly patriotic. The faction he most represents are not traditionalists but amoral, libertine Ugly American types like himself.
The conservative cope has been to dismiss his personal flaws by arguing that he still effectively serves their cause, but because Trump’s politics are basically an extension of his cruel and reprobate personality, the effect has been the opposite: in celebrating him, conservatives have not revived America’s traditional values but secularized, vulgarized and hollowed them out.
Lyons is basically correct that MAGA represents the long-suppressed thymos of politics as opposed to liberalism’s logos, but it pains me that he can’t see that this sort of thymotic politics is conducive not to building community but tearing it apart. Community and tradition are fueled by pathos. Fascism and radicalisms of all kinds are fueled by thymos. A politics based on bitter rage and action for action’s sake is more likely to get you the Russo-Ukrainian war (or indeed another World War) than a genuine revival of older virtues, assuming that is what he really cares about.
Based on my upbringing in a well to do, but not super-rich suburb of Boston in the nineties, I associate older virtues with an adherence to authority, and a belief that most authorities should be cis, hetero, white guys. I realize that some of these descriptors weren’t common back then, but as I’ve gotten older they seem to fit the case.
FWIW, I deeply appreciate the unfettered freedom of speech and thought that I had growing up, even when it led me, on a small handful of occasions, to say truly hateful things to peers my own age who absolutely deserved better.
I think that freedom ultimately helped me to develop a better set of moral principles, and to stick to them because they were organic to my own mental development, rather than being imposed from on high. At the same time though, I think back to an elementary school class where I declared that I was anti-Gay, not knowing that one of my classmates had lesbian parents. I still cringe at the recollection; I didn’t know her personally, but she seemed like a perfectly lovely person, and I still cringe at the recollections.
I’ve never taken Econ-101, but I read “Naked Economics” years ago, and I love the emphasis on tradeoffs. One person’s freedom is another person’s burden.
The 90s were a pretty intolerant time. However, the flipside was that -- in my vague recollection -- the "cis, hetero white guys" receiving this respect also felt some obligation back to the community and the country. You could appeal to them on moral grounds sometimes, even in favor of minority groups. (Not every single one of them, of course. There were plenty of racists and selfish assholes.) Today's version of right-wing politics almost demands that its adherents dump their morality out the airlock.
Damn, great stuff! I’m not a fan of the “older virtues,” because they tend to be cis, hetero, male and white. But some kind of contemporary, secular, and communal spirituality would definitely appeal to me.
What do you think “older virtues” are? Your comment doesnt make any sense to me.
I think this is a classic example of pretending Asians are white when it helps your argument.
This is excellent. There's so much to say on this. I'm increasingly of the belief that the greatest challenge for the generations of today is to find a way to rebuild the feelings of community, connection, and virtue (once promoted by religion) in the modern digitized world. If we can't find a way to do that we're doomed. MAGA and Lyons are totally wrong to believe Trump and their movement will do it. As you point out these people build nothing, and Trump himself is a corrupted seed to plant this renewal.
I think we really need to look at the Greatest Generation more closely, and read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam to get started.
Yeah, few things have radicalized me more than the Trump add about T being for you, while Kamala is for they/them. Meanwhile, Republicans are totally cool with cis white male rapists running the country. I’m not going to pretend to being a lifelong trans-rights advocate; I support trans-rights mainly because the ppl who want to destroy them are complete fucking assholes.
Largely agree, Two thoughts though.
1. I was raised Catholic, and the pedophiliac sex abuse scandals which eventually went global hit when I was just entering early adulthood. I’m not against religion: I love the prayer of Saint Francis, and the Economist’s obituary of Kim Dae-jung is probably my favorite piece of journalism - https://www.economist.com/obituary/2009/08/27/kim-dae-jung. However, I do think that culturally powerful organizations which involve unsupervised adults having a lot of power over young ppl deserve very close scrutiny: College athletics programs have similar issues, for both female and male students (God help Trans-kids nowadays).
2. I’ve never read the book, but I often think about “Bowling Alone.” In this vein, I really liked Henry Farrel’s piece about partyism from late last year - https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/not-popularism-not-deliverism-partyism
"Trans kids" definitely need God's help, preferably before they get mutilated, sterilized, and de-sexed.
Hi everyone, Mark S is a troll that is here in bad faith! He's a poisonous individual who is in every Noah post trying to throw people off topic. Report him, do not engage, and move on.
Report all you like, Noah does not censor me, as you would.
And of course the usual hurling of personal insults. Do you never get tired of being so lame?
If there is a god capable of producing this miraculous universe, they definitely would be capable of a more expansive understanding of humanity than your coarse comment reflects. Be better.
Nah, without exaggeration I think it’s the Civil Rights struggle of the 21st Century. Not because Trans-rights are more important than broad based rights/opportunities:/social status for everyone in general, but because they’ve become a centerpiece of cultural contention, and because Republicans routinely use dubious interpretations of trans-issues to justify their own misogyny and sexual violence against women. I’m really not a natural progressive, but in 2025 America I think it’s true that trans-rights are human rights.
What is dubious about (for example) following the Geneva Convention of 1949 and housing female prisoners separately from male prisoners?
We don't do this in blue states anymore. Today, any male prisoner (including a rapist of women) in a blue state can declare himself to be "trans" and housed in a women's prison.
And EVERY Democrat in Congress is on record as wanting this to be federal policy.
THAT is one example of what "trans rights" actually means in practice.
I would view particular trans-issues differently if America was approaching them from a generally trans-positive perspective. But since the overall perspective is negative, I suspect- reasonably I think - that a lot of the particular objections are driven by either transphobia, or by a desire to mask misogyny by invoking concerns about trans-ppl.
I do think that integrating trans-ppl into an overwhelmingly gender binary society will naturally create some perfectly reasonable tensions that should be resolved as reasonably as possible, while recognizing that invariably one side or the other is going to be a relative loser.
I’m fine with tradeoffs. I just think there’s a big difference between good faith and bad faith tradeoffs.
This is a canard, though; it's not an accurate description of what's happening. Yeah, the left can be overzealous about protecting trans rights to the point of ignoring some potential abuses. But the right seems to have this mental image of some beefy dude with stubble saying in a gravelly voice, "I just decided I'm a chick; where's the womens' showers at?" When that is REALLY not anything close to what's happening. By and large you're talking about people who have drastically altered their everyday lives and appearances and lived as women, and did so long before being convicted of a crime. And if I'm not mistaken, those blue states require psych evals at the very least.
Now, in a nation of over 330 million people, probably at least some bored male prisoners (as in, who do not and have never considered themselves women) have tried this. But I have seen no evidence that anyone like that has successfully declared himself a woman and been moved.
But even should one or two have succeeded (again, 330 million people, extremely unlikely events happen all the time), I seem to recall that the Geneva Convention says a few things about punishing a whole group for the actions (or imagined actions) of a few individuals...
I often wonder if the most extremist trans activists (like those who argue that convicted rapists should be able to self-ID as women and serve their sentences in women's prisons) are right-wing agents provocateurs.
I'm reminded of what happened in Scotland after the Scottish National Party (SNP) kicked out its former leader Alex Salmond after sexual harassment accusations: some members of the SNP started pushing fringe pro-trans positions, while Salmond started a new party Alba, which distinguished itself from the SNP with a transphobic stance.
Given that Salmond was defended at his sexual assault trial by Craig Murray (successfully, although Murray would subsequently be jailed for perverting the course of justice) and that Murray was both another sexual harasser and a notorious Russia apologist, how likely is it that both Salmond and the SNP's pro-trans extremists were on the Kremlin's payroll?
And another clue is that shortly afterwards the SNP has ran into money troubles: perhaps the Kremlin money that had helped build up the party was diverted to Alba?
"Trans" people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be.
This is a disability issue. It has nothing to do with "LGBTQIA+," let alone "Queer."
A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a deformity or disability. (As for "intersex"? Some people are born with eight toes.) And bullying or harming the disabled (or those with a genetic anomaly) is an atrocity in its own right.
None of this requires that we redefine “male” and “female,” or adopt terms like “cis” and “trans.”
All the rest is cosplay.
“Gender" (as distinct from biological sex) is a social fiction. Indeed, among gay males, drag is about repudiating and ridiculing the very notion of "gender identity" -- not “affirming” it.
Yes, I experience stereotypically "feminine" emotions -- but the operative word is "stereotypically"; those feelings don't make me female. Indeed, reconciling such feelings with respect for my male body has been absolutely crucial to my self-acceptance as a gay male.
Moreover, the implicitly adversarial notion of "Queer" (or some putative “LGBTQIA+ community”) is a self-serving, self-marginalizing corral into which we’ve been herded by “The Groups.” It dilutes and jeopardizes the hard-won, widespread acceptance (and self-esteem, as individuals) that gay people have otherwise already gained — along with our fight against those who once medicalized our condition. And those promoting that paradigm (thereby emboldening our adversaries) are running a protection racket, at our expense.
So, FWIW: Yes, I’ll pull up the ladder behind me when anyone (especially some apparatchik running a protection racket) starts clutching at my heels, dragging me down.
This seems to be a defining feature of the MAGA movement. A feel good neo-patriotic homage to the post-war period with absolutely no connection to the beliefs and policies of that time.
I don't think technology _necessarily_ resulted in a loss of religious identity; I think there were scenarios in which religion could have made itself more relevant as technology changed society as you describe. Churches could have recognized that and made it their duty to provide social cohesion, to call out dehumanizing influences and remind people of the importance of society.
Instead, I think organized religion in America met that trend halfway. Religion in the US got very cosy with the right wing. It was silent or complicit on big moral issues like the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis, and very loud on issues of sexuality that are really awfully minor in scripture. It largely refused to engage with technology, except to scold people about sexual matters. The American experience of religion has been that organized churches are just another part of right-wing power and generally unwilling to stand up to it on principle on which it ought to disagree. Which is fine if you're a business or other interest group, but when you claim to speak for God and still refuse to call out your buddies, when you say you represent the divine but never actually lead... well, it looks a bit shabby. They don't make demands on folks like Trump, because they know they're the junior partners here. As long as they never disagree, nobody knows they're not driving, right? So they let themselves be reduced to a sports jersey or a mascot, and at some level I think people recognize and respond to that.
The way in which American liberals turned away from a Christianity they saw as a tool of right-wing power, sounds like a milder version of how the Bolsheviks became anti-theists because the Russian Orthodox Church was basically an arm of the Tsarist regime (and note that following in this tradition it is now an arm of Putin's regime).
I wonder how much of a role the worldwide child abuse revelations played as well.
It almost certainly played a role in one of history's most rapid secularizations: the mass abandonment of Catholicism in Ireland!
Technology ruins things. It also, as you yourself have written many times, has vasty improved people's lives across the globe. Humanity needs time to adjust to new realities, and 20 years in human terms is the blink of an eye. It's both the change and the pace of change that's overwhelmed the current generations' abilities to adapt and adjust. You can know both your neighbors and still chat with people across the globe, as we are doing here.
As for the ripping apart of communities and their close knit order, industrialization did a fine job of that hundreds of years ago: re-regulating household chores, child rearing, and the care of the elderly and our neighbors. Humanity hadn't really begun to fully recover from that when the latest technology revolution reset everything yet again. It's no wonder we have some level of chaos and false prophets in every available flavor.
According to my Athenian wife, in modern Greek usage "thymos" just means "anger". Which you could argue is part of the problem, that in the modern day people don't distinguish between constructive and destructive outlets for male energies.
Reading this, I recall that some translation of the Illiad is titled "The Wrath of Achilles". Certainly, Achilles had the ultimate in thymos. But he was also dead by the end of the war.
I’m not associated with this group but wouldn’t it be nice if the thumotic, leaders and followers alike, would enrich their personal psychology by attending…
“Why is everyone so angry these days? Are social media and political rhetoric fueling extremism and driving us apart? Join us to discuss what philosophy and psychology can each us about the rapidly escalating problem of anger.”
https://platosacademycentre.substack.com/cp/158517650
“Like all good essays, this overstates its case.”
Is this intended irony? More than a few excellent essays employ understatement, e.g., “Corn-Pone Opinions,” by Mark Twain. In fact, Twain believed understatement was what made American humor unique.
The creator of the essay (Essais) form, Montaigne, frequently used understatement.
But let’s take a cursory look at the decline to disinformation. Walk the cat backward to one of the Greatest Generation who chose to not join the WWII troops in war with the claim of poor eyesight: Saint Reagan, and you’ll see that class warfare is as his stock in trade. He didn’t have any trouble reading cue cards from a decent distance. This has incrementally led us to the corporate oligarchs and monopolies that drive political polarization. Why his name adorns the Washington, DC International Airport is testimony to a long history of disinformation. “Ketchup is a vegetable.” “Welfare queens” “The nine most dangerous words in the English language. ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” And at the end of this road we have Saint Trump, who claimed he wasn’t fit for the draft because of bone spurs. I wonder how many holes of golf Trump has played in his lifetime. He’s still playing golf at age 79.
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
— Voltaire
A little over twenty years ago, a group of conservatives were proposing a dramatic course of action that seemed to go against the basic rules that had been serving us well for decades. If you disagreed, you didn’t love America enough, you weren’t manly enough, you didn’t understand the big picture and the clash of civilizations and blah blah blah. Most importantly, you weren’t visionary enough to see the mystical magical world that lay around the corner once we got rid of the quaint old rules.
Of course the Iraq invasion was a disaster in exactly the obvious ways people said it would be a disaster.
It’s mind numbing that here we are again with visionary conservatives trying to sell us on some magical world if we just tear down the system that has lead to untold prosperity and peace.
Can we maybe just slow down illegal immigration and cool it with the woke excesses? We can always revisit NATO and, like, democracy if that doesn’t do the trick.
Yes, I am going to be 70 this year and I couldn't agree more with your critique of the automobile, television, iPhone and social media. See the movie, "Avalon". I really miss the first half of my life. Other cultures still have "family values"' not the ones conservatives talk about, the ones we had in the last century. Also I agree with your view that just burning down the house will not accomplish anything unless you have something to replace it with. The Maga party has no plans for the future, there will be nothing left for anyone if Trump and Musk continue on their path of destruction.
Dear Noah: I loved this column, and I’ll make the same pitch to you that I made to Nate Silver earlier today. Please start posting on Bluesky.
Consistent with your priors, it’s Saturday night. I’ve had a few beers, and I’m on my phone instead of engaging in meaningful, real world social life. So please forgive the cut and paste job below.
Bluesky is very liberal, and I grant that in more normal, and politically healthy times it probably wouldn’t be an appealing place for centrist, or center adjacent people. Personally, I was on X all last year until the election.
But if America as it actually exists today, as opposed to the imaginary America which is conjured up by Republicans, had to be run by either X or Bluesky users, I’d pick the Bluesky people by a light year.
I get that there is a long list of legitimate critiques of progressives, and even more so of super-online leftists. Personally, MeToo was the first big social movement that I fully bought into as an adult, and I was so annoyed that Democrats held Biden to a lower MeToo standard than Kavanaugh that I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote for Trump either, but I admit that I was so frustrated by the left in the summer of 2020 that part of me wanted Trump to win as a giant FU to progressives. Defund the police was the worst policy idea of my lifetime until DOGE, and the academic public health hypocrisy regarding the George Floyd protests was just too much to take. But then came Stop the Steal and Jan 6th - events which progressives had warned about in substance, even though they didn’t get the details right - and the world changed. And then Republicans followed it up with the most openly prejudiced and fascistic political campaign of my lifetime in 2024.
Consequently, my genuine issues with the progressive left have faded into the background as I’ve been confronted with the grim reality of MAGA unchained.
To sum up, I didn’t choose Bluesky due to natural disposition; I chose it because the alternative is so much worse.
So yeah, I’d love to see Nate post there as well.
Man, if you think the country should be run by only X or BlueSky users maybe you should put down your phone and grab another beer.
Poor reading comprehension.
Sean Kelleher postulated a world where the choice of leaders is either X or BlueSky users, which is a silly as postulating a world where the choice of leaders is Walmart shoppers or Whole Foods shoppers. I agree with him that MAGA and Woke are both bad alternatives, just as X and BlueSky also are both bad, but you don’t have to choose one of the two.
What did you comprehend from his comment?
You claimed he said the country "should be run" by one or the other. He did not.
I see what you’re saying, and I agree that I’d rather live in an America ruled by Bluesky users than X users, but a big reason the Democrats have a brand in crisis is that center left politicians started talking their cues from social media shouters not their own constituents. By starving Bluesky of his attention, Noah is trying to model good epistemic hygiene.
Based on what I understand, I wouldn’t use the term liberal interchangeably with the modern left.
Couldn’t agree more. But I’m an addict. Still, even after the 4th beer, I remain a partisan for Bluesky.
> Bluesky is very liberal, and I grant that in more normal, and politically healthy times it probably wouldn’t be an appealing place for centrist, or center adjacent people.
Such problems are solved by following people who live in other countries and preferably speak other languages. I do think everyone on Bluesky has similar personalities and is over 35 though.
The main problem for me is that I turned on the algorithmic feed options and they continually show me, um, bad posts. I would describe the most common kind as selfies by people who I don't want to look at.
Fantastic post, Noah! Thank you for reading a lot and sharing the best with us. Other than that, I'm speechless.
This is an aside, but Putnam’s “I” vs. “We” chart. I know it is trite to refer to Hunter Thompson — but it reminded me of the “wave speech” in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
That, in 1971, is an extremely keen observation of this peak.
Powerful stuff, Noah. The tearing down will be a lot easier and much quicker than the rebuilding I am afraid.
"The singular figure of Hitler didn’t just lurk in the back of the 20th century mind; he dominated its subconscious, becoming a sort of secular Satan" - a bit like how the French Revolution haunted Queen Victoria and other 19th-century conservatives.
This was a fantastic essay, Noah.