Lucky for us, he’s delved deeply into our political history and plumbed the kinds of insights that perhaps we who live within the forest can’t see for the trees. Which I suppose is why he’s publicizing his book, The Unwinding, in the Guardian. For instance, Mr Packer tells us:
America’s postwar responsibilities demanded co-operation between the two parties in Congress, and when the cold war waned, the co-operation was bound to diminish with it. But there was nothing historically determined about the poisonous atmosphere and demonising language that Gingrich and other conservative ideologues spread through US politics.
Precisely correct. Once the cold war waned, and conservatism won it with that crazed cowboy Reagan narrowly averting nuclear armageddon and bumbling his way into an accidental checkmate over a Soviet Empire who made the mistake of not realizing they were dealing with an unnuanced child, the tacit big government agreement was to return to the status quo of the post-New Deal progressive march through the American landscape, a march that increased the size and scope of government and federal power while simultaneously growing dependency, the welfare state, instituting political correctness, and Balkanizing what was once a country endeavoring to create a melting pot rather than a new-agey, relativist quilt.
But some of these stupid bitter clingers, with their guns, their religion, their adherence to self-reliance and the Protestant work ethic, to a civil society not consumed by a secularist religion of State, just refused to follow the game plan.
As a result, America is unraveling, refusing to slide easily into the very kind of soft socialism that has swept over old Europe and left England, from where the Guardian postures, all but subsumed by immigrant populations and onerous laws that punish increasingly helpless citizens.
Should we only listen to Mr Packer and his ilk, in no time can we be back to permanent states of “compromise” in which the Democrats and the left run things entirely, and the right tries for whatever concessions it can glad hand from its superiors. We can return to those worry-free days of the New Deal, the Square Deal, the Great Society, etc., which has so brilliantly solved the problems of joblessness, permanent underclass status, and national cohesiveness, all while winning the war on poverty and removing from base capitalism the problems of corporatism and a politically-motivated perpetual expansion of the welfare client state.
And isn’t that what America is all about?
We have nobody but ourselves to blame. All during this rather silly, populist experiment in self-rule and liberty, the Fabian socialists in our own country with a hankering for the drawing-room pre-progressive Fabianism hailing from the country whose ass we booted in order to build our own, were ready and willing to step in and tell us how to do things correctly.
Provided they do it from the offices of the Guardian newspaper or some upper west side NY apartment and not from, say, Dearborn Michigan, or those areas of England they’ve allowed, through their own brilliant policies and ideological dictates, to be entirely overrun — and now ruled — by foreign entities.
Because them bitches be crazy!
(h/t RI Red)
Damn Jeff, if that didn’t sound like every one of my cultured leftist friends. But then, they are all Guardian readers.
The fact Packer uses Gingrich as an example of outrageous rightwing ideologue tells me he needs to get out more. I would be happy to introduce him to some real poisonous atmosphere and downright demonising language.
It’s impossible to imagine Packer’s mistaking churches for democratic institutions — where, y’know, a plebiscite tells their deity to go right the fuck off with his commandments business — as an embarrassment to his tale to the Americans. He just couldn’t be embarrassed knowing what he knows, could he?
Gingrich was poisonous and demonizing because he dared tell the truth about liberals, from a historical perspective — and this after liberal elites had done their best to erase and rewrite it.
It’s like a privileged elitist Ivy League leftist writer for the New Yorker is a stranger in his own land. That’s a complete shock to me, never saw that one coming.
I’m glad you posted this, Jeff. I read that article last night and thought “My fellow hobbits could have fun with this!”
Boy, I miss preview. And a /blockquote tag.
Aye.
Roosevelt Republic is a morsel of dogshit Packer tracked into his shoe, which he mistook for a discarded piece of pizza, thinking he would consume it later at his leisure — that, however, isn’t good reason anyone else should join him at his repast.
Let us not forget that our fellow Americans recognized just how poisonous and demonizing Gingrich was, and punished him with the first Republican House majority in 40 years and Time’s Man of the Year cover. Surely Packer’s criticisms of Gingrich can’t be any worse than what we’ve already put the poor man through.
On the bright side, at least Packer noted Gore’s immeasurable hypocrisy at the end of his little bout of logorrhea. Too bad he’ll never be able to see or admit that his “solutions” invariably make our problems worse.
After reading the Roosevelt Republic business, I was torn as to whether the piece was satire.
Then, I remembered it was in The Guardian.
It’s the Guardian. The Labourites in the UK make the Commiecrats look sane.
Amusing line from the article:
“It is sentimental at best, if not ahistorical, to imagine that the social contract could ever have survived – like wanting to hang on to a world of nuclear families and manual typewriters.”
And then the twit goes on:
“This deterministic view is undeniable but incomplete. What it leaves out of the picture is human choice. A fuller explanation of the Unwinding takes into account these large historical influences, but also the way they were exploited by US elites – the leaders of the institutions that have fallen into disrepair.”
Gee, Georgy, which side chose to take apart the nuclear family? Best not to ask that question I suppose.
Proggs are like chickens, fluffing up their feathers after a quiet day spent eating and shitting in their yard, getting ready to settle down for an uneventful future in their chicken house, with nothing in their chicken brains except the perfection of their current moments and the contemplation of their next day’s eating and shitting. What, you say foxes are just outside, waiting for dark? Those thoughts never cross their chicken brains until feathers start to asplode.
It takes conservative thought processes to evaluate and plan for future events that are unpleasant and that chickens would rather ignore.
There probably isn’t a cause worth examining behind that effect, so why bother even trying to look?
Oh. No relationship between one of these things and t’other. Nothing to see here; move along.
Industry didn’t all of a sudden stop so much as it fled to places where it could be more price-competetive.
But: nothing to see here.
So now we have a house of straw and one of cliche, awaiting a stout home of brick where all can shelter.
We am hoping for a better editor.
I have in the past read some well-written pieces by George Packer; this doesn’t quite measure up.