{"id":8573,"date":"2022-12-02T19:44:50","date_gmt":"2022-12-03T00:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/?p=8573"},"modified":"2022-12-02T19:44:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T00:44:50","slug":"broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/broken\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken"},"content":{"rendered":"

Methinks Tablet editor in chief Alana Newhouse and her correspondent Ryan are definitely onto something with this idea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

At one point last year, Ryan said something that struck a nerve. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I identify as these days, because everything has gotten so scrambled,\u201d he noted. \u201cI\u2019m not a Democrat or a Republican, I don\u2019t even think I could define myself narrowly as either a liberal or a conservative anymore. The one thing I know that I fundamentally do believe is the premise of your piece, that the dominant institutions of American life\u2014in education, in the arts, in politics\u2014are either totally broken or so weak or corrupt that they\u2019re becoming irrelevant. In a way, the only thing I\u00a0know<\/em> that I believe in is…brokenness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Ryan went on to explain that, when he gets into political debates with friends and acquaintances these days, those on the \u201cother side\u201d aren\u2019t all liberals or all conservatives or in fact all from any other previously recognizable camp. Instead, they are the people in his life who, regardless of how they vote or otherwise affiliate, remain invested in the institutions and political ideologies that now leave Ryan cold. Many of them acknowledge that there are problems, even serious ones, with universities, newspapers, nonprofits, both political parties, what have you, but they see these as normal, fixable challenges, not signs of fundamental brokenness. To them, the impulse to consign weighty institutions to the dustbin of history feels impulsive and irresponsible\u2014like arson. To Ryan, staying committed to decrepit structures, and insisting to others that they are fundamentally safe when they\u2019re clearly not, is what feels reckless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Most Americans don\u2019t fall squarely into one of these two camps. Around 40% don\u2019t even vote. But among the people who do engage in debates about this country\u2019s future, the ones doing it most compellingly are not those still stuck in the battle between \u201cDemocrats\u201d and \u201cRepublicans,\u201d or \u201cliberalism\u201d and \u201cconservatism.\u201d The most vital debate in America today is between those who believe there is something fundamentally broken in America, and that it\u2019s an emergency, and those who do not.<\/p>\n

…Many people understandably see our current moment as a wave of change that can be ridden successfully\u2014without overblown diagnoses or radical solutions. These are status-quoists, people who are invested in the established institutions of American life, even as they acknowledge that this or that problem around the margins should of course be tackled. Status-quoists believe that any decline in quality one might observe at Yale or\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0or the Food and Drug Administration or the American Federation of Teachers are simply problems of personnel, circumstance, incompetence, or lack of information. Times change, people come and go, status-quoists believe\u2014this outfit screwed up COVID policy,\u00a0yes<\/em>, and that place has an antisemitism problem,\u00a0agreed<\/em>. But they will learn, reform, and recover, and they need our help to do so. What isn\u2019t needed, and is in fact anathema, is any effort to inject more perceived radicalism into an already toxic and polarized American society. The people, ideas, and institutions that led America after the end of the Cold War must continue to guide us through the turbulence ahead. What can broadly be called the \u201cestablishment\u201d is not only familiar, status-quoists believe; it is safe, stable, and ultimately enduring.<\/p>\n

\n

On the other side are brokenists, people who believe that our current institutions, elites, intellectual and cultural life, and the quality of services that many of us depend on have been hollowed out. To them, the American establishment, rather than being a force of stability, is an obese and corrupted tangle of federal and corporate power threatening to suffocate the entire country. Proof of this decay, they argue, can be seen in the unconventional moves that many people, regardless of how they would describe themselves politically, are making: home-schooling their children to avoid the failures and politicization of many public and private schools; consuming more information from YouTube, Twitter, Substack, and podcasts than from legacy media outlets; and abandoning the restrictions, high costs, and pathologies of the coasts for freer and more affordable pastures in the Southeast and Southwest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Brokenists come from all points on the political spectrum. They disagree with each other about what kinds of programs, institutions, and culture they want to see prevail in America. What they agree on\u2014what is in fact a more important point of agreement than anything else\u2014is that what used to work is not working for enough people anymore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

Worse, the people for whom it IS still working are the selfsame nefarious wreckers who broke the whole damned system in the first place, intentionally and with malice aforethought.<\/p>\n

(Via WeirdDave<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Methinks Tablet editor in chief Alana Newhouse and her correspondent Ryan are definitely onto something with this idea. At one point last year, Ryan said something that struck a nerve. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I identify as these days, because everything has gotten so scrambled,\u201d…<\/p>\n

Would you like to know more? Broken<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17,20,22,42,45,162,61,71,77,89,120,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-american","category-big-tsimmis","category-brilliant","category-business-as-usual","category-disasters-near-and-far","category-domestic-disputes","category-hard-times-are-here-to-stay","category-hmmm","category-life-in-a-once-great-nation","category-meltdown-what-meltdown","category-read-and-heed","category-we-are-soooooo-screwed","category-where-do-we-go-from-here","wpcat-5-id","wpcat-17-id","wpcat-20-id","wpcat-22-id","wpcat-42-id","wpcat-45-id","wpcat-162-id","wpcat-61-id","wpcat-71-id","wpcat-77-id","wpcat-89-id","wpcat-120-id","wpcat-122-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8575,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8573\/revisions\/8575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}