The Comfort That Made Us Forget

For decades, wealth and power dulled our civic instincts. Now the gears are grinding in plain sight.

Photo by Mohammed Shonar on Unsplash

America has always prided itself on being a well-oiled machine, meaning it’s self-correcting, self-cleaning, practically able to run on autopilot while we debate whether pineapple belongs on pizza. For decades, we’ve treated democracy like a reliable old car: sure, the “Check Engine” light’s been on since the latter half of the last century, but she always starts in the morning. Trump’s second term is less a sudden crash than the sound of the transmission giving out mid-commute, and the dawning realization that nobody’s checked the oil since Blockbuster was still open.

Yesterday, a writer I respect and read often posed the question of whether there is a straight line between Reagan and Trump. You can read Jonathan V. Last’s article and the excellent Triad newsletter here.

I think that’s a heavy question to which, in the past, I would have unequivocally said yes, but now I believe there are shades of gray.

I do think the legacy of post-segregationist reactionary red meat is baked into the pie of modern American conservatism—sadly, as well as a short-sighted greed incentive structure that seems to epitomize America’s second Gilded Age. But I also think there was a genuine strain of thinking that sought fiscal accountability, respect for good faith traditions, and a belief in America as the indispensable democracy in the world, despite the murky waters that role always seems to navigate.

For much of the last half-century, America has run like a self-correcting machine. Wealth, power, and the post–Cold War glow convinced many of us the system would keep humming whether we tinkered with it or not. We didn’t have to fight the way earlier generations did to bend America closer to its ideals. And so we stopped checking the oil. Trump’s second term isn’t so much a derailment as it is the loud, grinding noise that makes you realize the “Check Engine” light has been blinking for years.

There will be a lot of debates, histories, and outright arguments about the legacy of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. However, I want to consider the aspect of our contemporary times that is closer to home for all of us: the idea that we inherited a relatively well-oiled machine, but lacked the institutional memory or the will to keep up with maintenance. One thing I’ve noticed over the last several years is a significant gap between what people who spend their lives in public policy and political communications (on all sides) know and what the general public perceives as necessary within public life.

And that gap? It’s not just a quirk of the moment. It’s the hairline fracture that tells you the whole chassis might be coming apart.