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The West is a victim of its own lasting peace

It’s not guns like the grin that make the photo a document of its era. “Santa Claus, please bring ammo,” US Representative Thomas Massie tweeted like household seven strong posing with a rifle in front of the bluff Christmas tree. His pun responses to accusations of bad taste confirmed that this is just “playful” lib ownership behavior at work. What, his whole being seems to be asking, what is the worst that can happen?

Five years on from voting for Brexit and Donald Trump, it is still not understood what percentage of populism is opposed to insurgency rather than (original theory) economic grievances or (more a thing). opposite) doctrinal beliefs. To some extent, this is a movement of cavaliers. Violence is not what they want, but neither do they see it as a legitimate and unintended result of their actions.

And why, given the lack of warning from recent history, should they? In terms of time, we are now almost as far away from the second world war as the American Civil War. Few voters in the West have ever seen their domestic politics go down the drain in a catastrophic, life-threatening blunder (at least until siege of the Capitol of almost a year ago.) Their appetite for political risk is therefore natural. Think of it as the civilian version of hasty consumption and investment at the end of the business cycle, when the final crash is too distant to remember. “Stability is destabilizing,” said economist Hyman Minsky.

Bob Dole enlisted in the US Army in 1942 © AP

To define the problem of the West as a matter of normalcy, not of willful malice, nor of minimizing it. In fact, it’s a much harder problem to fix. The implication is that nothing short of a violent crisis will instill a healthy fear of political extremism. Social media can be tamed, dark money embargoes of elections and improved education have little effect. These are tactical answers to an issue that could not be more structural: in today’s debate, the lack of “life experience” about the consequences of populism.

It’s a problem that by definition gets worse over time. When World War II veteran Bob Dole died at the age of 98 last weekend, the United States not only lost a dry wit and Senator used to be efficient. It has lost one of the few remaining messengers from the first half of the last century. Complimenting him is truly a tribute to the generations who have held politically more or less from 1945 to before the millennium.

Liberals have had half a decade to study populism in its modern form. They still remember its ridiculous element: treating politics as a sort of low-stakes team sport. Even those who argue that it is more inclined to blame it on the innate vanity of individuals, rather than the historical setting without any electoral choice, are misguided miserably in living memory. It can’t be a stroke of luck that most stable The great democracy, Germany, was the democracy for which the second world war, or rather its prelude, was simply never allowed to leave public discussion.

If and when America’s democracy collapses, giggling complacency, not malice like a mustache, will be the presiding atmosphere. Of course, there are true believers and zealots on the American right. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon is one of the writers Michael Anton. But there were a lot of people in the 1990s and (in Barry Goldwater, a presidential candidate) the 1960s too. What has changed is that most people think that no harm can happen from enjoying them widely.

In meetings with Trump voters and donors, a certain pattern will recur: civilian, vanilla suits most of their tastes and often corporate is easier than equivalent left side. Some are just staunch conservatives. (Dole himself isn’t above a bit of tribalism.) Some, as well as the most famous Brexiteers, indulge in an outsider’s memory that has hitherto been negated by their wealth. and their chastity. Most of all are hurt by being seen as the perpetrators of civilian damage to their countries. When toying with people like Trump, their primary failure is imagination, not conscience. They cannot imagine the worst-case scenario. Two or three generations separate them from any welcome history lessons about what fission-matter politics are.

To regard anything in public life as “inevitable” is to succumb to fiction. With the passing of Dole and much of his generation, however, it is hard to avoid the thought that societies have grown worse and more reckless as their memories of past crises faded past. In other words, for the West, where the final mess of existence is now a human life not too long ago, success is inevitable. It will hope its politics will wobble and wobble until the people taste the consequences again.

janan.ganesh@ft.com

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