Degrees of Radicalism

One of the burdens faced by American politicos is sustaining a nostalgic fiction that we’re still living in a golden age of American Exceptionalism. Marketing strategies for selling cars, toothpaste and political candidates will continue to work this realm with glossier and glossier messages how special we are and how the rest of the world pines for our rule. Likewise, they will continue to fall short on sustaining our crumbling public infrastructure and the dignity of our poor. America’s resurgence depends, we’re told in a full-page New York Times ad, on Reagan-like conservative optimism. Reagan optimism amounts to symbolically polishing up the locomotive pulling the American dream while conveniently forgetting about the fetid, jammed cattle cars and the dilapidated caboose at the end of the train.

John Grant with more than a few good reasons to grow depressed.

I kid, sort of...


TS